Before She Knew Him(19)
Matthew wasn’t surprised when the waitress—the young one from Lowell—came out of the bar and walked briskly to Scott’s car, getting into the passenger side.
The car started loudly and pulled out of the parking lot, its wheels scattering gravel.
Chapter 9
Hen sat in her car across the street from the Owl’s Head Tavern and wondered what Matthew Dolamore, also sitting in his car in the bar’s parking lot, was up to. Who was he watching?
It was Thursday night. She and Lloyd had made fish tacos for dinner, then watched two episodes of Better Call Saul before Lloyd said he was going to bed to read. Even though it was early, Hen decided to go to bed as well. She had the new Margaret Atwood, and while it had been months since she’d really gotten into a book, she was still trying.
The bedroom was cold. She’d cracked the window earlier in the day for Vinegar, who loved to sit in open windows, but the temperature had dropped and the room was frigid. She shut the window, just as Lloyd, oblivious to any temperature fluctuation, came into the room, holding a new paperback in his hand. Something science fiction–y. He had the dazed look he got when he was getting ready to get into bed. She imagined he was already falling asleep, which made sense, since once he got into bed, he’d be asleep about thirty seconds after he finished reading and turned off his lamp. Hen, on the other hand, would lie in bed for at least forty-five minutes, her mind turning the day over and over, slowly revving down enough so that she could edge her way into unconsciousness.
Tonight was no different. Before Hen had even gotten into bed, wearing flannel pajamas she had to dig out from one of the large bins under the bed, Lloyd was deeply asleep. Hen began to read her book, but her mind wouldn’t allow her to absorb the words. It had been three days since Hen had confessed to Lloyd her suspicions of their neighbor. Since then, she had done nothing more. Well, that was not entirely true; she had spent more time online, looking for any information she could glean about Matthew Dolamore. There wasn’t much, and there wasn’t much new on Dustin Miller’s homicide, either. But she hadn’t, as yet, gone to the police with her suspicions. And Lloyd hadn’t asked her if she had, clearly hoping the whole subject would be dropped.
Hen put the book away, not bothering to mark with a bookmark that she’d made it all the way to page two, and turned off her own lamp. She lay on her back, her eyes on the ceiling, wide-awake. She could hear the tap, tap, tap of Vinegar’s nails along the wooden floor of the bedroom, coming to check if the window was still open. It wasn’t, but he jumped on the windowsill anyway, and Hen turned her head to watch Vinegar’s tail twitching from under the curtain. An image came to her—a potential piece of artwork—of a human-sized cat tucked into a bed and a small, naked girl asleep on a windowsill. She imagined that outside the window, crouched on the bare branch of a tree, was a small, naked boy with large catlike eyes. As always happened when Hen imagined an etching, the entire image was instantly in her mind, exactly as it would look and exactly as it should feel. She got out of bed, went downstairs to the living room, and sketched the idea, just as she’d seen it in her mind. It felt good; she hadn’t had an idea for an original etching in months, at least since before they’d moved to West Dartford. She wasn’t sure her idea was any good—it was just a little obvious, the transposition of a pet and an owner—but something about the rendering of the sketch was working for her. It creeped her out to look at it, in a good way, and she felt the familiar buzz, the aliveness in her chest, that she got when she created a piece of art. She captioned it: “The boy was back again the very next night.” She’d always titled her artwork as though the images were illustrations for a nonexistent book, part of an ongoing story.
She put her sketchbook away, already looking forward to contemplating the drawing the next day with fresh eyes. The problem was that she was now fully awake. She considered getting back into bed, trying to read again, but knew it was useless. Her mind was buzzing.
She went back up to the bedroom, put on socks and slippers, and got a thick cardigan to put over her pajamas. Vinegar had moved to the bed, settling down by Lloyd’s feet. He eyed Hen with suspicion.
Back downstairs, Hen put the kettle on to make some herbal tea. Waiting for the water to boil, she stood in the living room looking out at the night. There were stars in the sky, something she’d rarely seen in Cambridge, far too close to the bright lights of Boston. The Dolamores’ house was almost completely dark except for some faint light coming through the curtains of the downstairs living room. She was just about to turn away when movement from the street caught her eye, and she turned her head to see a man walking down the Dolamores’ driveway. A motion sensor light went on above the front door as the man passed, and Hen could tell it was Matthew. She expected him to enter the house, but instead he got into his car. Hen checked her watch. It was almost midnight. Where could he be going? And where was he coming from on foot? The words follow him jumped into Hen’s head. He was clearly up to something, and she might be able to find out what it was. Without thinking, she grabbed her own set of car keys from the hook by the front door and went outside, speed walking toward the Volkswagen as Matthew’s taillights receded down Sycamore Street toward the center of town.
She thought she’d lost him but then spotted brake lights, a vehicle turning into the parking lot of the Owl’s Head. Hen slowed down. Instead of following him, she backed into a driveway across the road, immediately killing the engine and dousing her lights. It was a risk, but less of a risk, she thought, than following Matthew into the parking lot. And from there she had a good view. Matthew, after parking, had turned off his lights, and she waited for him to emerge from his car, but he didn’t. There was activity in front of the bar, even though the lights that illuminated the Owl’s Head sign had been turned off. She could see a small cluster of people standing around near the entrance, but she was too far to see what they really looked like. It did seem, however, that the few remaining people outside of the tavern might be members of the band. That was confirmed when she saw a drum kit being loaded into the back of a van. But Hen was most interested in Matthew, now sitting in his car on the outskirts of the lot. It seemed as though he had purposefully chosen the darkest spot in the lot. It was clear that he was there to watch someone, just as Hen was doing. But who? And where had he been coming from before he got his car, when he’d been on foot? It did occur to her that maybe he was coming from the Owl’s Head—it wasn’t far—and that he’d returned in his car so that he could follow someone.