Morning Glory(84)

“Can I get you something to drink?” he says.

“Water’s fine.”

He returns with a small bottle of Evian from the refrigerator and sets it in front of me on the coffee table. A droplet of condensation rolls down its side.

“So,” he says cheerfully, sitting in a chair opposite me. “How can I help you?”

I set the cookies down on the coffee table first. “Would you like one?”

“No, thank you,” he says, indicating his heart. “I’m on a strict diet, my—”

“They’re your wife’s recipe,” I say. “Penny’s cinnamon cookies.”

He looks momentarily shaken. “Did you say it’s Penny’s recipe? How did you—”

“I found her recipe book.”

“Where?”

“In the houseboat, inside the chest.”

“The one in the living room?”

“Yes. Her things are still there, frozen in time. Her wedding dress, some books and mementos.”

I pull out the blue notebook and set it on the coffee table. He picks it up and thumbs through its pages. His chin quivers a little at the sight of the familiar handwriting.

I feel funny watching him. It’s a private moment, so I look up, admiring a painting of a woman on the wall. She’s beautiful, with blond hair and a low-cut dress. She’s sitting on a dock looking out at the gray lake. Her eyes are sad, distant. She isn’t in the moment but is looking ahead, into the future. It has to be Penny.

“That’s her,” Dexter says, looking up at me. “I painted it the year after she disappeared.”

“She must have been so beautiful,” I say.

Dexter nods. “She was the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on. Even all these years later, I haven’t met anyone like her.”

“Were you happy together?”

Dexter rubs his brow. “We were once. But I was so consumed with my work. Too consumed. I strayed, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

I think of Lana Turner, but I don’t dare ask him about her. “What do you think happened the night Penny disappeared?”

“I wish I knew,” he says. “The fact is, that night’s haunted me every day since. I turn it over in my mind again and again, hoping I’ll recall something I missed.”

“Tell me what you remember.”

Dexter sighs. “It was the night of Bach on the Dock, the annual neighborhood party. We had a fight.”

“What was it about?”

“She told me she was pregnant,” he says.

“You must have been so happy.”

He shakes his head. “I knew it wasn’t my child. I was so consumed with rage, I didn’t stop to consider her plight, what a difficult spot she was in. And after what I put her through? Well, she didn’t deserve that kind of coldness from me. If I could do it all over again, I would have accepted her news, accepted the child.”

“But you turned her away?”

“I wanted to make her pay for the pain she caused me. I stormed off. I went to Naomi’s.”

I raise my eyebrows, recalling the images of Naomi that Alex took.

“We were close,” he says. “Listen, I’m not proud of parts of my past, especially that one.”

“And when did you learn that Penny had . . . gone?”

“Naomi’s son, Jimmy, was crying,” he says. “His father, Gene, told us that he’d gone to check on Jimmy, and he found him alone on the deck crying. He later said that . . . well, there have been so many theories. He said his son saw her leave by boat.”

“In a boat? With who?”

“I thought it must have been Collin,” he says, “a neighbor who lived on the next dock. Naomi told me Penny had become close to him during the time I was away in California. I believe he was the father of the child.”

I can feel his pain, even now, despite the passage of time.

“Well,” he continues, “it didn’t hold up. When the detectives questioned him, I learned that he and Penny were planning to go away together that night, but something went wrong. They had a fight, and he left without her.”

“Are you sure he didn’t come back for her?” I ask, clinging to the possibility that she might have sailed off into the sunset with her true love after all.

He shakes his head. “No. Collin had already set off for the ocean by then. He wasn’t anywhere near Lake union  . So it had to be someone else, something else who lured her away.”

“But who?”

Dexter throws up his arms. “The police questioned a handful of transients in the area,” he says. “They developed a few theories over the years, but none ever solidified. I pray that she just left, that she simply jumped on a boat and sailed away, like she always wanted to do. But I don’t think that’s what happened. Her mother died in 1972 without hearing from her again, and Penny never went more than a few days without calling her mom.” He rubs his forehead. “My one big regret in life is how I left her there that night. After my own transgressions, you’d think I would have been able to forgive hers.”