“No,” Raoul said. He didn’t want to fight anyone else. He shut off the phone and stared at the front of the house, which caught an orange glow from the rising sun. What waited for him inside? Nothing anymore. A wife who cheated on him, the job of a lifetime ruined. He began then to understand how Theo must feel-the most important things in his life gone, washed away, irretrievable.

Theo

He didn’t manage to make it back to school until Friday, and by then it was too late. Sara Poncheau, summer cab driver and best friend of Gillian Bergey, told everyone that she had seen Theo at Antoinette Riley’s house. This was the story as Theo finally heard it: Ms. Riley had been a frequent fare for Sara, a huge tipper, and Sara wondered about her. A beautiful black woman with a ton of cash living back in the woods off Polpis; it was intriguing. Then, on Friday afternoon, she saw Theo standing in the doorway of Ms. Riley’s house; she saw Mm grab her arm like he owned her or something. Sara assumed they were sleeping together. Which she reported to Gillian Bergey ASAP-and then two days later it hit the newspaper that the woman, Ms. Riley, wasmissing and Theo’s mother was somehow involved. Covering up for Theo, maybe. Theo confessed to two counts of vandalism, which meant Theo probably killed the woman, probably hacked her to bits with an axe and buried her body parts in the woods. And his mother took the blame. Everyone knew Theo’s parents spoiled him-his own Jeep, for starters, and spending money from his father who made all kinds of sick cash building huge houses for Chinese people. Yes, Theo was guilty of murder. Why else would anybody miss the first three days of senior year? That was insane, social suicide, and so there had to be a good reason.

Theo heard this from Aaron, just after first period, calculus-where the teacher, Mr. Eviasco, had started on derivatives and Theo stared helplessly at the numbers on the blackboard, unable to concentrate. As soon as the bell rang, dismissing them, Aaron yanked Theo into an empty classroom and told him the rumors that were going around.

“Man, is this the woman we saw at the Islander? And at the game? Your mom’s friend?”

“Shut up, Aaron. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m asking because I care about you, man. There’s some serious shit going around. Perpetuated by Gillian and those bitches. They’re saying you killed her, man.”

Theo looked into the empty classroom at the rows of desks. He felt so alien here, like an impostor at his own high school. He didn’t belong anymore.

Aaron ran a hand across the top of his spiky black hair. His neck started to splotch the way it sometimes did when he stood at home plate on a full count; he was nervous. “Man, is it true? Did you kill her?”

Theo grabbed the front of Aaron’s T-shirt and pressed his lips against Aaron’s ear. “Get one thing straight,” he whispered. “That woman is not dead.”

…

By lunchtime, Theo sensed the other kids moving away when he walked through the halls. Mrs. Waverly, his English teacher, giggled nervously when she called his name for attendance-and she had been his teacher since sophomore year. She liked him. But she squeaked when she said his name, as if noticing for the first time that he had three arms or something. They all thought he’d killed Antoinette. Or that his mother had killed her.

Because he was a senior, he had off-property lunch privileges, and Theo watched the other kids in his class fly out the doors when the bell rang. The guys from the baseball team-Aaron and Brett among them-stripped off their shirts. Theo heard them say they were going to Surfside Beach to eat at the snack bar. They didn’t ask Theo to join them, although Theo figured he would still be welcome- for a price. He’d have to throw them a bone, a lie or something about Antoinette, his mother, the vandalism. He wasn’t up to it.

Grief flooded Theo as he sat in the lunchroom, alone, with the egg salad sandwich that his mother had packed for him despite everything. His sister Jennifer sat at a table of ninth-grade girls, but even she wouldn’t make eye contact with him. Last year her friends had all been gaga over him; now they thought he was a psycho. Theo’s vision blurred and the tables of other kids decked out in their new clothes melted into a horrible stew. His old life decomposing.

He couldn’t eat. He shoved his sandwich back into the brown paper bag and left the cafeteria. He walked out to the parking lot, climbed into the Jeep, and drove away.

He ended up at Antoinette’s house. The police car was gone, but the yellow tape remained. Theo took down the pieces of tape over the front door and let himself in. The place was pretty much as Theo had left it-Antoinette’s books all over the floor with the wine bottles, the sofa cushions, the broken candles. Theo picked up a wine bottle and wandered through the house holding it like a club. A cocktail napkin was secured to the refrigerator with a magnet-in blue ink it said, L, Cape Air, noon Sat. Theo stared at the napkin-her daughter, he realized after a minute. Lindsey. Had Antoinette really meant to pick up Lindsey, or was this just a decoy? When Antoinette’s body didn’t turn up in the coast guard search, his suspicions were confirmed: Antoinette had been planning to disappear during Night Swimmers for a long time. But that napkin. It bothered Theo. He folded it carefully and put it into his jeans pocket.

He moved through the house touching all the things that Antoinette might have touched, the light switches, the doorknobs. He’d dumped her clothes in a pile on the bed and that’s where they remained-a mound of black T-shirts and black jeans and black sundresses. He buried his face in one of the dresses, rooting for her smell, but he couldn’t identify it. The dress smelled like fabric softener. He swept the clothes off the bed and turned back the sheets, looking for a stain from their lovemaking or one of his hairs, something to prove that he had lain with Antoinette in this bed, he had created a child here. But the sheets were clean, crisp even, Antoinette’s Egyptian cotton sheets.

In the bathroom, Theo saw pills on the countertop divided into neat, colorful piles. Theo checked himself out in the mirror-he looked awful, like a sick person, a dying person. He had dark half-moons under his eyes, and his lips were cracked. His hair stuck out all over the place. That napkin was a bad clue. That napkin said: I am planning on being around Saturday. I’ll see you at noon!

So she drowned.

Or, it was a trick. An Antoinette trick.

What Theo wanted the napkin to say was: I love Theo Montero and I love our baby. What he wanted the napkin to say was: Meet me in Newport, Rhode Island, noon Sat., and we’ll run away together. What he wanted the napkin to say was: I am thinking of you, Theo. Yes, even that, only that. What had she expected him to do? How had she expected him to feel? Did she really expect him to survive the love affair and then the pregnancy? He was only eighteen. His heart had been broken and entered, ransacked, robbed.

Theo studied the piles of pills. Take them, he thought. Wash them down. It might be as easy as falling asleep.

As Theo picked up the first pill, the whelk shell caught his eye. It sat on the back of the toilet. Here was what Theo had been looking for-a piece of himself in this house. He cradled the shell in his hands as though it were a small animal. He kissed its smooth, cool surface, and then he brought the shell to his ear and listened to the ocean.

Even though it was the middle of the day, both of Theo’s parents were at home. His father had lost the Ting job, although he insisted it wasn’t Theo’s fault. It was because of the newspaper article, that prick detective. Theo’s father went out to Ting to gather his sawhorses and his tools, the Dumpster, the vans. He fired two men from his crew-Micky and Carter, saying that he wanted to pare down the operation. Mainstream. Montero Construction had projects lined up for the next thirty months with people who needed a builder so desperately that a mere accusation of murder wouldn’t deter them. Losing Ting was a blessing in disguise, Theo’s father said with false cheer. Because really that house was preposterous. That cathedral.

But Theo’s father hadn’t started on any new projects yet. He’d been at home trying to find a lawyer to defend him against the assault charges. Theo’s mother hadn’t left the house for errands or shopping because she was afraid to see anyone she knew. “They all think I’m a murderer,” she said. “My own children think it.”

Theo didn’t think his mother was a murderer. He longed to climb into his mother’s arms and say, It’s my fault. Blame me. But both his parents insisted on protecting him. He wasn’t even going to get in trouble for the vandalism. He’d gotten off scot-free- except for Sara Poncheau. But now that Theo thought about it, he was glad Sara had told everyone at school about him and Antoinette. It made his pain real. Sara had seen them together only a week before. She had seen that it was real.

When Theo opened the sliding glass door, he heard his parents yelling. He wondered if this had been going on all morning while he was at school- his parents home alone in the empty house, screaming.

“… you’re throwing me out!” his mother said.

“Call it what you like, Kayla. I need time alone. I need time to think.”

“You want to get rid of me,” his mother said. “You hate me.”

“I’m angry,” his father said. “I’m hurt. But this is for you, too. You need to get off the island for a while.”

“I won’t know what to do,” Theo’s mother said. “The kids, I’ll miss the kids.”