The Sleepwalker(39)

“Well, this is a lovely surprise,” my father said.

“I got bored at the pool. Do you have another student coming in?”

“Not for a few minutes. How’s your day?”

“Weird.”

“Elaborate.”

“I ran into Marilyn Bryce at the supermarket.”

“Oh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I used to love grocery shopping with you and your mother when you were little,” he said, his tone pensive.

“Why?”

He sat back in his chair, an antique leather monster that shrunk him a bit, and rested his hands on his stomach. He was wearing a knit tie and a blue oxford shirt. His blazer was hanging from the wooden coat rack beside the door. “I was nurturing you and that always made me happy. The chore is all about feeding and comforting…and, one must admit, consumerism. And, of course, I was with you or with you and your mother. How could I not love it?”

“You know that Mom knew Detective Rikert, right?”

“That was abrupt.”

“Sorry. It just came out.”

“Yes. The detective told me the day I flew back from Iowa.”

“But Mom didn’t talk about him when she was…”

“When she was at the sleep clinic,” my father said helpfully, finishing the sentence for me. “No, she didn’t. Why?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Why now?”

“I have too much time on my hands.”

“Perhaps. Maybe you should volunteer at the elementary school. You like children.”

“I like giving them magic shows,” I corrected him.

“Do that then. Or read to them.”

“Or crafts, maybe. God knows Mom taught me enough crafts.”

He looked out the window and grew ruminative. “That detective,” he began, and he paused. Then: “If I hadn’t had an alibi, I am confident that in the eyes of that detective, I would have been more than a suspect. I would have been the suspect. If I hadn’t been in Iowa, I am quite certain that Detective Rikert would have believed that I killed your mother.”

The last four words reverberated in the room for me like a clap of thunder. My father had said them calmly, almost abstractedly. A sickening twinge of dismay—not quite fear, but a cousin—rippled along the back of my neck.

“Why would anyone think that?” I asked, my voice small and dazed.

“Oh, husbands are always the suspects in these things. Until they’re not.”

This was the moment, I decided, when I should tell him what Marilyn Bryce had said. In my mind, I heard myself speaking the sentence: Marilyn Bryce said you weren’t the easiest person to live with. But I couldn’t do it. Instead I murmured like a small child, “But you two loved each other.”

“We did.”

I waited. He turned back to me and met my gaze. “But…” I murmured, trying to start a sentence for him.

“There were no buts,” he said, and he sounded definitive.

“Can I ask you something else?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“This is kind of random, but I keep thinking about all of Mom’s miscarriages. She really, really wanted another child. You did, too, right?” I curled one of my legs underneath me.

“Absolutely. You and your sister are everything to me.”

“Did you and Mom ever look into why she kept having them?”

“The miscarriages?”

I nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. Your mother put up with ultrasounds, MRIs, a hysteroscopy. Her thyroid was examined. Her prolactin was measured. Her ovaries were tested. There were no chromosomal abnormalities in her eggs. Her uterus? First-rate. She had a model uterus. Utterly perfect, as far as these things go.”

“Then why?”

“We’ll never know,” he said. “I’m not sure what put more of a strain on the marriage in those days: the miscarriages or the medical testing.”

“And you never did find the cause.”

“No. I can only speculate.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, maybe it was me.”

“You?”

“Ten years ago, they didn’t test men. They are only beginning to study us now. Molecular karyotyping. Perhaps the miscarriages were my fault.”

“Did you and Mom ever consider adopting?”

“As I recall, we were just about to begin that process when your mother became pregnant with your sister. And this time—miracle of miracles—the pregnancy had a perfectly wonderful happy ending.”

“And Mom never walked in her sleep those years?”

“Oh, occasionally she did. But not like years later. She didn’t leave the bedroom quite so often. She rarely got out of bed. Sometimes, it was more like a…a childhood arousal disorder. Still between the miscarriages—and my fears they were my fault—and the sleepwalking, I probably wasn’t a perfect husband. I resented not traveling. I really did. I loved your mother, but I didn’t handle the realities of her infirmity all that well. You were at college when I was chafing most at the bit.”

I felt queasy. My father sounded tired.

“What…”