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.""Sometimes it feels like it was."He leaned over the balustrade.He wasn't precisely sure how, but he had the disturbing sense that he was about to say exactly the wrong thing.Again.He just knew it.But he felt he had to say something, and so he forged ahead."This is going to be a pretty short ride.I thought I might go for a much longer one this weekend.Maybe up in Underhill.There are some wonderful logging trails up there, you know.I guess I bike the way you swim.Tell me again: Why did you swap your bike for a swimsuit?""I don't think I told you once," she answered, not looking at him at all, but focusing intently on the process of zipping up her knapsack.It was the kind of remark that coming from anyone other than Laurel would have sounded curt and left him feeling profoundly diminished.But from her it seemed merely wistful.As if, suddenly, the topic had made her tired."Any interest in coming with me? I have two bikes, you know.I could lower the seat on one and you'd be incredibly comfortable.I was up there a month ago--up in Underhill--and there is one stretch where the woods just open up completely, and the view--""Whit, I have to run.Forgive me," she said, not even looking up at him as she cut him off."Oh, I understand," he said.Though, of course, he didn't really.Not yet.And not at all.CHAPTER SIXIN THOSE FIRST DAYS after Katherine had given Laurel the photos she had found, the young social worker was fixated most on the one of the girl on the bike.She caught herself staring at the jersey, the hair, the trees behind her for long moments until--almost suddenly--she would be nauseous.She would, as she hadn't in years, see again in her mind the faces of the two men precisely as she recalled them from those long summer days in the courthouse in Burlington.One time she had to put the photo down and duck her head between her legs.She almost blacked out.Certainly, she was intrigued as well by the odd coincidence that this mysterious Bobbie Crocker had owned pictures of the country club of her youth.She wondered what it meant that he might have grown up in her corner of Long Island--swum, perhaps, as a boy in the very same cove as her--and then, years later, been on the dirt road with her on the Sunday she nearly was killed.That he had photographed her hours (perhaps minutes) before the attack.But that would presume she really was the girl on the bike.And that the picture had been taken that nightmarish Sunday--versus either of the two Sundays that had preceded it.And Laurel just couldn't be sure.On some level, she didn't want to be sure, because that would put Crocker in a closer proximity to the crime than she wanted to contemplate.It was easier to focus instead on the tragedy of a man of such obvious artistic talent and accomplishment winding up homeless.Still, she tried not to obsess even on this thread too much.Other than skimming a few heavy tomes on old rock and roll and photography in the middle part of the twentieth century, she didn't do much in the way of investigating his identity--especially when she didn't come across Bobbie's name in any of the photo credits in the books.Still, at his funeral she had made a lunch date for the following week with Serena, and the next day she left a voice mail with Bobbie's social worker, Emily Young, asking to see her when she returned from vacation.Emily had cleaned out Bobbie's apartment at the Hotel New England with Katherine, and then left immediately for a lengthy Caribbean cruise.It was why she hadn't been present at the man's burial at the fort in Winooski.And so for two more days that week she did her job, and she went out again with David, and she swam each day in the morning.She actually went bowling with Talia and a guy her roommate was considering dating, and then, when they returned home, surfed the Web with her friend so they could both learn more about paintball.She brought the box of photographs back to her apartment, but--with the exception of that image of the girl on the bike--she did nothing more serious with it than flip through the pictures abstractedly while doing other things: brushing her teeth.Chatting on the telephone.Watching the news.She did not begin to carefully archive the photos to see what was there or take the negatives up to the university darkroom to start printing them.There would be time for that later.And then, on Friday, she went home for a break.Neither Katherine nor Talia had to ask why.They knew.The anniversary of the attack was approaching, and Laurel made it a rule never to be in Vermont on that day.Her plan was to return to Vermont the following Tuesday, after the anniversary, and then resume work on Wednesday at BEDS.After breakfast, she threw some clothes and cosmetics into her knapsack, checked the stove one last time, and prepared to start south in her tired but functional Honda.She wasn't sure whether she would try to see Pamela Buchanan Marshfield while she was home, but just in case she got the telephone numbers for both the Daytons and Mrs.Winston off the Internet and made sure that she had Bobbie Crocker's snapshots in a safe envelope in her bag.IT HAD BEEN ALMOST too easy for her to find Pamela Marshfield.Laurel hadn't even had to bring the woman up: Rebecca Winston did that for her.She was holding the phone against her ear in her childhood kitchen and watching the fog outside the window slowly engulf first the pines at the edge of the lawn--an edge not on Long Island Sound, but separated from the shore by a mere spit of preserved state forest--and then the wooden swing set and attached playhouse that had sat in the backyard like a great, hulking massif almost her entire life.She saw a blue jay land on the peaked roof of the playhouse and survey the grass.It was nearing lunchtime on Saturday, and she had only just woken up.She'd slept for close to twelve hours [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]