Free The Why of Things: A Novel by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop

turns around, her pulse still ticking wildly in her neck, though she immediately recognizes the voice.
    “Saul?” she says, catching her breath, a little bit angry now and embarrassed by her terror.
    “Hey.” Saul turns on a flashlight, the beam bobbing in her direction as he steps closer. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
    “Then why the hell did you sneak up on me like that?”
    “I didn’t sneak up,” he says.
    “You didn’t have your flashlight on. You didn’t call out. You just . . . crept. I didn’t know it was you.”
    “And I didn’t know it was you. All I saw was the end of a cigarette. I thought it might be your mother.”
    Saul is standing in front of her now, and the fact of his presence is mildly disconcerting. She realizes that she hadn’t expected to see him this summer, that in her mind it was almost as if he had died along with Sophie. And yet, here he is, utterly familiar and real.
    “Well it was me,” Eve says finally.
    “And it was me. And I’m sorry if I scared you.”
    Eve climbs back onto her perch and looks at Saul suspiciously. “What are you doing here anyway?”
    “Walking,” he says.
    “Walking?”
    “Walking. Thinking. I wanted to get outside, after the rain.” Saul sits down next to her. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
    “I don’t really,” Eve says, feeling caught. “Just when I feel like it.” She glances over at Saul, thinking that just as he has caught her, she has caught him, too, in a way. She wonders how much time he spends wandering around here, thinking about Sophie, remembering, and it makes her almost uncomfortable to consider. An image appears in her mind of Saul at Sophie’s funeral, his eyes red and hollow, his shoulders slumped, as if the awkward suit he wore were a great weight. It made her uncomfortable to see him that way, too, beaten and defeated, in such contrast to the Saul she knew, almost as if she were seeing him naked. “Do you walk around here a lot?” she asks.
    “Just when I feel like it.”
    Eve hugs her knees to her chest, wishing she had gotten a sweatshirt after all; her clothes are damp from sitting on wet rock. Despite her initial irritation and surprise, she is glad to see Saul, glad for the company. “Did you feel like it last night?” she asks.
    “No. I was working last night. Why?”
    “Well,” Eve says, delighted to share the story. “A pickup truck drove into our quarry.”
    “What do you mean, a pickup truck drove into your quarry?”
    “I don’t really know. I mean, it ended up in there somehow. When we got here yesterday I saw tire tracks on the grass, and they ended at the edge of the quarry, right at the high ledge, and then the police came and divers came and they found a body.”
    “Oh, wow,” Saul mutters.
    “Yeah, it was a guy, like thirty or so. No one knows what happened, exactly. But they’re saying in the paper that there was no foul play, which I guess means they’re assuming either accident or suicide.”
    The word hangs between them heavily.
    “Jesus,” Saul says. “That’s creepy.”
    “I know.” Eve is quiet for a minute, considering. “I don’t see how someone could accidentally drive into a quarry. I mean, that’s a pretty big accident. But I don’t think it was a suicide, necessarily, either,” she says.
    “Well why do they think it might have been?” he asks, looking at her carefully.
    “I don’t know, really. I guess it’s just the easiest answer and they’re too lazy to bother with anything else.”
    “So what makes you think it wasn’t?”
    Eve pauses a moment, worried that confessing she thinks it’s murder sounds childish. “I don’t necessarily think it wasn’t , just that it might not have been. I mean, for one thing, his windows were up. Wouldn’t he have rolled his windows down?”
    “Probably.”
    “Exactly.” Eve lets out a frustrated breath, pulls her legs up. “I guess it just bothers me that they’re jumping to conclusions without looking