A Noise Downstairs(85)

“This did not happen,” Charlotte said, splayed across the covers in the oversize master bedroom of a three-thousand-square-foot ranch that was close to schools, had a finished basement, and had dropped ten thousand in price in the last week.

“I know,” Bill said. “It just . . . Paul’s my friend. I mean, he was my friend. Maybe not so much now. This was just one of those things, right? It won’t happen again.”

But it did.

One night when Charlotte had told Paul she was showing a condo to a woman from Stamford, but instead was in a darkened empty house with her head in Bill’s lap, Bill said to her, “I’d like it to be just you.”

She looked up and said, “What? What does that mean?”

“Is there a way? Is there a way that we could do this without having to be in a different fucking house every time? A way where we didn’t have to pretend anymore? A way where we could just go wherever we want and do whatever we want? Because if there is, I’d want that. Just with you.”

Which would mean, of course, that she would have to leave Paul. That she would have to divorce Paul.

It could be done. It would be messy. It would be hateful. It would take time. But it could be done.

Paul had already been through one divorce, and from the tales he’d told her, it had nearly destroyed him. He had not made it easy, he had to admit, for Hailey when she wanted to separate. Lots of pleading. Plenty of late-night calls. Failing to see things as they really were.

Refusing to accept that it was over.

“I made a fool of myself,” he conceded. “I kept thinking I could win her back when it was clear she’d made up her mind.”

He’d been afraid to commit to another marriage, so great was his fear of failing again. “But there’s something about you,” he told Charlotte. “I’m willing to take a leap of faith.”

Leap he did.

And now, Charlotte was going to give him news she knew would destroy him. She’d met someone else. Hey, and guess what? It’s your old college pal, Bill!

But she was prepared to do it. It would be horrible, but she told herself, if you didn’t seek out your own happiness in life, no one else was going to do it for you.

She wanted to be happy with Bill.

And then Paul nearly died.

He stumbled upon Kenneth Hoffman getting rid of those two women he’d murdered. Kenneth clubbed him on the head. Paul went down. Kenneth knelt down beside him, ready to finish him off.

Enter the police.

Charlotte was willing to admit, to herself, that her feelings had been mixed. If only Kenneth had gotten away with it. If only that single blow to Paul’s head had been fatal. It wouldn’t have been her fault. She’d have been blameless. An innocent beneficiary.

So close.

Charlotte wondered, should she feel guilty, thinking that way? Because she didn’t. What she felt, overwhelmingly, was frustrated. It was a bit like checking your lottery ticket, thinking you have every number, then double-checking and finding that you’re off by one.

Paul had lived. Therapy had followed. He had to take a leave from West Haven while he recovered, and that recovery was slow with numerous setbacks. There were the nightmares. Waking up at three in the morning in a cold sweat, screaming.

Paul Davis was a broken man.

“You can’t do it now,” Bill said. “You can’t tell a man who’s coming back from a fucking attempted murder that you’re divorcing him. Think what it would be like for us. At the agency? In this town? You, the woman who left a guy at his lowest point, when he needed your support more than ever before, and me, the guy you left him for.” He shook his head. “I can tell you one thing for sure. We’d never sell another house in this market.”

Charlotte considered all of his points. She went very quiet.

“What?” Bill asked her. “What are you thinking?”

“Maybe,” she said, “there’s another way.”





Fifty-One

Anna White kept wondering whether she could have heard it wrong.

Maybe Bill Myers had not whispered the words “It worked” into Charlotte’s ear as they were walking out of the church together. But what else could it have been? What sounded similar to “It worked” but was not “It worked”?

Surely not “It sucked.” Bill wouldn’t have said that about the service, unless he was being self-deprecating about his own words honoring Paul’s memory. Yes, perhaps that was it, Anna thought. He believed his eulogy was inadequate. He should have said more. And he’d whispered those two words to Charlotte as an apology. He could have done better. Maybe he was looking for some reassurance, hoping that she would then tell him he was wrong, that his words about Paul were from the heart and that they definitely did not suck.

Yes, Anna thought. That could have been what she heard.

But even if he had said what she initially believed she’d heard, so what. “It worked” could have referred to any number of things. The service worked. What the minister had said worked.

And yet Anna couldn’t shake the feeling the words meant something very different.

If all she’d heard were those two words, she might have been able to let it go. But it was what she saw in the seconds before Bill leaned in and whispered in Charlotte’s ear.

The way he took her hand.