“Please sit down again,” Lieutenant Jaffe said calmly, and against my better judgment, I did so. I sat on the edge of the chair, though, ready to make my exit.
“We have to look at everyone involved,” he said. “Everyone who could have been in the same place as your sister that night. That includes you.”
I held on to my anger. If I didn’t, I knew I would start to cry. “I didn’t kill my sister,” I said, slowly and deliberately. “I had nothing to do with it.”
The lieutenant suddenly looked at his watch, then stood up. “We’ll be talking with everyone,”he said. “And we appreciate you coming in.”
Was that it? I’d been expecting the handcuffs to be produced at any second. I was thinking about my lawyer, who’d never handled a criminal case in his life. But now, free to go, my thoughts shifted to my mother.
“Are you going to need to talk with my mother?” I asked, slowly getting to my feet. Detective Engelmann was still sitting at the table, still writing. She didn’t even lift her head from her work.
“Most likely, yes,” Lieutenant Jaffe said. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”
I shut my eyes, holding on to the back of the chair for balance. I felt a little dizzy, and my mind was slow and logy. If I answered yes to his question, it would look as though I was afraid of what my mother might say. If I explained that my family never talked about Isabel’s death, it would look even worse. I opened my eyes and spoke the truth. “I don’t want my mother to suffer any more than she has,” I said. “I don’t want her to endure…” I waved my hand through the air, encompassing the room, my two questioners and the entire situation. “I don’t want her to have to deal with all of this,” I said.
“We understand,” the lieutenant said. “And we’ll keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER 20
“How about we go to the beach today, girls?” Mom said. All the women in the family—my sisters, grandmother, mother and myself—were relaxing around the porch table after a breakfast of fruit salad and French toast.
“Okay,” Lucy said. “Just don’t expect me to go swimming.”
“Not if you don’t want to.” My mother leaned over to brush a crumb from Lucy’s lip, then she sat back to admire her youngest daughter. “You’re turning a nice nut-brown color,” she said.
Of the three of us girls, Lucy was the least tan, since she spent most of her time indoors reading or playing cards with Grandma, but it was impossible to be at the shore and avoid the sun altogether.
“I promised Mitzi and Pam I’d go to the beach with them,” Isabel said, then added quickly, “but I’ll see you there.” She was sitting on the side of the table closest to the house, the seat that would give her the best view of the Chapmans’ backyard. Her huge, almond-shaped eyes darted in that direction every twenty seconds or so. She was so obvious I couldn’t believe my mother never caught on. Did Mom think for one minute it was Mitzi Caruso and Pamela Durant that Isabel wanted to hang out with at the beach?
But I supposed I was no less skillful in masking my real intentions.
“And I want to stay around here,” I said, wishing I could turn around in my seat to see if the Lewises had arrived yet across the canal.
My mother raised her eyebrows at me, obviously suspicious, and I ran my fork through the syrup on my plate to avoid her scrutiny. “Maybe I’ll fish and catch something for dinner,” I added, for something to say. I waited for her to admonish me not to cross the canal, knowing I could not disobey her direct command to stay in our yard, and I was relieved when she didn’t give it. Instead, she turned to Grandma.
“Why don’t you come with Lucy and me today, Mother?” she asked. Grandma always seemed content to stay in the house, sweeping the floors or doing the laundry, an arduous job without a washing machine.
“Well, maybe I will for a change,” she said, surprising everyone.
I jumped, startled, before I recognized the voice as Ethan’s.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Over here.” His voice came from somewhere to my left. I had to wade into the water to circumvent the reeds and cattails and finally saw him sitting cross-legged in the shallows, the water lapping at his knees. He was wearing only his trunks, and the freckles on his bare chest seemed to have converged to give him something of a tan.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Come look,” he said. “I found some baby eels.”
I had never seen a baby eel, and I was curious. I stepped as close to the grass as I could, trying not to disturb the water. Then I knelt down next to him, so close I could smell the suntan lotion on his skin.
“There.” He pointed.
I saw three squiggly black eels, thinner than a pencil, wriggling below the water’s surface.
“They’re so cute,” I said.
“I wanted to catch one of them to dissect,” Ethan said, “but I can’t. They’re just babies.”
He was weird, but I was touched nevertheless. “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t do it.”
