“We can rent a space, invite people for food and drink once we leave the funeral home. I’m not set up for many people at my condo; get more than two people in my kitchen and it feels sardine-like. There’s a back room at Casa Rosa that’s nice.”

“Let’s do it here,” I said.

“Here?” Diane said, looking around.

“Seriously, Jax?” my father said. “Dracula’s castle?”

I nodded. “Yeah, seriously, Ted. This was Lexie’s home—she loved it here. God knows there’s plenty of space. And it’s pretty cleaned up now. We’ll just need to get some snacks.”

My father frowned.

“Okay,” Diane said as she picked up her phone, started typing notes into it. “I’ll get plenty of everything. If we have leftovers, we can send food home with people.”

Her phone dinged as she held it. “Sorry,” she said, standing. “I’ve gotta take this.” She went into the hallway, and I could hear her say in a low voice, “I’m so happy you called.” She listened, then whispered something.

“Mind if I try one of the beers?” my father asked.

“Not at all.”

He grabbed a beer, and out in the hall Diane laughed, then said in a flirtatious voice, “Is that what you think?”

“I’m sorry, Jax,” he said after a moment of awkward silence. “For what I said. I know you didn’t always shut Lexie down. I know you tried.”

This was almost worse than being criticized. I shook my head. “Not hard enough,” I said. “And I’m sorry, too. Being back here is messing with me, clouding my thinking. And losing Lexie… it’s—” I struggled to finish the sentence.

“It’s impossibly difficult,” my father said.

“Look,” Diane was saying out in the hall, “I’ve gotta go. But I’ll call you soon. Promise.” She came into the kitchen, face flushed.

“One of your lady friends?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. Just picked up her glass and topped it off with Diet Coke.

“Are you still seeing the woman who works in the bookstore?”

“No,” Diane said.

“Jane? Was that her name?”

“No, that’s Sylvie,” Diane corrected. “Jane was the tax lawyer. That was over ages ago.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I remember. Jane was the one with the Great Dane. Is there someone else, then?” I pressed, smiling. “The poetry lover you were chasing?”

My aunt looked uncharacteristically flustered. “What’s in that package?” my father asked, and Diane flashed him a look of thanks for changing the subject.

“Something Lexie ordered. They had it at the general store. Apparently, she didn’t like the UPS driver.”

“Or the mailman,” added Diane.

“You knew about that?”

“She thought they were spying on her. I suggested she get a PO box in town. It seemed like the easiest solution.”

“Right,” I said. You had to pick your battles.

“Should we open it?” my father asked, already pulling a jackknife from his pocket. He carefully cut along the taped seams. We all held our breath. It felt, in a strange way, like getting a message from her.

My father opened the box to find layers of Bubble Wrap. He unrolled it and whistled. It was a gun-like weapon. It reminded me of a ray gun from an old sci-fi movie.

“What the hell is that?” Diane asked, stepping back.

My father turned the gun in his hands. “It’s a speargun. They’re used for fishing,” he said. “I have a buddy down in Key West who runs a charter—takes tourists spearfishing. They get grouper, marlin, hogfish, all kinds of stuff.”

He took spears from the package. “You load it by pulling back this piece of rubber tubing—it’s basically a grown-up version of slingshots kids make in grade school.” He got the spear in place, sighted down the shaft of the gun.

“Put it down, Ted,” Diane said. “Before you end up shooting an arrow through your foot.”

“It’s a spear, not an arrow,” my father corrected her, laying the gun down on the counter. He looked back in the box. “She got extra spears and a reel and line,” he said, clearly pleased. “That way you don’t lose your catch.”

I looked at the thick, ropelike yellow line in his hand, then back down to the gun. I asked the obvious question. “But why the hell would Lexie order a speargun?”

“God only knows,” Diane said.

My father picked it up again, with the intent of installing the reel. “It’s a hell of a weapon,” he said, running his finger over the sharp metal tip of the spear.

I remembered what Ryan had said: This was a different Lexie. A scared Lexie.

chapter sixteen

September 28, 1929

Lanesborough, New Hampshire

The entire town came out for the fall foliage festival! People from surrounding towns, too! There were so many automobiles that they had to start parking in Loomis’s meadow. The weather was perfect: the air cool and tinged with the scent of moldering leaves and woodsmoke from chimneys. Bands played all day at the bandstand, and there was a grassy area where people danced the Charleston and the fox-trot. Some ladies even took off their shoes and danced in stockinged feet! The older Sunday school children sold lemonade for a nickel a glass. The town green was full of games, and young and old took turns throwing bean bags and trying to get rings around the necks of bottles. The yard in front of the church was filled with long rows of tables for the dinner.

The children were bobbing for apples, the adults sipping hot cider laced with bootleg rum from hidden flasks. Tom Flannagan, the town constable, pretended not to notice and might have even had a nip or two himself! Dwight Miller was pulling a hay wagon with his old Ford tractor in careful loops across the meadow. There was a small pen on the south side of the green where Everett Jaquith was giving pony rides for the children, walking them round and round in circles.

Catherine Delaney hurried past me carrying the leaf garland the Sunday school children made to decorate the tables with, all reds and oranges and yellows, the fiery colors of fall. “Quarter to five,” she said, as if I weren’t watching the time. Fifteen minutes before we started seating people for the chicken-pie supper, the first of three serving times, staggered forty-five minutes apart.