A Noise Downstairs(68)

“She called me.”

“I was gonna tell you,” Charlotte said, looking like she’d been caught in a lie. “I knew there was a chance Hailey’d rat me out. But you remember the other day, how she strolled right in here?”

“You don’t really think Hailey snuck in here and—”

“I don’t know, okay?” she said defensively.

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them I was worried about you. So shoot me. I’ve been worried sick about you, and honestly, I can’t predict what you’re going to do next. Not these last few days. Not since I bought that goddamn thing and put it in your think tank.”

Paul glanced at the open door to his study, as if to confirm that the typewriter was no longer there. He mentally breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was not. He knew where it was, but he was not going to go into the garage to check this time.

You could take paranoia a little too far.

“Whatever’s going on, whatever the cause,” Charlotte said cautiously, “I see it driving you to the brink of . . .”

Paul gave her a look.

“Just hear me out here. What if Hailey is behind this? She had a key. She could sneak in. What if it’s a custody thing? What if she and that smug asshole Walter are somehow setting you up, trying to make you seem mentally unfit, so they could go after sole custody of Josh?”

“No!” he said firmly. “She wouldn’t do that! She wouldn’t do it to Josh. She wouldn’t keep him from me.”

“Sometimes,” Charlotte said, “you don’t know what people are capable of.”

Paul sighed, moved his head from side to side sorrowfully. “I just spent the afternoon learning that lesson.”

He recounted his prison visit for her.

“Are you glad you did it?” Charlotte asked.

He told her he thought he was, and why.

“Good,” she said. “You know what I’d like?”

“What would you like?”

“One night where we don’t talk about any of this. Nothing about Hoffman. Nothing about typewriters. Nothing about your legal problems with that asshole Hitchens.”

“God, him. There’s been so much going on, I nearly forgot I might be going to jail myself.” He tried to laugh.

“Stop.”

“Okay.”

“I want one night that we devote just to ourselves.”

“Sold.”

“Have you eaten?”

“I’m so hungry, I’d eat airline food.”

He perched himself on one of the island stools while Charlotte pulled out an already prepared plate from the refrigerator. She said, “Spinach-and-ricotta-stuffed cannelloni with tomato sauce. Sorry, I had mine about an hour ago. I was starving.”

She put it into the microwave, then went back to the fridge and brought out a bottle of red wine. “Got this, too.” She found a corkscrew in a drawer, opened the bottle, and filled two wineglasses.

Charlotte handed one to him, raised her glass to make a toast. “To a new beginning. To putting the bad behind us, and looking forward to the good.”

Paul, struggling to be enthusiastic, clinked his glass to hers and drank. “I like that.”

Charlotte, wineglass in hand, turned back to the microwave to check on the progress of her husband’s dinner. “Three minutes.”

“I’m gonna wash up,” he said, leaving his glass and heading for the stairs to the top floor.

“Be quick,” she said.

By the time he returned, his dinner was waiting for him and Charlotte was refilling her glass. “It is my intention,” she said with mock seriousness, “to get drunk and make some bad decisions.”

Paul smiled as he retook his spot on the stool. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, picking up his glass and downing the rest of his wine in a single gulp.

“Hit me,” he said, setting the glass back down. Charlotte filled it to the brim, then looked at the trickle left in the bottle.

“Good thing I have more than just this one,” she said.

Paul cut into the cannelloni with the side of his fork and blew on it before putting it into his mouth. “This is not bad.”

Charlotte smiled as she went to the fridge again. “All I want is for you to be happy,” she said. She scowled at the second bottle she had pulled out. “A screw top. Is that too down market?”

“Seriously?” he said. “For me, who doesn’t know a Chablis from a chardonnay?”

“Yeah, and really, the more you drink, what does it matter?”

She opened the bottle, set it on the island at the ready. Paul went through his second glass in half a dozen gulps. The moment his glass was empty, Charlotte refilled it.

“Do you forgive me?” she asked.

“For?”

“Talking to Hailey and Dr. White.”

He nodded. “I do.”

“If the roles were reversed, wouldn’t you have done the same thing?”

Paul thought about that. “I guess I would have.” He had polished off the dinner and pushed the plate away from him.

“Are you wondering what’s for dessert?” Charlotte asked.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m good.”