polished seashells and artfully strung sea glass she still added to each time we visited our second home on the Cape.
The top of her dresser held two vintage china dolls, one brought back by Justin from Paris, another she and I had found together at an antiques store. Both had been expensive, and once, both had been treasured. Now, their sightless blue eyes, glossy ringlet hair and frothy lace dresses served as makeshift jewelry stands for piles of beaded bracelets and long snarls of nearly forgotten gold necklaces. More piles of silk-wrapped hair bands and decorative hair clips adorned their feet.
Sometimes, when I entered the chaos of my daughter’s room, I wanted to toss a match. Scorched-earth policy and all that. Other times, I wanted to take a photo, draw a map, to somehow immortalize this complex web of toddler dreams, young girl obsessions and teenage desires.
In the dark of the night, however, I simply sat and named each treasured item over and over again. It became my rosary. A way to try to convince myself the past eighteen years had had some value, some worth. That I had given love and that I had been loved. That it hadn’t all been a lie.
As for the rest of the days, months, weeks currently unfolding ahead of me… I tried to tell myself I had not become the clichéd middle-aged woman, abandoned by her cheating husband, alienated by her teenage daughter, until she now existed as a mere shadow in her own life, with no identity or purpose of her own.
I was strong. Independent. An artist, for God’s sake.
Then I would get up and wander out to the rooftop patio. Where I would stand in the faint ambience of city lights, my arms wrappedtightly around my body for warmth, taking step after step closer to the edge…
I never managed to stay awake an entire night.
Five thirty A.M. was probably the longest I made it. Then, I’d find myself curled up once more on top of the king-size bed in the master suite. And I’d watch the dawn break, tomorrow forcing itself upon me after all. Until I closed my eyes and succumbed to a future that happened whether I wanted it to or not.
It was during the second month of forced sleep deprivation that I opened my medicine cabinet and found myself staring at a bottle of painkillers. Justin’s prescription, from when he hurt his back the prior year. He hadn’t liked the Vicodin. Couldn’t afford to feel that fuzzy at work. Besides, as he put it bluntly, the constipation was a bitch.
It turns out, walking all night will not keep the future at bay.
But the right narcotic can dull the edges, steal the brightness from the sun itself. Until you don’t have to care if your husband is sleeping in the basement beneath you, or your teenage daughter has locked herself in a time capsule down the hall, or that this house is too large and this bed too big and your entire life just too lonely.
Painkiller, the prescription promised.
And for a while, at least, it worked.
Chapter 9
WALKING INTO THE THIRD-STORY STUDY, Tessa immediately recognized the detective sitting at the computer as the final member of D.D.’s three-man squad. An older guy, heavyset, four kids was her memory. Phil, that was it. He’d been at her house, too, that day. Then again, most of the Boston police and Massachusetts state cops had been.
Apparently, he remembered her, too, because the moment he spotted her, his features fell into the perfectly schooled expression of a seasoned detective, seething on the inside.
She figured two could play at that game.
“My turn,” she announced crisply, heading toward the computer.
He didn’t address her, turning his attention to Neil and D.D. instead.
“It’s okay,” Neil, the lead officer, proclaimed. “The owner of the house, Denbe Construction , hired her to assess the situation.”
Tessa could tell Phil got the nuances of that statement loud and clear, because a vein throbbed in his forehead. If Denbe Construction owned the house, then in theory, Denbe
The top of her dresser held two vintage china dolls, one brought back by Justin from Paris, another she and I had found together at an antiques store. Both had been expensive, and once, both had been treasured. Now, their sightless blue eyes, glossy ringlet hair and frothy lace dresses served as makeshift jewelry stands for piles of beaded bracelets and long snarls of nearly forgotten gold necklaces. More piles of silk-wrapped hair bands and decorative hair clips adorned their feet.
Sometimes, when I entered the chaos of my daughter’s room, I wanted to toss a match. Scorched-earth policy and all that. Other times, I wanted to take a photo, draw a map, to somehow immortalize this complex web of toddler dreams, young girl obsessions and teenage desires.
In the dark of the night, however, I simply sat and named each treasured item over and over again. It became my rosary. A way to try to convince myself the past eighteen years had had some value, some worth. That I had given love and that I had been loved. That it hadn’t all been a lie.
As for the rest of the days, months, weeks currently unfolding ahead of me… I tried to tell myself I had not become the clichéd middle-aged woman, abandoned by her cheating husband, alienated by her teenage daughter, until she now existed as a mere shadow in her own life, with no identity or purpose of her own.
I was strong. Independent. An artist, for God’s sake.
Then I would get up and wander out to the rooftop patio. Where I would stand in the faint ambience of city lights, my arms wrappedtightly around my body for warmth, taking step after step closer to the edge…
I never managed to stay awake an entire night.
Five thirty A.M. was probably the longest I made it. Then, I’d find myself curled up once more on top of the king-size bed in the master suite. And I’d watch the dawn break, tomorrow forcing itself upon me after all. Until I closed my eyes and succumbed to a future that happened whether I wanted it to or not.
It was during the second month of forced sleep deprivation that I opened my medicine cabinet and found myself staring at a bottle of painkillers. Justin’s prescription, from when he hurt his back the prior year. He hadn’t liked the Vicodin. Couldn’t afford to feel that fuzzy at work. Besides, as he put it bluntly, the constipation was a bitch.
It turns out, walking all night will not keep the future at bay.
But the right narcotic can dull the edges, steal the brightness from the sun itself. Until you don’t have to care if your husband is sleeping in the basement beneath you, or your teenage daughter has locked herself in a time capsule down the hall, or that this house is too large and this bed too big and your entire life just too lonely.
Painkiller, the prescription promised.
And for a while, at least, it worked.
Chapter 9
WALKING INTO THE THIRD-STORY STUDY, Tessa immediately recognized the detective sitting at the computer as the final member of D.D.’s three-man squad. An older guy, heavyset, four kids was her memory. Phil, that was it. He’d been at her house, too, that day. Then again, most of the Boston police and Massachusetts state cops had been.
Apparently, he remembered her, too, because the moment he spotted her, his features fell into the perfectly schooled expression of a seasoned detective, seething on the inside.
She figured two could play at that game.
“My turn,” she announced crisply, heading toward the computer.
He didn’t address her, turning his attention to Neil and D.D. instead.
“It’s okay,” Neil, the lead officer, proclaimed. “The owner of the house, Denbe Construction , hired her to assess the situation.”
Tessa could tell Phil got the nuances of that statement loud and clear, because a vein throbbed in his forehead. If Denbe Construction owned the house, then in theory, Denbe
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