She marveled at the way the house had been built to encompass a view that hadn’t existed yet. Prior to the flood in 1974, the large plate-glass window in the front that looked through an identically sized window in the back would have shown nothing more than a forest like the one behind her circled by the chain-link fence. Now, Mallory could peer through both windows to see the rolling water nudging at the small beach on the other side of the house. It made her new home seem hollow, nothing more than a darkened tunnel to the lake. She shook her head to rid it of the strange idea, and another thought rushed in. During their search for a home together, Graham had rejected a ranch house, calling it a shoebox for old people. She had acquiesced, and they had ended up with a two-story.
She let a deep breath lift her shoulders, sighed out the memory of her husband, then made her way to the house. She kicked a few small stones, causing them to roll out in front of her like tiny footmen paving the path to the front door. As Betty had directed, Mallory extracted a key from beneath the mat, still in awe of the fact that the practice was commonplace in McNamara, and slid it into the lock. Despite the rust that surrounded the aged lock, the key turned effortlessly.
She let the door swing open without stepping inside. Now that she was here, she wanted to savor her new house, unwrapping it as slowly as possible, the way she used to eat her candy bars as a child. She decided to unload the car first before exploring every room and spent the next half hour ferrying the dozen boxes and suitcases that contained what was left of her old life to the threshold of her new one. With each step, she grew more excited. After depositing a particularly heavy box on a stack inside the door, she thought she heard a high-pitched shriek on the wind. She stepped outside quickly to discern its source and paused, her body still, but the only sound was the rustle of dancing leaves. She continued with her task, and, finally, the house contained everything she had wanted to keep from her past.
She raised the fob and beeped her car locked. The electronic chirp sounded out of place among the bird calls and the waves. With a slow smile, she pressed the button again and unlocked her doors. Hearing the mechanisms release made her feel safe. According to Betty, McNamara was a place where locks weren’t necessary.
Finally, it was time.
She edged past the tower of boxes, past the entryway closet on the left side of the narrow passage, and into the kitchen. The back window of the house faced directly north, and the beatific light from the low sun warmed the space. To the right of the kitchen were a back door and an open space for a dining room table. Beyond that was a large room sandwiched by the two large windows she had seen from outside. Mallory chuckled softly at the yellow shag carpet that covered the floor and the faux cedar planking that lined the walls. Though the glints of changing light from the water sparkling throughout the dated room were pretty enough to make the deep mustard color slightly less unpleasant, even the sun couldn’t save the room from the tragedy of its original furnishings. The house hadn’t been updated since it was built in the mid-1960s, and it showed. The air smelled of dust with a whiff of body odor, like an old sweater left in a drawer too long.
So many ways to make it your own, Betty had cooed over the phone.
Mallory had been unexpectedly moved by the clichéd pitch. Making something her own was a dream that she’d never realized she had until the real estate agent had suggested it. But her excitement had also troubled her. She had been married for so long. It was difficult to shift her place in the world from the collective to the individual without feeling the heaviness of guilt.
Now that she was here, however, the idea of redesigning a home with only herself in mind had become more inspiring than treacherous. It was another way the light of McNamara was able to pierce through the aftermath of Graham’s dark death. She began taking an inventory of what she loved about the place and what she would change. The windows were incredible, and whoever had built the place had been forward-thinking enough to keep the living space open rather than create the boxed-in rooms of many houses of the era. Only the foyer was fully divided from the living room by a wall. The kitchen kept its sense of openness with a pass-through between the hanging cabinets and the counter.
She looked to the left. Past the kitchen, a long hallway led into the other half of the house. From the floor plan Betty had sent her, she knew that there were two large bedrooms at the end of the hall with a bathroom between them. As she began to make her way toward them, a sharp knock on the front door made her jump. Mallory bit her lip in uncertainty. You can do this. It’s likely a friendly neighbor, she told herself as she moved toward it. People here must know things almost before they happen.
She swung the door open and saw a tall man with close-cropped sandy-blond hair. His hazel eyes turned gold as a sunbeam lit his face. He looked stern, almost aggressively masculine. So not my type, she thought before reversing course immediately. She didn’t have a type. She was married. Except she wasn’t. She spoke to cover her ping-ponging thoughts.
“Hello?”
It sounded more like a question than a greeting. Halfway through the word, she had registered that the man was in uniform. A police officer.
“Good afternoon, ma’am.” His hard gaze swept her face, her body, and then flitted from box to box behind her before returning to make eye contact. “Sorry to bother you. I can see you’ve just arrived.”
“I did, yes,” Mallory said.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
Mallory noticed a muscle jump along his straight jawline. It was shadowed with stubble salted with silver where the darker hair had faded. He looked to be in his midforties. Younger than Graham had been, but older than her.
“Are you the welcoming committee?” she asked weakly when the silence grew uncomfortable.
The officer closed his eyes, then rubbed under each of them in turn. On another person the gesture might have looked like swiping away tears, but this man didn’t look like he cried often. Mallory guessed he was brushing away his own fatigue.
“No, ma’am. I wish I was. I’m Sergeant Joel Benson. I’m here to inform you of a death.”
Her heartbeat faltered. Was McNamara really small enough to warrant a police officer delivering news like this to every household?
“That’s awful. Who died?”
He eyed her carefully, and she realized how stupid her question had been. She had hardly been in town for more than five minutes. How could she possibly know the person? She covered her confusion by looking at the ranking stripes on his chest, then realized it might seem suspicious to avoid his eyes. She forced herself to reconnect with his gaze.
“Sorry. I’m sure you can’t release the details.”
His expression didn’t change as he answered her. “Best we can tell it was a drowning, but they’ll be sending a coroner up from Turner shortly.”
“Oh my God,” Mallory replied. Black spots crowded the edge of her vision. She took a deep breath to try to dispel them.
“Bad business, for sure,” the sergeant said. “It was on that beach about a mile from the turnoff to town. You would have seen it on the way in.”
Mallory blinked hard as she tried to figure out how to answer him. She had seen the beach. In fact, she had stopped there to stretch her legs. It didn’t seem worth mentioning. “The one with the spit?”