Only after Erin started to dig into the details of Tim’s case, did she remember that Mrs Davis, in addition to her role as town librarian during the summer, had taught English at Belle River High School.
‘Shall we go for a stroll?’ Ruth’s eyes looked troubled. ‘I could do with some fresh air.’
*
A flock of terns swooped and squabbled at the water’s edge. The air, wonderfully fresh and alive, carried the sharp, briny scent of the sea. After guiding Erin through the bracken, Ruth led her onto a well-trodden path that wound through the marshland.
‘Brisk today, isn’t it?’ Ruth said as she fastened the buttons on her coat. ‘Not cold, are you?’
Erin shook her head.
They walked in silence for several minutes before Ruth cleared her throat. ‘So, Tim is one of your… case studies, is that it?’
Admitting the truth would be a breach of ethics, but she didn’t have the stomach to lie any more than she already had. Posing as a born-and-bred Londoner to colleagues and strangers, and relating stories about growing up in Britain, was one thing, but Ruth had always loomed large in her imagination, to the point where Erin had fantasised as a child about what it would be like to have Ruth as her mother. Yet here she was, prepared to relay another outrageous falsehood. Ethics be damned.
‘Actually, I’ve been asked to provide an assessment of his case,’ Erin said, tucking her windblown hair into the collar of her coat. ‘It’s standard procedure for psychiatric patients in the criminal justice system who are eligible for release.’
Beside her, Ruth bent her head into the wind. ‘You mean he’s been in a mental asylum all these years?’
On the far side of the salt flats, a fleet of sailboats, white canvas billowing in the wind, tacked through the channel.
‘I’ve completed most of the formal assessments,’ Erin said, ‘but I wanted to speak with someone who knew Tim as a child. Before the crime.’
Ruth adjusted the scarf around her neck. ‘It was a terrible shock, of course.’ She briefly met Erin’s eyes. ‘Tim was a quiet boy. Rather awkward. The kind of person you couldn’t imagine hurting a fly. He rarely spoke in class and when he did he would sometimes stutter from anxiety, what with everyone staring at him. He wasn’t a particularly good student, at least not in my English Literature class. Rather than take notes, he used to doodle in the margins of his paper. Once, I remember catching sight of a list he’d made of the collective nouns for different types of birds. A quarrel of sparrows, a conspiracy of ravens, that sort of thing. But I heard he was good at maths, and something of a talented artist. One time, I passed his desk and looked down to see he’d made an absolutely exquisite sketch of a great blue heron. So lifelike, I felt it might fly off the page. Since he was supposed to be taking an exam, I couldn’t exactly praise him for his work, but it was truly lovely.’
Erin pushed her hands into the pockets of her coat. ‘What about the father, did you know him?’
‘Tim’s father? Oh my.’ Ruth brushed the windblown hair from her face. ‘That poor man. I can’t imagine how he went on living after what happened.’ She plucked a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed her face. ‘I didn’t know him socially. But he was quite the man about town in my day, so everyone knew who he was.’ She looked up and shaded her eyes against the pale sun. ‘Shall we press on? There’s a wonderful view of the bay from the lighthouse.’
Erin marvelled at Ruth’s vigour. She must be in her mid-seventies, but showed no signs of slowing down.
‘I remember the first time I saw him,’ Ruth said, bending down to collect a piece of blue sea glass from the sand. ‘The summer of 1956. I was on my lunch break with one of the library volunteers. Babs Greeley, her name was. Gosh, I haven’t thought about her in years. Anyway, we had just bought ice-cream cones – it was so hot that year – and were heading to the docks. Babs had her eye on a lobsterman, and she was looking out for his boat when someone else caught her eye. She grabbed my arm and said, “Who’s that?” I was trying to keep my ice cream from melting all over my hand, but when I looked up, I saw this absolutely gorgeous man. Wavy chestnut hair, eyes like the Aegean, and a smile from a toothpaste ad. The spitting image of Senator Kennedy, only better looking, if you ask me. The whole town was abuzz, so it was easy enough to find out his name. He was a local boy, just graduated from law school in Boston and home for the summer.’ Ruth pointed to the sailboats, plunging through the whitecaps. Sunlight sparkled on the water. ‘Isn’t that a pretty sight?’
A familiar snapshot, blurred by time, surfaced in Erin’s head. Her father at the tiller of a Sunfish, his ruddy face turned happily into the wind. This memory of the two of them, one of the few she possessed, had begun to appear at odd moments, ever since her trip to Maine.
‘Rumour had it he’d come back to Belle River to set up a law practice,’ Ruth was saying. ‘Why he didn’t stay in Boston or head to another big city after law school was anybody’s guess.’ She turned into the wind. ‘A year later, I saw his wedding picture in the paper. He’d married a girl from Philadelphia. Quite a number of hearts must have been broken that day.’ Her lips twitched into a smile. ‘Not mine, though, in case you’re wondering. Tim Stern pére was a bit too flamboyant for me.’
When a shadow blocked the sun, Erin looked up, surprised to
