Phần I
"I wasn't in Virginia."
Julian said it to the floor. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed, the photograph in both hands, and Ellie stood by the door with her back against the frame because she did not trust her legs.
"It was spring break. I was home. Mom and Dad told me to say I was at school - for the insurance people, they said. For the investigators. It's simpler, sweetheart. You weren't involved. I said it so many times that by the time I was twenty I almost believed it."
"Tell me," Ellie said. "All of it. Don't skip anything."
He nodded slowly.
"I had a film camera. A Pentax my grandfather gave me. I was doing an AP photography project on night herons - they roost in the oaks by our dock - and you need a tripod and long exposures, so I was down there with my stuff around nine-thirty." He swallowed. "I saw Mom's skiff come back across the river. She almost hit the dock. She was soaking wet and she was shaking and she walked right past me like I wasn't there."
"What time?"
"Quarter to ten, maybe. A few minutes after that, Dad came running down the lawn. He didn't say a word to me. He jumped in the Grady-White and took off without his running lights, straight across toward your side." Julian looked up. "And then I saw the glow."
He held up the photograph.
"I don't know why I took pictures. I think I thought if I looked at it through the camera, it wasn't really happening. I took the whole rest of the roll. There was a man on your dock. Just standing there. Then he ran into the house - the back, I think. Then I heard Dad's boat hit your dock. And I finally ran up to the house to call 911."
"At ten-oh-two."
He flinched. "You've heard the tape."
"Why did it take fifteen minutes, Julian?"
"Because my mother grabbed my wrist," he said. "In the kitchen. Hard enough to leave marks. She said, Your father is over there. If you call, everybody will know he was there. And I looked at her - I was seventeen, Ellie, I didn't understand any of it - and I said there are kids in that house, and I pulled my arm away and I called."
He set the photograph down on the quilt very gently.
"That was the woman's voice on the tape. My mother. Telling me to hang up."