Tell Me Everything

Bob visits the Beach house where Matt and Gloria lived together. He still isn’t sure why he agreed to take the case but knows it has something to do with the fact that he’d thought he’d killed his father.

When Matt answers the door, his innocence immediately strikes Bob. Matt tells Bob that on the day of Gloria’s disappearance, he went grocery shopping and came home 45 minutes later, and Gloria was gone. Two days ago, when Gloria’s body was found, the police came. They were nice, he tells Bob, but they took his computer. Matt says the only harmful things on his computer are letters that he wrote himself, venting about his mother when she aggravated him. When Bob asks if they took his cell phone, Matt says he doesn’t have one because he doesn’t have anyone to call.

Matt has found Gloria’s will, although he hasn’t shown it to the police. He shows it to Bob, who realizes that Matt will inherit his father’s life insurance policy, the house, and his mother’s savings of $50,000. Bob tells Matt not to tell anyone else about the will yet.

Matt emphasizes that although sometimes his mother annoyed him, he loved her. She took care of him, and so he was committed to taking care of her. Diana and Thomas, however, hated her. Matt admits that none of them know who Thomas’s father was.

Matt gives Bob a tour of the house, and on the second floor, Bob is surprised to find Matt’s studio filled with paintings. All the paintings feature pregnant women, and Bob can see the skill and beauty of Matt’s work.

When Bob asks, Matt admits he has a rifle stored on the top shelf of his closet. He tells Bob that the last time it was used was when Diana killed a raccoon, but Bob suggests that Matt unload the gun. Matt tells Bob that he used to dread Diana’s visits because she and Gloria hated each other. He also mentions, before Bob leaves, that Ashley Munroe had been one of his models.

Lucy visits Olive to tell her a story. After a writing event in Washington, DC, Lucy met a man on the train. Their interaction was banal and pleasant, but the whole time, Lucy felt connected to him and was sure he felt the same. She realized that she loved him and knew that he loved her. At his stop, he collected his bag, and they said goodbye. Olive doesn’t understand the story, telling Lucy she has never fallen in love like that. Olive and Lucy are disappointed in each other.

Lucy tells Olive another story. When a cabbie in New York asked how she was, she answered honestly that she was tired. They shared a moment of commiseration, and when Lucy got out of the cab, he said, “God bless you” (129). Lucy felt it as a “benediction” and returned the sentiment. The interaction made her day.

Olive comments that Lucy is lonely, and Lucy responds that everyone is lonely. Her stories, she says, are “stories of loneliness and love” (130). She believes that every connection is important and tells Olive that she feels a connection between them. Olive says she feels the same. After Lucy leaves, Olive calls Isabelle to tell her the story.

Carol Hall is the prosecutor on Matt’s case. Bob knows that she just had an unsuccessful case and will be out for a conviction. After Bob leaves Matt’s house, he calls Carol and tells her he is taking Matt’s case. Then he calls the police and tells them not to talk to Matt without him. He then arranges to meet Diana at his office the next day.

Bob finds Ashley Munroe’s phone number and calls her. She invites him to her house. Ashley and her baby are sweet and cheerful. She reiterates what she told the police: Her driver’s license and credit card had been stolen, and she was in labor at the hospital at the time of Gloria’s disappearance.

Ashley modeled for Matt for extra money when she was pregnant and had liked him, calling him “sweet.” She also tells Bob that Gloria screamed at her whenever she’d gone there, and she wouldn’t have blamed Matt if he killed her. Bob remembers that both his sisters, Susan and Olive, said the same thing.

That night, Margaret talks about her day but doesn’t ask about his. He finally tells her, but she doesn’t seem engaged, and this “caused a dreariness to rest in him” (137). When she questions whether he should be taking the case, Bob gets angry and wishes that he could tell Lucy about it instead.

Jim calls Bob in the middle of the night to tell him that Helen has died. Jim was with her at the moment of her death. Bob goes to Jim’s house in Park Slope, and being in New York feels different. It is April, and the forsythia is partially blooming. Jim’s children are there—Margot, Emily, and Larry—along with their children. It felt oddly celebratory, and Bob feels “out of place” (142).

That night, Bob sits with Jim in his study. Larry comes in crying and tells Jim that he “sucked as a husband to Mom” (142). Jim agrees, but when Larry turns to leave, Jim gives him the middle finger. Bob is incredulous, and so is Larry, who has seen the gesture in the hallway mirror. Larry calls Jim “a piece of crap” (143). After he leaves, Bob reflects that Larry was born to the wrong father. To distract Jim, Bob tells him about the Matt Beach case. When Jim hears about the life insurance policy, he tells Bob they “might be fucked” (144).

At his office, Bob waits for Diana Beach to arrive. He thinks about Matt and Lucy’s similarities, as they are both artists.

When Diana arrives, Bob realizes he wouldn’t have recognized her even though they went to school together. Diana doesn’t like coming home, but as their eldest brother, Thomas, has cut off communication, she is the only support Matt has. When Bob mentions Matt’s paintings, she gets excited, knowing how good they are. She can also testify to how Gloria yelled at his models, as she was there for a few of the encounters, but denies knowing Ashley Munroe.

Diana is a high school guidance counselor—her guidance counselor was the first person Diana told her story to, and the woman changed her life. Bob asks if it was hard when her father left, but Diana replies that she “loathed” him. She sees Matt’s life with Gloria as a “prison sentence.” Diana also tells Bob that she is divorced. The previous August, her second husband told her he was having an affair with her best friend, and the divorce was finalized the prior week.

After he meets with Diana, Bob sees Katherine Caskey downtown. He and Katherine had known each other for years, but recently, they discovered that they’d also seen each other as children in a moment that neither of them had ever forgotten. When Bob tells Katherine that Helen died, Katherine hugs him before leaving, and Bob reflects on how grateful he is for her hugs.

At Helen’s funeral, all three of her children give moving eulogies, but Larry includes a pointed dig at Jim. Pam rides with Bob and Margaret to the graveside service, and she and Margaret talk frankly about her recovery.

At Jim’s house after the funeral, Pam tells Bob about making amends as a part of her recovery. After speaking with her son, Eric, he came to visit. Although she felt awkward about him wearing women’s clothes at first, she’s gotten used to it. Pam and Ted are still living separately, and he and Lydia have never apologized to her.

Later, Jim tells Bob that he doesn’t want to be buried in the plot next to Helen—he wants to be cremated and have his ashes scattered “over the Androscoggin River in Maine” (161).

On a walk, Bob tells Lucy about the car ride with Margaret and Pam. Lucy tells Bob about her most recent meeting with Olive and how they’d failed to connect. Bob wants to hear the stories she told and, afterward, tells Lucy that she is “something.”

Bob tells Lucy that Jim wants his ashes scattered on the Androscoggin River, and she says that makes sense because he is “[r]returning to the scene of his crime” (165). She feels sorry for Jim, who has spent his life keeping a secret that got harder and harder to confess. Bob tells Lucy that he feels relief with her that he doesn’t feel anywhere else.