Look Closely by Laura Caldwell Page A

a fictional and transient one. Once my clothes were in the closet and my makeup in the bathroom cabinet, I cal ed Maddy to tel her what I’d learned. For once I got no answer at either her home or cel phone. There was no one else I could tel about what I was doing, what I’d discovered.
    I closed my eyes and let myself hear Del a’s words again.
    Your mother died from a blow to the head. They wanted to find out if someone had done that to her on purpose.
    It only confirmed what I’d thought—that something strange surrounded my mother’s death. What did it mean that my mom had died of a head injury? Did that necessarily mean that someone had purposeful y hurt her? I had asked Del a those questions before I bolted, but she had shrugged. “There were lots of stories about what happened, but mostly people said it was an accident,” she’d said. “No one real y knows.”
    But someone knew. The person who’d sent the letter knew. Or at least they thought they did.
    The sound of a vacuum downstairs made me realize I was standing in the middle of the room, motionless. I’d had so much momentum al day. What to do now? Though the room was cozy, a huge step up from the impersonal hotel where I’d stayed in Chicago, I wished for my own apartment right then, for my comfy sweatpants and the taupe chenil e blanket my father had given me. Under different circumstances, I would have loved to curl up on the canopy bed here with a book, but I couldn’t just sit around. Not now. I couldn’t stand the thought of being in Woodland Dunes and not be moving, remembering, doing. I wasn’t here for a weekend getaway. I was here for my mother.
    The thought drew me to the French doors, but for a moment, I didn’t open them. I stared out at the wide beach, the gray-blue water licking the sand. As I watched the rush and recede of the water, I remembered the feel of my smal hand in my father’s as he led me down the unfinished wood pathway to the lake. I must have been about six or seven years old. He had come home to Woodland Dunes that day, a treat for the middle of the week.
    “Where’s Mom?” he’d said when he was inside the front door. He crouched down and held open his arms. “Is she taking her walk on the beach?”
    I nodded and charged into him, wrapping myself around his neck, breathing in the slightly stale scent of the city he always brought with him.
    “Let’s find her,” he said.
    We walked the two blocks to the lakefront and then down the wood sidewalk to the sand. We pul ed off our shoes, my dad rol ing up the bottoms of his suit pants.
    “Which way?” he said, his voice playful. “You pick.”
    I bounced on my toes with excitement. I looked both ways down the beach. The sun was growing gold and heavy, but it wasn’t dark yet. To my right, the houses were grand, some of them as big as hotels. To the left, they grew smal er and friendlier, and there were usual y more kids that way, so I raised my left arm and pointed.

    “You got it, Hailey-girl,” my dad said.
    We walked along the water where it was packed wet and hard, looking for beach glass, the colored shards of glass, rounded and smoothed by years spent in the water.
    “Here’s a great one,” my dad said, bending down to lift a green piece the size of a quarter.
    I held out my hand, but just then I saw a flash of pink farther down the beach. I looked closer, and I could see my mother’s pink T-shirt, the length of her sandy blond hair.
    “Mom!” I cal ed.
    My father stood in one quick motion, the glass fal ing from his hand. I knelt to pick it up. When I stood again, I saw my mother hadn’t heard me. She was standing a few hundred yards away, her back to us, and she was talking to someone.
    “Let’s go see Mom,” I said, tugging my father’s hand, but he refused to move. He was frozen, it seemed, with his pants rol ed up, his suit coat over his arm, staring at his wife.
    I looked at my mom again, too. I couldn’t see who she was talking to,