When Clare reaches the rear deck, she is again astounded by the ocean. She spins in a slow, full circle to check the surroundings. No one is here. The house is dark. This deck is all glass too, even its floor, so that the rocky cliff is visible underneath her feet. It gives her vertigo to look down, and so Clare fixes her gaze on the horizon. The sun has recently set, the last pink of the sky casting everything in a hazy light. The edges of the deck are marked by a metal and glass railing. Clare peers over. She can still make out the frothing white waves a hundred feet below. She grasps the railing and shakes it. It holds firm. It’d better, she thinks, because you’d never survive that fall. Clare arches her back to feel for her gun.
It was only this morning, before she boarded the bus, that Clare found herself at the back of a sporting goods store, the fake ID provided by Somers in hand, the young clerk more than happy to help a woman who knew her weapons well. The gun was an easy purchase. Clare tracks a seagull circling among the rocks below. Even in the dying light she knows she could withdraw the gun, aim, and strike it. She was still just a girl when her father started her on moving targets, skeets and tin cans tossed into the air. She knows Somers would not approve, but then, Somers would have no idea just how well Clare knows the feeling of a gun in her hands.
At the back, the house’s stucco foundation is washed gray by the salt off the sea. To one side is a rock garden. Its flowers bloom, the soil around them weedless and black. Malcolm and Zoe may not live here anymore, but someone tends to this place. It is not abandoned. It takes Clare a minute to notice that the sliding door is open an inch. There is a screen door too, and she tries it and finds it locked, but the screen itself has a tear, and Clare is able to edge her arm through it and unlock it from the inside. She cups her hands to the glass and looks in. A kitchen devoid of color and life.
No huge risks, Somers said.
This is risky, Clare thinks. Stupid. And yet, I’m here.
The patio door slides open with a whine.
“Hello?” Clare calls into the space. “Hello?”
Clare presses the door closed behind her and the sound of the ocean vanishes. Instantly there is a shift in the quality of the air, the breeze replaced by thick humidity. This kitchen is stark, the floors cement, the counters and cupboards white and angular. It’s the sort of room you’d find in the pages of an architectural magazine. Clare stands still, listening. Of course Malcolm is not here. He would never be so reckless as to return to his home. All she wants is evidence of Malcolm’s former life, his marriage. To paint a picture. This showpiece house is nothing like what she would have imagined of him, the calm and reserved Malcolm she thought she knew.
In the living room the furniture is spare, a long leather couch and a wooden coffee table facing a gas fireplace embedded into an otherwise bare wall. Everywhere the walls and the floor are white. Ghostly. Clare is losing light fast. She closes her eyes in an effort to animate this space, to imagine Zoe and Malcolm in this room, drinks in hand, talking or arguing. Were there mundane aspects to their marriage? Or was Zoe always craving adventure, conflict? Though Clare calculated last night that it’s been two months since she first met Malcolm, he is still unknowable in so many ways.
She climbs to the second floor. At the top of the stairs is a square landing with only three doors, all open. Straight ahead is a bathroom, and then a guest bedroom with nothing but a queen bed. Clare turns left first and finds herself in the master bedroom. The mattress has been stripped, the blinds open, the ocean vast out the large window. Clare enters the walk-in closet and uses the light on her phone to illuminate the space. It is split into his and hers sides. A smattering of clothes hang, the shirts on Malcolm’s side ordered from dark to light. Clare leans into them and inhales. Dust tickles her throat. She must stifle a cough, annoyed at herself for thinking these shirts might still bear Malcolm’s scent. Clare opens and closes the drawers. Most are empty, but in the bottom one on Zoe’s side she finds a framed photograph. Clare holds her phone over it.
In the photo a family of six stands on a beach, each in khaki pants and a white shirt. The Westman family. Clare’s gaze is drawn immediately to a younger Malcolm on the far left, his posture tense, his expression serious. Zoe is not beside him but instead at the opposite end of the group. The woman next to Malcolm holds a young girl on her hip. The little girl is beaming, her eyes fixed on Malcolm. Jack Westman and his wife, Colleen, are centered in the frame, arms around each other. Zoe and Malcolm are the frowning bookends to an otherwise happy family portrait.
The details of Jack Westman’s death are easy to come by, a prominent businessman shot dead five years ago in his favorite restaurant as his wife and daughters sat with him eating dessert. Clare draws the photograph closer. It must be Charlotte Westman who stands next to Malcolm, Zoe’s younger sister. She is taller than her sister, heavier set, her
