The next two days were blurry: Monday was lunch with June and dinner with Nick and boxes and boxes of Polaroids. He stayed over again on Monday night, and she woke up at two in the morning again, and this time, she slept on the bed in Dot’s room until the vibrating alarm on her phone buzzed at 7:00 and she got back into bed with Nick. This time, she stayed in bed while he hopped into his car and ran out to Frederick’s, the bakery a few blocks from Dot’s house, where he grabbed muffins and coffee and brought them back with the muffins still warm and dotting the paper bag with oil. Breaking the muffin in two, still lying on her back and picking the crumbs off the front of her nightshirt, Laurie laughed as he explained that it had taken a little longer than it would have if he hadn’t run into his mother in line, because she wanted to know what he was doing at Frederick’s when he lived over by The Cozy Cup, and because he wasn’t yet prepared to explain to his mother that he was spending nights with Laurie, he had decided to tell her that Frederick’s had better coffee, which turned into a disagreement he didn’t care to have about a thing he didn’t actually believe.
“So,” he said, “if you run into my mother, make sure you don’t act surprised if she tells you that I’ve developed some strong and unjustified opinions about coffee.”
He couldn’t tag along to Rosalie’s, even though they both would have enjoyed the ride down together, because he had promised to help a friend of Ginger’s figure out her iPad, so Laurie said she’d call him when she was home and promised him a full report.
It would take her about two hours to get down there, and she’d told Rosalie she’d try to arrive around 1:00, so after she’d had enough coffee, she gathered up some of Dot’s 1972 Polaroids, just in case Rosalie recognized anyone, and some of her own family: her grandfather who’d been Dot’s brother, her mom and her cousins, Laurie’s brothers, and Leo, the only suspected boyfriend of whom Laurie had a good picture to show. She also took a couple of pictures of Dot’s house on her phone, and at the last minute, she pushed into her bag the phony appraisal Matt had given her, because that story was probably going to come up, as much as Laurie wished she didn’t have to explain it.
She took Route 1 south instead of 95, because nobody came to MidCoast Maine to drive down 95. They came there to drive down Route 1, with the views of the water and the billboards for motels, the tourist towns with their views of the water and their postcard aesthetics.
When Laurie was young, she’d taken this drive for granted, zipping up and down the coast for short vacations and summer camps, never anticipating it would become unfamiliar the way it was now.
When she pulled up in front of Rosalie’s house, she saw a little red hatchback parked in the street with a bumper sticker that said YOUR TEACHERS ARE PROUD OF YOU. She put her tote bag on her shoulder and headed up the narrow sidewalk, and she tapped on the door knocker, which was in the shape of a black cat.
“Hello, you must be Laurie.” Rosalie Kane had a broad smile and a gray braid, and she was wearing a sleeveless blue jersey dress with white slip-on Keds just like the ones Laurie’s mom always wore to get groceries. “I’m so excited to meet you, come on in.”
“Thank you for inviting me,” Laurie said, stepping into the house. While it was small, it was open and airy, with plants in every corner and pottery that looked handmade lined up on a table in the front hall. When Laurie stopped to look at it, Rosalie stopped, too.
“Kids give me pots they make,” she said. “My husband and I came to an agreement that when this table gets full, I have to rotate a few pieces out.”
Laurie pointed to one that was made of smooth blue coils, about the size of a soda can. “Some of these are really pretty.”
“You have great taste,” Rosalie told her with a laugh. “My son Kevin made that when he was in fourth grade. He’s an architect now. I still think it’s some of his best work, but I can’t get him to design a building that looks just like it.” She gestured toward the back of the house. “It’s such a nice day, should we sit on the porch? It’s got screens to keep out the bugs.”
“Of course, that would be great.”
The porch was already set with a tray of glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. Laurie told Rosalie about the trip, and about the way she had wound up taking care of all of Dot’s possessions when she wound up at—what had Daisy said?—the bottom of the funnel.
“And you found out that she knew my grandfather after you found the decoy, I suppose.”