Phần I
For the first time in eight years, Ellie called in sick.
Then she drove to Wade's apartment above a bait shop on Folly Road and knocked until he opened the door in boxers and a Braves T-shirt, squinting at the sun.
"It's six-thirty," he said.
"Get dressed. I need you to come somewhere with me."
"Where?"
"Home," she said.
He looked at her for a long time. Then he went and got dressed.
They didn't talk on the drive. Out past the end of Maybank Highway the road narrowed and the live oaks closed overhead like a tunnel, and then there was the sign for Bohicket Road, and the turn they had both stopped making fifteen years ago.
The lot looked smaller than Ellie remembered. That was the first thing. Everything from childhood looks smaller, but this was different, as if the land itself had shrunk around the empty place. The brick footings of the old house still stood in the tall grass like broken teeth. The chimney was gone. The live oak by the water was still there, and the frayed end of a rope swing still hung from its lowest branch, gray with age.
The dock reached out over the marsh, crooked and missing boards.
Across the water, gleaming white on its bluff, sat Heron Hall.
Wade stood at the edge of the footings with his hands in his pockets.
"Why are we here, Ellie?"
She opened the trunk and took out the hard black case.
"Because for fifteen years, everybody told you that you dreamed it," she said. "And I'm the only person in this family whose job is to write down exactly what people say. So I'm going to take your statement. Right here. And I'm going to believe every word."