Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [30]
I jogged in place for a moment, taking time to breathe, to look around. There were no other joggers near me, and the closest person on the beach was a man a few hundred feet away, his head in a paperback. I glanced out at the water. A couple of boats bobbed in the distance, but they were so far away I couldn’t even make out what type of crafts they were. I turned my attention to the houses lining the beach. Immediately behind me, sitting high on a dune, was a massive, white contemporary home with flat roofs and walls of glass that faced the beach. The boxy structure made it look cold and unappealing, but it had probably cost millions.
The reflective glare of the glass made it impossible to see if anyone was inside, and I was just about to begin running again, when an image snagged my attention. I continued jogging in place, squinting up at the house, until I could determine what it was. On the far right side, a figure stood at the corner of the deck. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. I could only make out a baseball hat, an orange windbreaker, and arms that were holding something up to the person’s face. I stopped running, and without the bouncing I could see that it was a pair of binoculars. And the binoculars were facing toward the lake and down to the beach. Right at me.
I looked both ways, but there was no one close to me, no one else that the person could be focusing on. Doesn’t matter, I told myself. It must be a home owner simply checking out the beach. But the person didn’t sweep the water or the length of the sand with the binoculars. Instead, the orange-clad arms held fast, the body facing mine, not wavering, frozen.
I took off running back the way I’d come. I was moving too fast, and the speed would soon tire me, I knew, but I had an irrational desire to get away from the house, from that person, quickly. Yet I couldn’t outrun the feeling of being under surveillance, and when I stopped and looked back, I thought I could still see the figure, turned toward me.
When I got back, I peeked in at the front desk. The housekeeper was on the phone taking a reservation. Ty was nowhere in sight. Then I remembered he’d said that he spent most Sundays at his parents’ until high season. He had told me that he would come back to the inn in the early evening to pick me up for dinner, a dinner where I would meet his father and, hopefully, find out what the police knew about my mother’s death.
I was glad Ty wasn’t at the desk. I didn’t want him to see me right now, looking sweaty and smelling as if I’d bathed in a pool of beer, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop the feeling of wanting him around, wanting that ease.
“Excuse me, Elaine?” I said, stepping into the lobby.
The housekeeper looked up and gave me a smile. “Good morning.”
“I was wondering if you know who owns that big white house down the beach.”
“Down to the right, you mean? The one with all the windows?”
“Right.”
“Ah, probably just some summer resident. I can’t keep them all straight. Sorry.”
I thanked her and went to my room.
After a shower, two more ibuprofen and a raid of the minibar that included every bottle of water and miniature bag of chips, I felt somewhat human. I padded barefoot out onto the deck and again settled into the Adirondack chair with Caroline’s and Dan’s letters.
I began with the next few from Caroline. She had, it seemed, stayed at Crestwood Home for five years. Five years, five years, I kept thinking. Surely that was a hell of a long stay for inpatient treatment. I tried to think of every reason that a nineteen-year-old girl might be in a psychiatric clinic for that length of a time—anorexia, bulimia, depression, drugs—but did any of those require five years of inpatient treatment? I wanted to believe that Caroline had just needed some help, that she needed counseling and had gotten it, but my mind kept coming back to the same