Blue Water Read Free

meal. And, too—more than once—the outline of a wine bottle, a slender long-necked glass. Rex was certain that Cindy Ann was still drinking. Still getting into her car in the morning, regardless of how much she’d had the night before, what time she’d gone to bed.
    â€œI hope she chokes on it,” he said, sitting down to our own empty table. “Christ.” He pushed his plate away.
    â€œStop driving past her house,” I said, “if it bothers you so much.”
    But I didn’t mean it, not really. The truth was that I, too, savored each detail Rex excised from Cindy Ann’s life with a surgeon’s care: the new pink bicycle that appeared in the driveway; a second cat, another Angora, napping on top of the newly repaired Suburban; the small, pale face in an upstairs window, looking out at Rex until he drove away. Just as he’d feared, the delayed Breathalyzer had worked in Cindy Ann’s favor. At the arraignment, Cindy Ann pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter; jail time was suspended in exchange for community service, driving school, and twelve months of counseling for substance abuse. As far as Rex and I were concerned, she’d gotten away with murder. And, judging from letters to the editor that ran in the parish bulletin, in the Harbor Pilot, in the county paper published in Sheboygan, nearly everyone in Fox Harbor agreed.
    Excepting Cindy Ann’s two sisters, of course. They were quick to counter with letters of their own; this was to be expected. What we did not expect was that the worst of these letters, the most hurtful,would come from Mallory herself. It could hardly be supposed, Mallory wrote, that Cindy Ann set out to harm anybody. Yes, she’d had too much to drink the night before, but who hasn’t woken up with a hangover, taken two aspirin, jumped in the car? Who, after all, hasn’t made a mistake?
    I’ve known Rex and Megan Van Dorn a long time, and while I feel for the tragedy they have experienced, I don’t see how they can possibly believe that destroying my sister’s life—not to mention the lives of her children—will make up for the loss of their son. What happened was an accident. It wasn’t deliberate. It wasn’t personal.
    And then—
    The only deliberate, personal attack was the one that took place in court.
    Sallow-faced Mallory Donaldson, with her animal rights petitions, her aggressive vegetarianism—the result, we all supposed, of growing up on a farm that raised veal. Summers, she traveled around the Midwest, selling handmade jewelry at flea markets and craft fairs. Winters, she washed dishes at the Cup and Cruller, dressed in flannel shirts and shit-kicker boots, a man’s synthetic cap pulled low over her forehead. Yet, Toby had fallen in love with her. They’d been together for almost two years. Every now and then, they’d even babysat for Evan.
    â€œI can’t take sides on this,” Toby said, after the letter appeared. “Not against her. Not against you.”
    Everything, now, seemed poisoned. Pointless. Mornings, I’dwake up, stare out the window at the naked, gray shoreline, littered with fat chunks of ice.
    What, I thought, do I do next?
    The sun coming up and going down again. The clock tick-ticking on the wall.
    Â 
    Shortly after Cindy Ann’s sentencing, I wrote my letter of resignation to Lakeview Accounting. “Take a little more time to decide,” Lindsey pleaded, filling all the tape on our answering machine. “Let’s talk over lunch, okay? C’mon, I’ll meet you at the Shanty, my treat.”
    But I didn’t want to have lunch with Lindsey. And I’d already made up my mind. I was going to do something else, something different, though I didn’t know what that might be. I thought about starting a business. I thought about going back to school. I even thought about working for Toby at the fish store, the way