“What?”
“The nails were sticky.”
79.
I FEEL LIKE all the blood has left my head. I might faint. “You took the board,” I say. “That’s why it went missing.”
“I took the board,” he says. “I brought it up to the house and I scrubbed it over the sink. Then I went to the attic and stashed it behind a pile of boxes. I didn’t know why I was doing it. I didn’t know why my daughters had gone rowing in the motorboat in the dark of night, leaving the dock stinking of bleach, and a heavy board they had tried—and failed—to properly clean lying there with some hellish sticky substance on it—but I sure as sure was going to protect them, no matter what was going on.”
He loves me, I realize.
He treats me like I am his flesh and blood. He cares what happens to me, no matter what I’ve done.
For the first time since I learned about my parentage, I feel myself completely part of my father’s family. I belong.
Harris goes on. “In the morning, I learn that the boy seems to have been the victim of a shark attack. The three of you are screaming and carrying on like hysterics, but I put two and two together. I’m damned glad I had the sense to move that board before the police arrived, I tell you.”
He stops. Leans forward in his chair. Stares at me.
I stare back.
I will not tell him what happened.
I cannot tell him. About not being loved enough, about Pfeff, about Penny, about what I did and why. Even though he knows someone did something and we covered it up, he cannot know the full ugly truth of the matter.
“Do you have anything to add?” he asks finally.
“No.”
“All right, then.” He leans back. I know he is curious, but silence on difficult topics will always earn his respect. “So we got through it, and we got through it,” he continues, “and when things were settled down, I told your mother it was time for Bonfire Night.” He gestures toward the beach. “Now that board is nothing but ash and smoke.”
“You had the dock rebuilt.”
“Well, we can’t have anyone wondering where that one board went. Or noticing that lingering smell of bleach.” He smiles with tight lips. “Tipper wanted a new dock anyway, so she’s happy.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
He tilts his head to look at me. “Your mother says she told you about Buddy Kopelnick.”
I nod.
“So.”
I wait.
He explains: “The way I figure it, you—unlike your sisters—might need a reminder that this family is very important to me.”
“I know it is.”
“I will do a lot to protect it. And that includes you, as well as Penny and Bess. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He puts out his cigarette and arranges some papers on his desk. “I told your mother I only went down to the kitchen that night. That I drank a nightcap, and read for a while, and came back to bed. I am letting you know what I really did so that you can stop mooning about Buddy Kopelnick, stop messing around with my sleeping pills, and be the Sinclair I have always considered you to be.”
We stare at one another in silence for a moment.
“？‘No way out but through,’？” I say.
Harris smiles. “Robert Frost. Yes.” He clasps his hands. “We will carry on as usual. Chin up, all right?”
“All right.”
I realize then, and understand even more in retrospect, that we have gotten away with murder not only because we were clever, and not only because we were lucky, but because my father helped us. Because he has resources—an attic, a bonfire, the money for a new deck. Because the police believe a man like him is an upstanding citizen. Therefore, they assume that girls like us—educated girls from a “good family”—they assume we are telling the truth. We get the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence, conferred by our family name.
Harris stands, as if to dismiss me, so I stand, as well. “I believe your mother is planning Midsummer Ice Cream for tonight,” he says, smiling again. “The Hadleys and the Bakers arrive at four o’clock.”
“I’ll help her,” I say.
“That’s my girl.”
80.
A COUPLE HOURS later, the Hadleys and the Bakers tumble off the big boat and into Goose Cottage.
There are little kids and parents. Everyone wants to go swimming, then go on the sailboat. The adults want to drink cocktails and eat cold lobster salad on warm potato buns, cucumber salad with dill, and thick slices of cantaloupe. The children need someone to teach them croquet.