“I know,” Sam said. “Loved art. Loved the gallery.”
“No. I was going to say loved you. You were everything to her, Sam. You were her sky.”
Sam didn’t reply, but when they parked outside the Waterstons’ house, she gave Kate a quick and unexpected hug. “Thanks for telling me that about Mom,” she said.
“Anytime,” Kate said, wanting to hold on to the feeling of closeness with her niece.
She watched Sam walk up the steps. Scotty greeted her at the door, waved to Kate. It was still so early—Sam and Isabel would hang around for a while, then catch the school bus. Kate picked up Lulu, and they headed for the airport. Just knowing she was about to go up into the air made her feel lighter, took weight off her shoulders. She felt Beth with her. They would visit the sky together.
Their Piper Saratoga looked lonely and neglected on the side of the tarmac. Dead leaves had skittered around the wheels, caught beneath the chocks. Rainstorms had stuck them to the wings and windshield like brown paper. Kate and Lulu did their best to brush the debris off, knowing the flight would do the rest.
Lulu was pilot this leg, and Kate would fly home. They took off toward the southwest, Long Island Sound glittering below. One sweeping turn revealed the faded autumn colors of Southeastern Connecticut. The rising sun lit the land, acres of trees dropping their last leaves.
They banked over Napatree Point. A thousand feet below, the long, narrow sandspit curved outward into Block Island Sound, creating Watch Hill’s sheltered harbor. Nothing could have protected the point from the hurricane of 1938, when the winds blew ninety-eight miles per hour with a gust of one hundred twenty recorded in New London. A fifty-foot storm surge washed away forty houses from Napatree; one hundred people in Westerly were killed. Kate stared down at the sandy spit; she and Beth had walked there every summer. She closed her eyes—everything seemed so vulnerable.
Tom Francis, a pilot friend, moored his boat in Great Salt Pond during the summer and let his friends borrow the old Jeep he kept at the airport. Kate got the key from Margie at the desk, and they set off for Rodman’s Hollow, 230 acres of pristine open space.
Kate and Lulu were at their best when they were on the move. They sometimes tried meeting at cafés or restaurants, but sitting still at a table never felt like enough. It didn’t have to be hiking in the Anza-Borrego Desert or kayaking the Colorado River; they loved local expeditions just as much.
They parked in the lot off Cooneymus Road, grabbed their backpacks, and followed a trail into the glacial hollow. Beyond the tawny fields and coastal scrub, the bright-blue Atlantic glittered. Migratory birds, resting on their journey south from the boreal forest, darted around the thicket. A yellow warbler, perched for ten seconds on the silver-tipped branch of a bayberry bush, looked like pure gold.
“I have to tell you something,” Lulu said.
“Do I want to hear it?” Kate asked. “Lately when you say those words to me, we stop speaking.”
“Well, when you put it like that, I’ve changed my mind.”
They kept walking. Kate stared at the five massive wind turbines just offshore, tall and white and gawky in the morning light. A red-tailed hawk circled overhead, a black shadow against the blue sky.
“Go ahead,” Kate said, stopping dead in the middle of the trail.
“You sure?”
“Just get it over with,” Kate said. She felt off balance, scared of what she was about to hear. “Whatever it is, you couldn’t have told me before?”
“I didn’t want to,” Lulu said. “But it’s Beth’s birthday. It has to be now or never.”
She looked pale as she pulled her phone from her back pocket. Head bent, she scrolled through photos.
“Let’s see,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “October, September, August, July . . . okay, here we go.” She glanced into Kate’s eyes. She hesitated, then handed the phone to Kate.
Kate held it and stared at Beth smiling out of the screen. She felt a shiver of normalcy, as if Beth were still alive, could appear at any moment, could be with them enjoying her birthday. Beth had a sly twinkle in her eyes. She stood in her bedroom. She wore an orange sundress, and from the size of her belly, Kate knew the photo couldn’t have been taken long before she died.
“Swipe through,” Lulu said. “There are eight photos and a video. I took them all the same afternoon.”
Next was a shot of a pocketknife in a bone sheath, laid on the bed’s summer-weight white comforter; Beth standing in front of Moonlight on the wall; Moonlight now facedown on the bed, Beth holding the knife like a dagger above it; the painting cut from the frame; the pale-red heart drawn on the back; the canvas yellowed with age, its edges unraveling; a selfie of Beth and Lulu grinning at the camera, each holding up a blood-smeared index finger; then a five-second blurry video.
“Proof of love,” Beth said steadily. She reached out to Lulu. The camera shook as Lulu accepted the knife, and the clip stopped.
“What did you do?” Kate asked now, trembling as she looked into Lulu’s eyes.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Lulu asked.
“No,” Kate said.
“She hated him,” Lulu said. “Pete. He’d lied to her for so long, took so much of who she was. She had to show him. That painting was hers. The empty frame was a symbol—that’s all he was, an empty space, and that was all she was leaving him. She wanted him to know there was someone else. The heart was her proof of love—for herself, for Sam, for the baby, for Jed, for us, her blood sisters.”
“Okay,” Kate said, her voice breaking. “Then . . . ?”
“I put the knife into my pocket,” Lulu said. “Rolled up the painting and hid it in Beth’s briefcase. Then Beth took a nap. But God, Kate, I did it to her. I caused her death.”
Kate’s mind slipped out of gear, a car rolling backward down a hill. She pictured the knife. It couldn’t be; she couldn’t bear the thoughts and images racing through her mind.
“You’re telling me she died that day?” Kate asked, her voice barely a croak. She took a step closer to Lulu.
“No,” Lulu said. “Not that day.”
“But you were there when she died?” Kate asked.
“What?” Lulu asked. “Are you kidding?”
“Whoever took the painting killed her,” Kate said.
“She stole it herself!” Lulu said. “I just told you—it was a message to Pete. Jesus, Kate! He killed her the day he left to go sailing.”
“How do you know?”
“He had to—it’s the only way it fits. You know it too.”
“Then what did you mean by what you said—that you did it?”
“I meant that I helped her cut the painting from the frame—she asked me to—and seeing the painting gone must have set him off,” Lulu said. “He got Beth’s message, figured out she was going to leave him. He couldn’t have missed it. He’d never be able to stand Beth having the upper hand, making a fool of him. She was laughing when she took it; the idea of it made her feel strong, so happy. If I hadn’t supported her, even egged her on, she might not have done it. It was just a symbol. We never imagined the consequences.”