AUDREYWinthrop IslandJuly 30, 2024, seven o’clock in the morningThe body lies at the edge of the rocky slope that falls to the sea. Someone’s already draped a white sheet over him, but you can see how his toes point peacefully upward, how his soles face the water. As if he settled back to nap and just died.
To the north, the sky clears to a fine, pale blue. The air smells of brine.
“Mrs. Fisher?” The officer’s voice conveys both sympathy and impatience. She glances at her iPad. “Meredith Fisher?”
“
Audrey Fisher,” I tell her. “Her daughter. We spoke on the phone?”
“Where’s Meredith Fisher?”
“She’s at home. She—um, declined to come.”
“
Declined?” The officer raises both eyebrows. She’s about fifty years old with short steel-wool hair—not somebody you want to disappoint. “You’re saying she had something better to do?”
The wound throbs on my forehead. I lift my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, which grows hotter by the second as it climbs the sky to my left. The sheet is sharp and white on the grass, like a sail. “Is it necessary?” I ask. “For Meredith to identify the body?”
The officer rubs the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are weary, like she was up at dawn getting the kids ready for day camp and now this. Dead man parked on a cliff. “Can
you identify the body?”
“I guess I can try.”
The officer gives me her best Yoda look—
do or do not, there is no try—and tells me to follow her.
***
Over the phone, the officer gave not a lot of details. Explained the bare bones of the situation in a staccato voice, so as not to arouse emotion. Asked if I could bring Meredith down to identify the body. Of course, I said.
Meredith was still asleep, flat on her back like a vampire in a coffin. I touched her shoulder and she jumped.
What the f***, Audrey, she said.
I told her what the police officer had told me. The bare bones of the situation. She eased up to a sitting position against the wooden headboard and watched my lips as I broke the news in the same staccato voice as the officer over the phone.
“Meredith? Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard you.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
She shrugged. “He was an old man, Audrey. You don’t sound all that shocked.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, next to her leg. “Some lobsterman spotted the body on his way out from Little Bay to check his traps and called it in. That’s what the officer said. They need you to identify the body.”
“Me? Why?”
“He named you next of kin or something. In the note. Found with the body.”
“You mean like a suicide note?”
“I guess that’s what they’re trying to ascertain?”
Meredith turned her face away to stare out the window, where the sun was heaving itself up above the ocean. “You go. I’m staying here.”
“Meredith, it’s the police. I don’t think you can offer your regrets.”
“I’m not offering my regrets. I’m offering you.”
“Meredith,” I said, “why would Harlan Walker refer to you as his next of kin?”
“No idea, honeybee.”
From her tone, I knew I’d have to call in a forklift to get her out of bed. I put on some clothes, swung onto my bicycle, and pedaled downhill to Little Bay Point, where this police officer met me at the front door of Harlan Walker’s rental cottage and introduced herself as Detective Jackson.
My flip-flops smack against my heels in the wet grass. The noise ricochets through the air, causing the two officers on the cliff to glance up. They wear green high-visibility vests and stoic expressions— a stocky man with a sparse ginger beard, a woman whose hair coils in a neat, dark bun beneath the brim of her cap. New York State Police. They would have arrived on the early ferry, from the troop on Long Island.
My feet come to rest a yard or so away from the edge of the sheet, on his right side. The troopers stand on the left. We arrange ourselves around the top half of the body, because his heels sink right where the grass stops and the cliff begins. Fifty feet below, the sea slops against the rocks.
“Kind of a dramatic place to die,” I say.
Nobody speaks. When I look up to determine whether the silence is one of respect or disgust—whether I’ve come across as poignant or flippant—I find both troopers frowning at the new, livid scar on my forehead.
“This is Ms. Fisher,” says Jackson. “She’s here to identify the body.”
The male trooper sinks into a crouch and peels back one corner of the sheet to expose the face.
I don’t know what I’m expecting. To be honest, the news hasn’t really sunk in. Just sort of bounced off the surface of my brain. It’s been a shitty month overall, as you might guess by the fresh scar on my forehead and the fresh scars you can’t see, the scars lacerating my insides, and when the phone rang this morning at that early hour that can only mean trouble, and Detective Jackson said she was afraid she had some bad news, I found myself choking back a spasm of laughter.
Of course you do, I thought.
I hung up the phone and did all the things—I spoke to Meredith, I dressed and rode my bicycle down to Little Bay Point and walked here to the edge of this slope and stared down at the lumpy white sheet—all without once stopping to think,
He is dead.
Dead. That final, freighted word. I did not pause to consider what it meant.
That life no longer keens inside his veins. That his arms and legs no longer move. That his heart no longer beats and his lungs no longer take in oxygen and exchange it for carbon dioxide and breathe it back out again. That the circuits of his brain no longer crackle with thought. That he no longer speaks, no longer hears. That his skin is cold and bloodless.
That his eyes are closed. That his lips are blue. That his cheeks are as white as the sheet that covered them.
That he’s gone, and this body in front of me is just the shell he left behind.
I choke back a sob that sounds fake—like a noise an actress would make, pretending grief. Because, to be honest? I don’t know what to feel. I don’t know what this man is supposed to mean to me.
Only Meredith knows that.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s Harlan Walker.”
Of course, the detective has questions for me.
There is no police station per se on Winthrop Island, so we sit down instead inside the mobile unit the state police send out whenever there’s an incident of this kind. Which is not often, as you might imagine.
I give her my name and occupation. When she asks for my permanent address, I hesitate for an instant before replying with Meredith’s address in Los Angeles. I think she catches the hesitation, but her fingers record the answer on her iPad, all business.
Then she asks me if I can account for my location last night, without any gaps.
“Wait. Like an
alibi? Are you suggesting I’m some kind of
suspect?” I ask.
“Until we establish an official cause of death, we can’t rule out homicide.”
“But there’s a
note!”
She shrugs. “Anyone can write a note, Ms. Fisher. Could you answer the question for me?”
I cross my arms. “My mother can account for my whereabouts, yes.”
She taps this in. “Your mother, Meredith Fisher. Is there someone who can vouch for her whereabouts? Other than you?”
“Are you saying my
mother’s a suspect?”
“Nobody’s a suspect,” she assures me. “It’s procedure, that’s all.”
“Well, we were home together. Alone. It was my night off. You can check our cellphones if you want.” I watch her fingers, tap-tapping. “How long before you expect to have a cause of death?”
“It shouldn’t be long. A few days, at most. We would advise you to stay within easy reach during that time, however. On the island, if possible.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s
not possible. My mother has an important engagement starting the first of August.”
Jackson rises from her folding chair and motions me to the door. “I would strongly advise her to postpone it.”
I climb to my feet. “Could I see the note?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Can you tell me what it says?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Together we cross the lawn to where I left my bicycle, leaning against a corner of the porch. The wind comes in steady, following the storm last night. Later, I’ll remember thinking,
This woman is made of total f***ing stone, right before we reach the bicycle and she stops to shake my hand.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says, watching my face.
“Thank you.” My forehead throbs. This time, I smother the urge to lift my hand and touch the scar.
Copyright © 2025 by Beatriz Williams. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
