The weight of water - Anita Shreve [85]
Rich goes to the forward cabin and leaves the door open. Adaline is still lying motionless on the berth; she has thrown her arm across her eyes. I watch Rich peel off his wet clothes. How casual we are being with our nakedness, I think.
Rich dresses quickly in jeans and a sweatshirt. I can hear his voice, murmuring to Adaline, but I cannot hear the precise words. I want to know the precise words. He comes out and pulls on a pair of foul-weather pants and a jacket. He slips his feet back into his wet boat shoes. I can see that he is still thinking about the storm, making mental lists, but when he walks past me to go up on deck, he stops at the bottom of the ladder and looks at me.
It is strange enough that just a half hour before I was willing — no, trying — to make love with my brother-in-law. But it seems almost impossibly strange with my daughter in the berth and my husband at the sink. I feel an odd dissonance, a vibration, as though my foot had hit a loose board, set something in motion.
Thomas turns just then from the faucet, where he has been pouring water into a paper cup. In one hand, he holds the cup; in the other, a pill. I believe he is about to say to me, “Drink this,” when he sees his brother’s face, and then before I can pull away, my own.
Thomas’s eyes move briefly from Rich’s face to mine. Rich glances away, over toward the radio. I can see images forming in Thomas’s mind. He still holds the cup of water with his hand. The other hand with the pill floats in front of me.
“What?” he asks then, almost inaudibly, as if he cannot formulate a whole question. I take the pill and the cup of water. I shake my head quickly, back and forth, small motions.
I hand the cup to Thomas. Rich goes immediately up to the cockpit. Billie calls to me: “Mommy, help me, please. I can’t do the snaps.”
With the exception of Maren Hontvedt’s testimony as an eye-witness to the murders, the prosecution’s case was based on circumstantial evidence and a lack of an alibi. It had been a bloody murder, and blood was found on clothing (left in the privy behind his landlady’s house) belonging to Louis Wagner. Mrs. Johnson, the landlady in question, identified a shirt as belonging to Wagner by the buttonhole she had once mended. Money had been stolen from the Hontvedt house, and the next morning Wagner had enough money to go to Boston and to buy a suit of clothes. Any man who made the row to Smuttynose and back would have put a lot of wear and tear on a dory; the brand new thole pins in James Burke’s dory were worn down. Wagner had talked to John Hontvedt and know that the women would be alone on Smutty-nose. In the weeks prior to the murders, Wagner had said repeatedly that he would have money if he had to murder for it. Wagner could not produce a single witness who had seen him in the city of Portsmouth from seven P.M. on the night of the murders until after seven o’clock the next morning. His landlady testified that Wagner did not sleep in his room that night.
The chief bit of evidence for the prosecution, however, was the white button that was found in Wagner’s pocket when he was arrested. The button, the prosecution claimed, had been stolen, along with several coins, from a pocketbook belonging to Karen Christensen the night of the murders. The button matched those of Mary S. Hontvet’s nightdress — the one she produced in court.
I slip Maren Hontvedt’s document and its translation into a plastic bag and seal it. Into other plastic bags, I put my film and my cameras, my log, Thomas’s notebooks, other books, and the provisions Rich has asked for. Rich and Thomas are above; Billie is beside me. I keep her close, throwing my arm in front of her or behind her