Here She Lies

me to stay put and wait out the blood test results to avoid an appearance of flight. It was a week of squeezing my eyes shut at the peaks and valleys of a roller-coaster ride of worries and relief and sorrow — I missed Julie. I missed her. A week of facing grim realities.
    But it was also, miraculously, the week Lexy started crawling, first tentatively, then daringly over every floor. She was young to crawl and her relative independence surprised us as much as it empowered her. Her determination to master her new mobility was thrilling, and it helped take our minds off the wait. The blood test results loomed, casting shadows everywhere, and Lexy dodged and darted them. I began to understandthat regardless of what happened to me, to us, Lexy would forge ahead. She was unstoppable. This inkling of hope offered its own form of happiness that no new piece of information could completely destroy.
    When Lexy wasn’t wearing us out chasing her around the inn, we were reluctant tourists. We haunted the Mount, the house where nearly a hundred years ago Edith Wharton had written some of her most famous novels (in the gift shop I bought Ethan Frome; I’d finished The Talented Mr. Ripley and needed a new book); traipsed the gardens and climbed the famous blue steps at Naumkeag; visited the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge (not stopping in town at the creepy caterpillar playground even though Lexy let out a cry of desire when we passed the dangling baby swings). Then on Monday, a full week into the wait and after a drizzly morning in the car (because we’d had to get out of the so-called house), Gabe Lazare phoned to say the blood test results were in.
    We’d just walked into the red-velvety back room of the Helsinki Cafe and were settling in at a table. It was already late for lunch and Lexy was getting cranky, but I wanted her to eat her jar of mush before breast milk and back-into-the-car and back-to-the-inn for a nap.
    “I’d like to speak with you,” Lazare said.
    “You are speaking with me.”
    “No, Annie. I want to see you, to speak with you in person.”
    The waitress came over, holding a pad and pencil, ready to take our order. As Lazare spoke, I heard Bobby ordering for both of us; he knew I loved the falafel platter they made here.
    “I was right. It was her, wasn’t it?” I didn’t ask it as a question.
    “Where are you right now? I could come to you.”
    “We’re in town, eating lunch.” The truth was, Helsinki was so close to the police station we could walk there in five minutes.
    “When you’re done with your lunch, I’ll see you here.” He hung up before telling me exactly where he was, assuming I would just know, which of course I did. He was at work, on the case as usual. No one could fault this man for not trying his hardest.
    “It was Lazare,” I told Bobby. “He has the blood test results.”
    Water from his glass sloshed out on the way to his mouth. He set the glass down without drinking. “And?”
    “After lunch, we’ll go see him.”
    “Don’t you want to go right now? Don’t you want to know ?”
    “Of course I do, but I’m hungry and we have to feed Lexy before we do anything else.”
    So I fed her. And we ate. But nothing tasted good; adrenaline killed my appetite and I think Bobby’s, too. We finished and he paid while I struggled to change Lexy’s diaper in the bathroom. On our way back to the car I saw that the cloudy, drizzly day had brightened. Yes. The news would be good. The blood would tell the story. It would be neither my blood nor Julie’s. Zara’s killer would be someone else entirely and Lazare would have to broaden his search. I would send Liz flowers (and a check) and give Elias a bottle of good wine (and a check) and Bobby, Lexy and I would be onour way home to Kentucky. Then, on the drive over, the clouds returned and with the disappearance of that brief spate of sunshine went my optimism.
    “What if—” I stopped myself.
    “What if what?” Bobby turned the steering wheel, pulling us into the parking lot of the police station.
    “Nothing.”
    After that we kept quiet — what was there to say? Lexy had fallen asleep almost instantly upon leaving the restaurant, so Bobby sat with her in the car while I went inside for the news.
    Detective Lazare was standing in the station lobby, staring out the window with his hands clasped behind his back. He was calm, thinking. Two armed officers got up from a snack table as soon as they saw me,