“I took my son to a bar once,” Matthew had said. “It was a bar at a pizza place, nothing too wild, and he ordered one of those root beers that come in a glass bottle, that look, you know, like the real deal. I remember watching him and thinking that we had our whole lives together, I remember thinking ‘You know, some day I’m going to be able to have a beer with my son.’ I just wish I could have been able to have a beer with my son.” Matthew teared up, he patted his eyes as he spoke, but did not break down; he simply stood, letting everyone know that he’d had a son, he’d loved him and now he was gone.
Claire looked away from the window and back at this gathering that had transpired against her will. She wanted to watch it all, letting the waves wash against her, to fall to the floor in tears, to grab hold of the carpet to anchor herself before she was tossed out to sea. She just wanted to feel this grief, to let it permeate, to be an all-consuming physical specimen of it, but she had to put on the hostess’s face. She was an adult and adults held their tongues; they nodded politely and did not scream in the faces of well-wishers, no matter how old the “I’m sorry” ‘s got. Adults did not throw a fit because their son was dead while others had been spared. No matter how badly she just wanted to scream right now, societal conventions, the pull of the real world, which was enlightened and civilized, was too strong. She’d given that up for a little while, she’d turned into a bleeding animal at the morgue, and every night alone in her bed, she thrashed and cried and screamed. But to let her connection, even her small connection, to the world go completely would be to lose so much more.
“Claire, there you are,” Cara List said, having just set the salad she’d been tossing on the table near an aluminum tray of lasagna and a pitcher of iced tea. “I thought I saw you earlier,” she went on, grasping Claire’s arm, which was clenched tight. “It was a lovely service, really a lovely service and it just makes me feel so…” Cara didn’t finish, instead she shook her head, and Claire could see that she was fighting off tears.
“Hey! Hey!” Peyton cried, running energetically at his mother and grabbing onto her legs as Eva followed. “Over here, I’m over here,” he shouted and his mother looked down at him, horrified, as Eva stayed still, staring up at Claire as if she were afraid of her.
“Peyton Andrew List,” Cara hissed, visibly embarrassed. “You know better, you calm down and go sit by your father,” she instructed with that Mom voice, the kind of tone only certain women could pull off, a tone Claire was sure she did not possess anymore. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into him. I’ve tried to explain to him what happened to Preston, but he doesn’t really understand yet and he won’t stop acting up. I always thought he’d be a little older before we’d have to start talking about this.”
“I know,” Claire replied, still hugging herself. She could feel the warmth of her own body, as if the rest of the world were freezing.
“And I just want you to know how sorry I am…how I didn’t know and if I had, I wish I had known to call the police when Preston didn’t come back to our house. Maybe if I’d done that they would have found him sooner.” Cara shook her head and Claire watched her neighbor. She didn’t want to blame her, not for neglecting to contact Claire about Preston’s leaving her house or for being the mother to initiate the newfound freedom the children had been allowed this year. She couldn’t blame her, and though part of Claire really wanted to accuse this woman she knew it would do nothing, it would mean nothing and what was the point—Cara List hadn’t poisoned him.
Claire gave Cara the tiniest, tightest smile as she gently touched her arm and walked away, saying a slow, quiet “thank you.” Claire knew in another world she’d never have been so impolite to her friend, but she couldn’t concentrate now, the pills had wrapped a blanket around her mind and she could barely focus on the people here. Cara stayed behind, turning once Claire left and tending to the salad that a few neighbors had started to dig into. “No, no, no, make sure you take the avocado,” Claire could hear her neighbor instruct as she left.
She turned into the living room to find Eva’s parents standing there. Claire had never known Gloria and Derrick Murphy very well. Sometimes they chatted at school functions, a paper cup of weak coffee in their hands as they discussed the PTA, the latest class play, what the school was planning to do about the cricket problem. They were doctors and didn’t have a lot of time; Eva’s last nanny, who’d left a year ago to start a family of her own, had basically raised her.
“I’m so sorry,” Gloria Murphy said, grasping Claire’s arm as the grieving mother looked at her. She was a pediatric oncologist and Claire was sure this woman had said these exact same words many times to other mothers before. “I can still hear your voice on the phone when Preston went missing, I shudder each time.”
“We’re really sorry, Claire,” Eva’s father added stiffly. He was, Claire had heard, the brilliant surgeon the hospital called in when all was lost. He had an entire team of doctors behind him and had probably rarely had to leave an operating room to tell a family they’d lost a patient. He had a staff for that.
“Thank you,” Claire replied, nodding kindly, not knowing what else she could do. She pursed her lips and stared at the floor until Gloria Murphy grasped her husband’s arm and, sensing Claire’s discomfort, moved to walk away.
“Well if you need anything…”
“Thank you, I know,” Claire said, moving further into the living room.
She turned and there was Matthew standing with a plastic cup resting at his lips. He sipped from it as he watched Kyle Clinter, his golf buddy, who seemed to be explaining something. Todd Snider and Terrell Jacobs were also standing around as if they were in the driveway after a mid-afternoon basketball game, the kind she’d seen her husband partake in on many a Saturday afternoon. Matthew casually shuffled two steps away from the conversation, but remained with his friends as they surely commented on how “awful” this all was.
The front door opened; Claire turned her head just as it began to creak. No one else noticed it; people had been moving in and out of the house all day. This was the kind of gathering where people came and went, opening the door as if this house had become, at least for the time being, communal property. Only this time it wasn’t any old neighbor who entered, or Father Sherman who’d said the Mass, or one of Matthew’s mother’s friends from Andover. It was the neighbor from two streets down, the one from the cul-de-sac near where Preston had been found, Gregory Hawthorne.
He was a youngish man, his features played up by a pouty baby-face. Gregory was probably about thirty-two, thirty-three, with prematurely thinning dark hair, a pale face and watery blue eyes, the kind of eyes that belonged not to a grown man, but to an old person. He was hunched when he walked and looked too skinny yet a little chunky at the same time. He was the kind of man who would have been made fun of on the playground, the kind who might never have gotten over it. He worked with computers, that was the generic job description the people in the neighborhood gave, he’d made a lot of money that way and he’d never been spotted with a woman, or a man for that matter. Sometimes he could be seen outside shooting baskets in his driveway, only he didn’t do it like the teenagers did, he didn’t play with anyone else and was always attempting long, elaborate shots and then celebrating excessively, and a bit too loudly, whenever one went in. He stayed alone in his house and ordered his food in; sometimes he had a housekeeper cook for him. It was rumored that he never kept one for longer than a couple of months because, as Shannon Forrester’s old nanny had said, “He is too picky, too picky for everyone, they all quit.”
He came in wearing a dark blue T-shirt and black jeans. He walked on two steady legs and still it seemed as if he were stumbling. His wide eyes seemed terrified of something, like a kid who knows he’s done something wrong and can’t make eye contact, and yet he kept on walking, right until he was nearly in the middle of the living room, facing Claire.
“I just want to say,” he fumbled and Matthew moved away from his friends, to stand between Gregory Hawthorne and his wife. “Mrs. Tumber, I am so incredibly sorry,” the man said, sniffling. “And I didn’t know…I mean…” He kept talking despite the tremor