It was with the vague aftermath of these thoughts still in his mind that Gaines arrived in Gulfport. It was a little after five, and he pulled to the curb on the central drag and asked a passerby for directions to Hester Street. It was no more than three blocks, and Gaines decided to walk. He went on down there, hat in hand, and he stood for a while on the sidewalk in front of Maryanne Benedict’s house. It was a simple home—white plank board–built, a short veranda that spanned merely the facade, beneath each window a box containing flowers in various colors.

Gaines’s hesitation was evident in his manner as he approached, and before he even reached the screen, the inner door opened and he saw Maryanne Benedict.

For a moment, all thoughts stopped. Later, he could not identify what it was about her that struck him so forcibly, but Maryanne Benedict possessed something undeniable and unforgettable in the way that she appeared, there in the doorway of her own small house on Hester Road. Something that defied easy description. She was not a beautiful woman, not in any classically accepted sense. Her features were defined, but shadowed, simple but strangely elegant. She looked through the mesh of the screen door, and—had Gaines thought of it—he again would have defined that look as a thousandyard stare. But it was not. It was something beyond that.

The outer door swung open, and she remained silent until Gaines had reached the lower steps that led up to the veranda.

“You have good manners or bad news,” she said, “or both.”

Gaines smiled awkwardly. He looked down at the hat in his hand. “Perhaps the first,” he replied. “Definitely the second.”

“Well, both my folks are dead and I’m an only child. I never married, have no kids, and so it’s a neighbor or a friend or someone you think I care about.”

“Nancy Denton,” Gaines said, and in that second he saw a change of expression so sudden, so dramatic, that he could say nothing further.

He remembered delivering the news to Judith. Your daughter is dead. Your only child, the one you have been waiting for these past twenty years, is dead.

In some way, a way that Gaines could not understand, this felt even worse.

Maryanne Benedict seemed to lean against the frame of the door for support. A brief sound escaped her lips. A whimper. A cry of repressed astonishment and disbelief.

Gaines walked up the steps toward her, held out his hand to assist her, but she waved him back. Gaines just stood there in silence, not knowing where to look but unable to avert his eyes from the woman.

Standing closer now, he felt awkward, ashamed, embarrassed to have been the one to bring news that would create such an effect, but unable to move, unable to think of any words that might alleviate the distress that Maryanne Benedict was evidently experiencing.

She was first to speak, standing straight and looking back into the house. “I need to get inside,” she said, her voice cracking. “I need to sit down . . .”

She left the door open wide, and Gaines could do nothing but follow her.

Inside, the house was much as it had appeared from the street. Neat, orderly, precise. The furnishings were feminine but functional, nothing too embellished or decorative. It seemed Spartan to Gaines, almost unlived in, and in some strange way reminiscent of his own quarters. There was nothing there that really communicated anything of Maryanne Benedict’s personality—no photographs, no trinkets, no paintings on the walls.

She walked back through the house to the kitchen, Gaines following on behind her.

She turned suddenly. “Some tea,” she said. “We will have tea.”

Gaines didn’t reply.

Maryanne filled the kettle, set it on the stove, busied herself with a teapot, cups, saucers.

“I am sorry to be the one to bring this news,” Gaines said, and for some strange reason, his voice sounded strong and definite.

“You will tell me what happened,” Maryanne said, without turning around.

“I’ll tell you what I can,” Gaines replied.

She nodded.

“There is something else—”

And this time she did turn around, and her expression was alive and anticipatory, her eyes bright, rimmed with tears, the muscles in her jawline twitching visibly. Everything was there—every feeling, every thought and emotion and fear—and she was using every single last line of defense to hold it all inside.

“Michael . . . ,” Gaines said.

“Michael,” she echoed.

“Michael Webster.”

“Yes, yes, I know Michael . . . I know of Michael. What about Michael . . . ? Did you tell him, as well?”

Gaines nodded. “I did, Ms. Benedict, yes.”

“And is he okay? What did he say? Oh my God, I can’t even begin to imagine what he—”

“Michael is dead as well, Miss Benedict.”

The last line went down. The depth of pain that seemed to fill that small kitchen as Maryanne Benedict broke down was greater than anything Gaines had before witnessed.

She dropped a cup into the sink. It somehow did not break.

Gaines was there to hold Maryanne Benedict. She seemed to fold in half—mentally, spiritually, just like Judith—and she sobbed uncontrollably for as long a time as Gaines had ever known.

36

The sun was nearing the horizon. Gaines was aware of this as he sat at the kitchen table.

For a long while the woman said nothing at all, merely glancing at Gaines, her eyes swollen, her mouth forming words that never reached him, as if she were holding some conversation with Nancy, perhaps with Michael, perhaps with someone else entirely.

Gaines remained silent. He felt it best not to interrupt whatever internal monologue was taking place. People dealt with such things in their own ways, and Gaines believed himself more than capable of sitting there as long as was needed. For some reason, he did not feel awkward in the presence of Maryanne Benedict. Perhaps this was due to nothing more than his own emotional exhaustion. He was not fighting anymore. The deaths of Nancy, Michael Webster, and Judith Denton seemed to have bleached his mind of thoughts. He anticipated everything now, as if nothing at all could surprise him. Like Vietnam. Be ready for anything. Run for three days, stand still for four. Move at a moment’s notice; go back the way you came—all of it without explanation as to why.

Eventually, Maryanne Benedict seemed to wind down. Gaines could feel it in the silence between them.

“I am sorry,” she said, and her voice was a whisper.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Miss Benedict.”

A faint smile flickered across her lips, as if it amused her to be called Miss Benedict, but she did not correct Gaines.

“It must be awful for you,” she went on, “having to do this . . .”

Gaines looked at her. He had yet to tell her about Judith Denton’s suicide. Would there be a better time than now?

“I am sorry about what happened to your friends,” Gaines said. “I understand that you and Nancy and Michael were very close when you were younger.”

Again that faint smile, and then Maryanne looked away toward the window and seemed lost for some minutes.

“When you were children,” Gaines added.

“We were all close,” she said. She looked back at Gaines. “I was fourteen when Nancy disappeared. She was sixteen. Matthias was all grown-up too, but it never felt like we were anything but the same age. Della was ten, soon to be eleven. Eugene was a couple of years older than me, and Catherine was a month or so away from her nineteenth birthday. And Michael? Michael was thirty-one.” She shook her head. “It seems strange now to consider such a thing, but at the time it didn’t seem strange at all. He didn’t seem that much older than us, either. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like there was any difference between us at all, but now . . .” Her voice trailed away. “He was twice her age, wasn’t he?”