The summer after freshman year was the only full summer that Harry spent in Maine with his father and his new wife. Alice, who had never married and was childless, had been ecstatic, transforming one of the guest bedrooms into what must have been her notion of a young man’s room. She’d painted the walls a dark maroon—“hunting-coat red,” she called it—and bought furniture from L.L.Bean that looked like it belonged in a fishing lodge. She’d even framed an original poster of The Great Escape, because Harry had once told her that it was his favorite film. He’d been grateful for the room, but slightly uncomfortable in it. His father, as he’d always done, traveled the country scouting books at estate sales and flea markets. Harry was left alone with Alice, who worked hard at being a replacement for his mother, constantly making him food, cleaning his room, meticulously folding his clothes. She was thirteen years younger than his father, which made her exactly thirteen years older than Harry, although she looked young for her age. Despite living on the coast of Maine her entire life, she avoided the sun because of her pale complexion, and her skin was unlined, almost lucid. Her only exercise was swimming, either at the community pool or in the ocean when it was warm enough. She ate ravenously, drank glasses of whole milk like she was a teenager, and was neither thin nor overweight, just curvaceous, with wide hips, and a narrow waist, and long legs that tapered to childlike ankles.

It had been hot and humid that summer, and there was no central air-conditioning in the house. Alice had spent all of July and August in cutoff jeans and a pale green bikini top, unaware of the effect she was having on her teenage stepson. She was a strange kind of beautiful, her eyes set too far apart, her skin so pale that you could always make out the blue veins right near the surface. She reminded Harry of one of those hot alien races from Star Trek, a beautiful female who just happened to have green skin, say, or ridges on her forehead. She was otherworldly. Harry found himself in a state of constant, confused sexual turmoil, guiltily obsessing over Alice. And the way she mothered him—making sure he had enough to eat, making sure that he was comfortable—made the attraction all the more distressing.

After that first and only summer in Kennewick, Harry had arranged to spend his college breaks either staying with friends or remaining in New Chester, doing research for one of his professors. He saw his father fairly often, because of how much time he still spent in New York, meeting with Ron Krakowski, negotiating purchases and sales. New Chester was less than two hours away from the city by train.