Page 42 of What You Never Knew

“She’s gone,” she says again, louder this time, and then gets up from the table and leaves the room.

I float there in the moonlight until the sadness, the longing for my sister and the real world, overtakes me and sends me back to where I actually belong.

JUNE

The next morning I don’t get out of bed right away. I lie there thinking about my visit with Leslie Swann in the new light of what Ezra told me last night. Did my mother actually do those things, or did crazy Leslie make it all up? Did my father disappear, or did something horrible happen to him? Each time I’ve gone looking for answers about what happened back then, it has only created more questions.

My mind then drifts to the strange interaction I had with Ezra’s mother, Willa. When she called me April. Did she actually think I was my mother? And what did she mean, you promised? Could my mother and Willa have had some agreement between them? Seems strange for a woman to collude with the same woman who has had an affair with her husband. Could Willa know things about my mother?

Without even trying, a sneaky plan forms quickly in my mind. It involves tricking a senile old woman and pretending to be someone I’m not, but it may also mean getting some answers.

I head into my parents’ room to execute the first part of my plan. As I step into the room, a blinding ray of light catches me in the eye. I move forward and can see that it’s the late-morning sun shining off the glass face of a watch. It sits, on its own, in the middle of the bed.

I definitely don’t remember it being there before—or anywhere in the room, for that matter. It feels like someone put it there, in plain sight, for me to find. It’s my father’s watch. I know it immediately. The black leather band, the thick square face of it, and the Roman numerals are as familiar as the man himself was. I turn it over to find the inscription on the back: To Simon with love. My mother gave it to him for their first-year wedding anniversary, well before I arrived on the scene. My father wore it every day.

I close my fingers over it. How did it get here? A powerful shiver travels across my shoulders. Maybe it fell out of one of the shoe boxes when I was going through things the other night. Maybe my mother hid it just like she did the ring. My mind works fast, coming up with logical explanations.

I go to the closet and get the wooden jewelry box down. Taking the ring out, I loop it over the watch strap and fasten it, then put it on the dresser. I’d had a lot of wine that night when I was going through the closet. I make another note to self not to drink too much wine. I have to keep my wits about me; there’s just too much stuff coming up on Avril Island for me to be fuzzy-headed.

How mature and level-headed of you. Makes me proud. I once again hear May’s voice in my head, half-mocking, half-serious, the kind of comment that would have elicited a little slap on the arm from me, and then we both would have laughed. I wonder if I’ll do that until the day I die—hear her voice respond to my thoughts and imagine I see her in the middle of the night in patches of moonlight. Part of me hopes so and part of me really hopes not.

Finding the watch has made me even hungrier for answers. I go to my mother’s closet and choose one of her plainer dresses and a pair of her shoes. As I survey myself in the mirror, guilt starts to creep in about what I’m about to do, but I push it away. It will just be a quick visit, just a few questions, no harm done.

On the approach to Ezra’s dock, the guilt resurfaces, but I don’t turn back. I make sure his utility boat isn’t there, meaning the coast is clear, and then very carefully dock my own boat.

Willa is sitting in the same spot at the living room window. She watches me approach, her face unreadable, no acknowledgment of my arrival. I knock twice and then push the door open and let myself in.

“Willa?” I call out. There’s no answer, so I move deeper into the house. “Can I come in?” Still no answer. Only once I’m in the living room standing in front of her does she look away from the yard to greet me—a curtain seeming to lift from her gaze, bringing her back to the real world.

“Ah, June,” she says, and my heart sinks. I really thought she’d think I was my mother, given how I’m dressed and what happened the last time. “What a nice surprise,” she says. “So lovely to have visitors.”

“Is this a good time?” I ask. She nods with enthusiasm and gestures toward a chair by the window. “How are you doing today, Willa?”

“It’s a good day, June. A good day. The peonies are in bloom.” She points out to the garden, where several green bushes are heavy with pink-rimmed white blooms as round and large as serving plates.

“They’re beautiful.”

“Cut some and take them home with you. Spread the wild, I say.” Her eyes almost disappear in the creases of her aged skin as she smiles wide. I wonder, do I just continue making small talk, or do I still ask what I came here to ask?

As though sensing my internal debate, she leans toward me and says, “Was there something you came to talk about?”

“Yes.” I hesitate, unsure how to broach it. “I guess there is.”

“You were gone a long time. Must be a lot of catching up to do.” She chuckles to herself.

“I was wondering, actually.” I pause and smooth the skirt of my dress down, suddenly feeling ridiculous in my getup. “Do you know anything about my father and what may have happened the night he disappeared from Avril Island. Anything at all?”

Her whole body tenses, but her expression gives nothing away. “Your father? What was his name?”

“Simon Bennett.”

“Ah yes. That’s right.” She shakes her head, making the wisps of white hair around her face sway. “I didn’t know him so well. Just to recognize him on the street.”

“Did you ever speak to him personally?” I push, not buying her story of not knowing him.

She shakes her head again. “There wasn’t much mixing between summer folk and locals,” she explains.

“But you knew my mother, April?”