Page 49 of Dead of Summer
“It’s quite creepy really,” she whispers, leading her away from the front entrance and through the house. “After a few days alone here, you start to feel like you’re going insane.”
A rhythmic humming interrupts them. Elena points through a giant picture window as a helicopter lowers through a space in the clouds, its descent sending giant ripples of wind out across the lawn and flapping the tops of the white tents.
“Looks like Geoffrey Clarke has arrived,” she says dryly as Faith watches the staff scramble to save decorations from scattering across the lawn. He’d been gone for the last couple of days, leaving his “boys” the run of the house. Faith had found them lounging around the mansion, their feet up on furniture. They would appraise her, their hooded eyes traveling silently over her body in a way that made her sure what they were after, leaving powdery cigar ashes in their wakes.
“Let’s go do your makeup,” Elena says quickly, squeezing her hand. “Show me your room.”
“The bedroom is this way.” Faith leads her up the marble staircase to her and David’s suite.
“This place is even bigger than I expected,” Elena says, falling into step with Faith, the garment bags dangling from her hand.
They sit across from each other at the long bathroom counter while Elena unpacks her makeup, setting out endless tubes of Dior lipsticks and Armani powders next to a row of brushes like she is preparing for surgery.
“What are we going for tonight? Sweet and serene? Or perhaps something a bit… darker.”
In the mirror, Faith watches as something passes over her friend’s features like a fast-moving storm. Is she jealous? It’s gone as fast as it came. Elena takes a brush and swirls it around in a pot of bronzer.
“And what about our little artist, Orla; have you been feeling any better about her?” Faith detects a bitter edge to the words.
“I haven’t seen her again,” Faith says.But David has, she thinks.
“Look up,” Elena commands. Faith trains her eyes on the crystal light fixture at the ceiling.
She feels the rough brush of a mascara wand against her lower lashes and tries hard not to blink. When she looks back across at her friend, her face has gone back to normal.
She’s missed Elena, missed having a girlfriend around. They gossipabout the Clarke family as they get dressed, and Faith calls down for a bottle of champagne to be sent up to the room. It comes on a tray with a bowl of fruit next to it. It’s funny how the luxury is starting to feel commonplace. Incredible how quickly your expectations can shift. Amazing what we can get used to.
“What good is money if you can’t even talk to your partner?”
“Plenty.” Elena laughs, dusting Faith’s face with finishing powder. “Blot.” She slips a tissue between Faith’s lips. “Are you ready for tonight?”
“I’m nervous,” she says.
Elena smiles at her a bit wistfully in the mirror. “Don’t be. You’re absolutely perfect.” She squeezes Faith’s shoulder with one hand before dabbing a thin brush into a square of iridescent powder. Faith feels it touch the inside of her lash line, the tip of her nose, her cupid’s bow. “There,” Elena says. “All done. Some of my best work if I do say so myself.”
Faith stands and Elena turns her to see herself in the mirror. The woman looking back at her now is sophisticated and lovely. Her hair, done earlier in the day by a woman she’d arranged to come up all the way from New York, is done like a 1930s movie starlet in thick waves. Her cheekbones chiseled; her eyes framed with a smoky black-gold glitter. Her lips are a deep plum red.
Faith is nearly intimidated by her own reflection.
“You’re an artist. Truly,” Faith says, smiling at her friend in the mirror. She takes in their heart-shaped faces and Elena’s smooth brown hair. Elena strokes her hair affectionately. She puts her cheek next to Faith’s and smiles. “I know. Look at us. We could be sisters.”
HENRY
Despite all that has happened, Henry feels like joining the party, even if it is from afar. It feels proper to mark the occasion. He’s taken his time shaving with a fresh razor blade. He goes to the closet and takes out his nicest shirt, the one Margie always said brought out the green of his eyes. As Henry dresses, he allows himself to imagine her standing in front of him.Now hold still, she’d have said, her fingers fumbling with the top button. Back then he might have brushed her away and said,Don’t be silly, I can manage on my own. What he wouldn’t do for the warmth of her so close again. He should have appreciated it more. If he had only paid more attention. Maybe then he could have saved her.
Henry touches his wrist, looking for the comforting shape of the bracelet, and finds it missing. The bracelet should be enough to tie him to her. There’s been no further sign of the police officers, but Henry suspects it is only a matter of time until they return with a search warrant or possibly even one for his arrest. He has no real alibi, after all, no one to vouch for him. And there was the blood. It won’t be a match. But it will take a while for them to verify that. He has been replaying their visit in his mind, lying awake at night staring up into the skylight with worry gnawing at his chest. Henry shouldn’t have said the thing aboutthe girls. There are no other suspects, that much was clear to him from the bloodthirsty way the younger cop looked at him. And then what will happen? Jail, he supposes.
Henry knows he should be panicking at the thought of it all, but something has changed inside him these last two weeks. Ever since Orla O’Connor returned and the whole shameful business of fifteen years ago got dredged up again, Henry feels like he’s been broken open. He wonders if part of him will be relieved when he is finally hauled off the little island and forced to reckon with everything. Without Margie here things have been unbearable most days anyway. The visit has shaken her loose from his mind as well. He’d been able to conjure her up so clearly before Jean had called him out. He could pretend she was still there. But now she only appears to him in pieces, her memory so transparent he is afraid to blink, or she’ll be gone.
His heart can’t take it out here alone anymore.
He swallows the lump forming in his throat and goes into the kitchen, where he pulls a dusty bottle of port from the back of one of the cabinets. It is the lone bottle of alcohol he could find in the house, still there from back when Margie was alive and liked to have an occasional tipple after dinner. He pours the rest into a small, chipped juice glass and takes it with him out onto the deck. It is a clear, balmy night. Warmer than normal. The perfect night for a soiree. He brings his telescope outside and positions it, moving across the sound until he finds the edge of the Clarkes’ lawn.
Through the telescope Henry watches as the guests begin to arrive at the Clarke estate. He focuses in on the men in their pressed linen suits, groomed within an inch of their lives and the women, their tan limbs peeking through slits and spilling from the tops of sleeveless dresses. They trickle in until the lawn vibrates with color. Rows of cocktail glasses sparkle on the tables waiting to be filled. Waitstaff in fitted black suits crisscross the lawn holding aloft trays with tiny crudites. People greet one another, but their raucous laughs and slaps on the back are all silent to Henry, swallowed up by the expanse between them.
He takes a moment to sip from his drink. The port is bitter, the liquid long gone rancid. He gags a little, disgusted, wishing he’d had the foresight to ask Jean to bring him something better.Jean.He hadn’t seen her this past week. She’d brought his groceries, anyway, leaving the sagging bags on the end of the dock one morning. Inside were a bunch of his staples. There were no special treats, no ice cream bars or brightly colored packages. He wonders if the police have gone to her yet. She would tell them the blood was hers. She’d back him up, wouldn’t she?
At the Clarkes’, partygoers begin to shuffle en masse collectively turning their bodies toward the center of the lawn. By the time Henry reaches the white-framed gazebo with his telescope, Geoffrey Clarke has come to stand in the center of it. Henry’s throat constricts at the sight of him there—a king observing his subjects.
