The sleeve tore when Tess slid the clipping out of the album, one clean rip straight through the word drowned.
Her mother had kept that book perfect for as long as Tess had been alive. Tess had not slept, and she was going to do this anyway, with a minute before Claire came back.
What did you ask a woman about the one night she had never let anyone ask about?
"Don't put your thumbs on it." Claire stood in the doorway with three forks and a dish towel over her shoulder. "That's newsprint. It's older than you."
"Sorry." Tess laid it flat on the table. HARLOW FALLS SENTINEL, July 6, 1979. Local Boatyard Owner Drowned After Fireworks.
Ray Brody was already at the table, because it was Thursday. He had brought an apple pie and he was cutting it with the big knife in his left hand, in wedges so even they looked measured. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and scorched sugar. He slid the first plate to Tess without asking if she wanted it.
"You look like something the cat wouldn't finish, kiddo."
"Night shift." She turned the clipping so they could both see it. "I want to write it down. All of it, who was where. Gram's gone, and you two aren't getting younger."
"Speak for yourself," Ray said.
"What is there to write?" Claire sat. "Everybody knows what happened."
"Then it'll be quick. Start at the picnic."
Claire told it the way she did every Fourth of July, as if reading off a card. The bluff, the potato salad, Daddy with a beer. Ray went down to the barge before supper and did not come off it until the show was over.
"Nine thirty," Ray said. "On the nose. Lit the first reds myself."
"And it ran past ten," Claire said. "Then Daddy went down to the Kettle, and he'd had a few, and the Kettle took him. Tess, I know this one."
Ray, who had not set foot in the river since Lonnie, studied his pie.
"Past ten." Tess put her finger beside the printed line, not on it. "Then why does his watch say nine forty-one?"
The fork in Claire's hand stopped.
"It's a diver's watch. Water doesn't stop it. It quit at nine forty-one, and the show had barely started."
"Watches stop when they stop."
Ray had not moved either. The knife lay across the pie with his hand still on it. He let that sit for about as long as Ray ever let anything sit, which was a breath and a half.
"Who's been talking to you, Tessie?"
"A patient. Elias Kerrigan."
Claire set her fork down very carefully.
"Elias Kerrigan found Daddy in the lock gates," she said. "He was a drunk then too, and he's been one since, and now they've got him in a bed telling people things."
"He said Lonnie didn't drown."
"Tess."
"He said he watched."
"You're interrogating a dementia patient." Claire's voice had gone thin and polite, the voice she used on parents who came to the school office without a pass. "About our family. On your own floor, with your own file. Do you want to lose your license? Is that what this is?"
Tess stood up because she could not sit under it. She went to the front room and stopped at the mantel with her back to them.
Claire's wedding, the one with the ridiculous sleeves. Marian's portrait, the good one. And the Fourth of July picture from the bluff that afternoon: Lonnie squinting into the sun with the steel watch on his wrist, Marian beside him laughing in sunglasses, and a six-year-old in a sparkler dress riding the shoulders of the boatyard's young mechanic, both fists knotted in his yellow hair.
"I'm asking what time it was," she said to the glass.
"I was six." Claire had followed her. She stood in the arch with the towel twisted in both hands. "I fell asleep on that swing in my dress, because nobody would tell me why I couldn't go in. Mama said Daddy was on the river. You want it minute by minute? I don't have minutes. I have a dress."
"Mom."
"Leave it alone. I mean it." Her chin shook once. "You had one thing to do right this year and you know what happened. I sat up with you in February. I will not do it again for him. I think you'd better go home and get some sleep." She was brittle as a good cup. "Thank you for coming."
Ray walked her out. He carried a square of pie in foil and said nothing until the porch door shut behind them.
"She's been afraid of that river since she was six," he said. "Don't take it for hate. And I'll tell you something she won't." He stopped at the bottom step. "Your granddad swam like a seal. Navy. I worked beside that man every day for a year and I never once saw him drunk. Curtis Lyle told Marian he had a bottle in him, and she wanted a reason so bad she took the first one handed to her."
"Curtis is Mr. Kerrigan's health care proxy," Tess said. "Mr. Kerrigan gets lorazepam at nine every night. Every night, to the minute, on Curtis's request."
Ray looked at the street for a while.
"If Curtis is keeping that old man doped," he said slowly, "I'd want to know why too." He pressed the foil into her hands. "I'm on the hospital board, Tessie. Say the word and I make a call."
"Not yet."
"All right. Then you tell me what you need." He nodded at her car. "That deadbolt I put in at Depot Street. Still sticking?"
"When it's cold."
"Lift the door as you turn it. I'll bring graphite Saturday." He patted the roof of her car twice, the way he had since she was sixteen. "Eat something, kiddo."
He stood on the walk with one hand up until the corner took him.
She was at the stop sign when the phone buzzed on the seat.
The email was from Gail Ostrander, nurse manager, 3 West. Subject line: Reassignment, effective tonight.
Tess,
The patient's health care proxy has filed a complaint that you agitated Mr. Kerrigan with questions about a personal matter. Effective tonight you are reassigned off bed twelve and may not enter his room.