Morning Glory(30)

“No,” he replies. “I grew up in Oregon, on a farm. My parents moved there when I was four.”

“Wow. What did you grow?”

“Hops,” he says. “For beer making.”

I grin. “So your parents were fun loving, I take it?”

“Well, I guess you could say that.” I imagine him in overalls, running through fields with vine-covered trellises. “How about you?”

“I grew up in Kansas City,” I say, “in a quiet little neighborhood. Church every Sunday, you know.”

“Do you still attend?”

“Church?”

Before the accident, we began going to church as a family, but now, well, I couldn’t imagine a God who would take two beautiful lives in one fell swoop. “I used to pray,” I continue, “but I’m not so sure what I believe anymore.”

“I go to Saint Mark’s,” he says. “It’s up on the hill. They have a wonderful choir. Sometimes I don’t even listen to the sermon. I just sit in the pews and think. I guess it just feels good to belong, you know?”

“Yes.” His words hit me on a deep level, maybe because I’ve been unattached for so long, floating aimlessly. I miss belonging.

“Anyway, if you’d ever want to,” he says, “you’re welcome to join me.”

“Thanks, but I’m still ambivalent about church, God, about all of it.” I nod toward his houseboat, changing the subject. “So what was it like when you bought it?”

“Pretty bad,” he says. “It had been a rental for decades, and the last round of college students who lived here nearly destroyed it. Jim said they packed in one hundred people one night and it actually took on a foot of water.”

“Wow,” I say. “So you gutted it?”

“Pretty much.” He gestures toward the door. “Come in. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

I follow him into a tidy living room. There’s a beige sofa and coffee table facing a flat-screen TV and two matching armchairs. The air smells of fresh laundry. James used to do all of my laundry—fold it, too, making him the rarest man in America. I notice a laundry basket by the couch and a pair of boxer briefs on top and smile to myself.

“I redid every detail,” he says. “The walls, the kitchen, the bathroom.”

“The kitchen is gorgeous,” I say, walking over to admire the solid wood cabinets and slab granite counters. They’re nearly bare, but then I remember that Alex doesn’t cook.

He shrugs. “I don’t know why I bothered. I’ve never even used the stove.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not,” he says.

I run my hand along the gas range and admire the elaborate range hood. I wonder if Kellie, his coauthor, ever cooked on this stove. I envision her standing in front of the stove on a lazy Saturday morning. She’s wearing a red lace negligee, and one of the spaghetti straps falls down her shoulder as she drizzles syrup over buttermilk pancakes.

“Can I offer you something to drink? OJ, Pellegrino?” Alex asks, jarring me from the daydream.

“Water’s fine.”

He fills a glass and hands it to me. I like that he doesn’t ask me too many questions about why I’m here. He’s giving me space in a way that no one did in New York. And it makes me want to open up.

He gestures toward the couch, and we both sit down. He begins to speak at the same time I do, and we laugh.

“You go first,” he says.

I nod. “Well, I was at Pete’s the other day, and someone told me that there was a woman who lived in my houseboat years ago, and that she disappeared under mysterious circumstances. And then I—”

“Penny,” Alex says, nodding.

I remember the hospital bracelet I found in the chest. “How do you know her name?”

“It’s one of those unspoken agreements on Boat Street,” he says. “Everyone knows, and yet no one ever discusses it.”

“Why is that?”

He shrugs. “When I bought this place, the real estate agent mentioned the story, that some woman disappeared here in the 1950s. She said the bad memory has haunted the dock since, and that residents don’t like to talk about that night.”

“I wonder why.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I’ve learned that it’s best not to bring it up around the old-timers—Jim, too. It was a painful time for them, I think.”

I nod. “Alex, I found something, in the houseboat.”

His eyes widen.

“A chest,” I continue. “I think it belonged to Penny.”

“Really? How do you know?”