I told her everything then, about how I felt an urgency to know more now, to uncover the whole truth, whatever it was, to make sense of that fatal night. About the guy in the hoodie, about the caller named Esme and her relationship with Belinda, about how I sped away spooked and in a panic before Esme arrived when we were supposed to meet.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Julie said.
“But that guy…”
“Was there to scare you. If he wanted to…”
“He’d have done what? Shot me through my windshield?”
With a long exhale, Julie said, “I was going to say, if he wanted to hurt you he would have followed you and…and really run you off the road.” The memory of that slow spinning slide to the edge of the river cliff on the way from prison silenced us both for the stomp home.
Just before we got there, I told Julie about the box of police reports Detective Sunday had given me, how I wanted to dig into them, how I was too terrified to dig into them, how I’d let the box sit under my bed since I came home, even though I could feel it pulsating, as if it were somehow alive.
“You know what? How about you and I go to the cabin? Right before Christmas?”
“Your family will be there.”
“Not this year. Hal and the boys and my brothers’ families are leaving early this year to go diving someplace warm. But not me.”
“Well, I’d love to do that. It seems like years.”
It had, I realized later, been years, four years, in fact. Julie and Hal customarily spent Christmas at her storied country home on the Door County peninsula, with her brothers and their families, and we’d visited for New Year’s many times, the memories of those crepe breakfasts and midnight hot tubs still an arsenal against despair for me.
Some of the best times of my growing up were the three weeks in August my parents let me go to stay with Julie’s family. The main cabin was a four-story, ten-bedroom spread that even I, as a child, understood cost serious change. None of the Bishops ever talked about money.
“We can ski cross-country. Or just hike. I’ll get a chef,” she said.
“We can buy frozen pizza.”
“No, it’ll be fun. Chefs love these little gigs.”
I hadn’t been anywhere alone with Julie in years. The idea was so appealing that I took hold of her shoulder and hugged her, there in the street.
“And here’s the deal. Bring the police reports,” Julie said. “You can look at them with me right there. I’ll look at them with you.”
“I don’t want you to have to do that.”
“I can’t imagine you having to do something like that by yourself. You’ve already faced so much by yourself. And you managed to do your job and be good to your husband and son and friends and your sisters… I could never have done what you did.” Trust sweet Julie to make grace of my disgrace. And yet her generosity was not by far the best thing about her: Only she had never, not once, flinched from Stefan.
When he arrived home, minutes after us, he made her come back outside onto the porch. And he switched on his lights.
Julie gasped at the glorious bower that Stefan had created at our house for Christmas, with all the fairy lights, garlanding and only-slightly-dinged British-inspired gewgaws left over from his jobs decorating lavish private homes, businesses and a country club or two.
It continued, outside to inside.
“You’re a genius,” she said.
“I am indeed, Jujubees. Whatever a person can do with some fourteen-dollar light strings and some baling wire, I am that genius.”
“I mean it. This looks professional.”
“I am a professional. I’m a professional landscaper.”
“You know what I mean. I mean, it looks Hollywood, Stefano. It looks Hollywood.”
She was right. It was still weeks before Christmas but we noticed cars slowing down to look at our house—not just for the customary reasons. In early November, Stefan banished me and Jep for an afternoon of shopping and a long dinner out. We were gone for five hours. Then, when he heard the sound of our car, he powered the whole thing on.
It felt as though we were entering a private fairyland. Jep said some of the same things Julie was saying now.
“You don’t have to give me another thing for Christmas,” he told Stefan. “When I was a little kid, you know I lived in England for a while with my parents. And this is what the village looked like…”
“Writtle,” Stefan said proudly. “I know. I looked it up. I looked in your boxes of old pictures. They went all out for Christmas, like a Dickens story. I did this trying to resemble that. I can’t believe you actually think it worked.”