were eating bowls of ice cream. I think it was about twelve-thirty when we went inside. Wouldn’t you say it was about twelve-thirty?” He asked his son, who dropped his eyes under his father’s steady regard.
“I didn’t look at the clock,” Ned said.
“All right.” Officer Davis flipped his notepad closed, then nodded in my direction. “I’d like some time with Julie, here,” he said, then looked at Ned and his father. “You two can go. We’ll be in touch.”
Ned walked ahead of his father toward their house, and Daddy led me over to the double Adirondack chair. I sat down next to him and my grandfather took a seat near us, while Officer Davis and the other policeman leaned against the chain-link fence.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning, Julie,” Officer Davis said to me, kindly.
I told him everything and I tried not to cry so that I would be a good witness. I told him how I’d set up the meeting between Bruno and my sister when I was fishing with Wanda.
“I told you not to go over there,” my father said, as if fishing with the Lewis family was the cause of all that had happened.
I admitted that I used to sneak out in my boat to watch Ned and Isabel on the platform. “This whole thing is my fault,” I said. My voice had grown hoarse and it came out in a whisper. “I was jealous of her. I didn’t want her to have Ned. I didn’t mean for her to get killed, though.” I felt my father’s hand on my back and I wasn’t sure if he meant the touch as a comfort or if he was telling me to stop talking, that I was saying too much.
I was sorry when the policemen left, because I was suddenly alone with my family again and I no longer knew how I fit in. There was an air of helplessness in the bungalow. My mother and grandmother worked in the kitchen, their silence broken by sudden bouts of sobbing. My grandfather and father sat on the glider near the bed on the porch, deep in conversation. Lucy was curled up at one end of the couch in the living room, her eyes closed, thumb in her mouth, her nose still red from crying. I did not know where to go. I thought of reading, but felt sick again when I thought of the childish, made-up mysteries in my Nancy Drew books.
I sat on the couch with Lucy for a while, staring into space, wishing she would wake up and talk to me, but she slept as though she’d been drugged. Maybe she had been. Maybe someone had given her something to let her sleep through the grief.
Finally I got up and walked into the kitchen.
“Can I help?” I asked, my voice small as I tried to tiptoe my way back into my family.
My mother looked at me, surprise on her face as though she’d forgotten I existed. She turned back to the frying pan where she was searing a roast.
“I’m sorry I hit you, Julie,” she said, her attention on the roast instead of on me.
“That’s okay,” I said.
“Here.” My grandmother handed me the potato peeler and pointed to the pile of potatoes on the counter. “You can peel.”
We worked in a silence that was rare in my family, but I welcomed it because the only things that could be said would be full of pain and anger. I peeled every potato perfectly, leaving no hint of skin and carving out every eye. I wanted the task to last all afternoon because I wasn’t sure what I would do once I had finished.
The phone rang, and my mother jumped but made no move to walk into the living room to answer it. She stood at the sink, a half-washed spatula frozen in her hand, as we listened to my father’s footsteps in the other room, then his Hello? into the receiver. The three of us listened hard, but could not hear much of his conversation. Finally he walked into the kitchen.
He stood in the doorway, the color of his face so ashen I felt afraid for him. He might die, I thought. This might kill him. I would be responsible for both their deaths.
“She wasn’t…there was no rape,” he said. “Thank God for that.”
“What do they think happened?” I had never heard my mother sound so tentative and weak, as if she was afraid of the answer.
“They said she drowned, but that she’d been…manhandled first. She had a bruise on her shoulder and her arm and a lump on her head. They guess she fought the Walker boy off and then fell or maybe jumped into the water and hit her head on the edge of the platform.”
My mother suddenly threw the spatula against the wall, then buried her face in her hands. My father was quickly next to her, pulling her into his arms. My grandmother moved to them, wrapping her arms around them both. I stood alone in the middle of the kitchen floor, the peeler in my hand, tears no one noticed running down my cheeks.
Officer Davis returned to our house just as we were sitting down to a dinner we had no interest in eating. My father answered the door, then walked with him back to the porch.
“Sorry to disturb you folks,” Officer Davis said, “but I need to talk with Julie again.”
My father nodded to me without saying a word.
I stood up, scraping my chair away from the table, then walked outside with my father and the policeman. Daddy and I sat on the double Adirondack chair again, and this time, Officer Davis took a seat as well. He pulled his chair in front of me and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together loosely in front of him.
“We found Bruno Walker,” he said.
I was filled with hatred for Bruno. I remembered how he’d looked toward the bridge the day before, how I’d hoped my sister could be drawn in by his lovely eyes.
“Where’d you find him?” my father asked.
“In Ortley Beach,” the officer said.
“Did he confess?”
