Before She Knew Him(35)
Chapter 19
Mira opened her eyes at dawn. She knew she’d slept, although her body and her mind didn’t feel rested. She swung herself off the bed, moving carefully so as not to wake Matthew, still curled up on his side.
She put on a robe and went downstairs, making coffee, then chugging a glass of water. She was still so thirsty, a remnant of the hangover she’d suffered the previous day, after drinking far too much at the Portsmouth Arms. Her stomach was queasy and there was a pulsing ache in her temples, almost like one of her migraines, but she knew it was from alcohol and stress. She went into the living room, thought about lying down on the couch, but decided to try to meditate instead. That was something her father did, ten minutes of meditation every morning before he drank his coffee. He swore by it, and she trusted him because, other than the meditation, her father was maybe the most pragmatic non-new-age-y person she knew. She got her yoga mat and sat cross-legged on the floor, focusing on her breathing and staring at a patch of early-morning light that lay in a rhombus across the hardwood floor. It almost worked, but she couldn’t shut out the bizarre events of yesterday, especially learning that it was Hen, their new neighbor, who had claimed to have witnessed Matthew at the scene of a murder. It was ludicrous—the whole thing was ludicrous—but Mira was trying to make sense of it. Hen had told her that she suffered from depression, mentioning how she didn’t want any children because she didn’t want to pass along her brain. Maybe she was just unhinged, and, for whatever reason, she had decided—this was what Matthew believed, anyway—that Matthew was some kind of serial killer. It was just that . . . Hen seemed sane. And she seemed nice, even though Mira now knew that Hen had come over after the dinner party only in order to look for evidence, or maybe even to plant evidence. Suddenly she was scared. How far would this woman go? She thought back to after they had all met at the neighborhood party, how much she’d already decided that she liked her arty new neighbor with the pixie hair and the interesting jewelry, how she told Matthew that she really wanted to have them over for dinner.
“They’re total strangers,” he’d said.
“Strangers are just friends we haven’t met yet, you know that, Matthew,” she said, laughing. She didn’t really want to have that discussion—that argument, really—about friends. For a few years Mira had wanted more friends and Matthew, if anything, wanted fewer.
“Do what you want,” he’d said.
And she had done what she wanted, and look what had happened. She had a psychotic neighbor now, out to get her husband.
But there actually was a murder on Saturday night. Some man died.
Mira went back to the yoga mat, did some stretches. There was too much to think about, and her mind was getting rattled. Calm down, she told herself. Think about yesterday. Try and put it in perspective.
So, with her toes gripped by her fingers, she thought about the previous day. There was her hangover, of course, the worst she’d had in years, the worst she’d had maybe ever. Why had she drunk so much?
Your husband made you do it.
Matthew had encouraged her, that much was true. Matthew, who drank about two alcoholic beverages a year, if that. They’d been in that pretty bar at the inn, all dark wood and flickering candlelight, and the wine had tasted amazing, and then she’d had some sweet-tasting Scotch drink that had tasted just as good. She remembered thinking: He’s trying to get me drunk, Matthew’s trying to get me drunk. She’d wondered why and told herself that maybe it had to do with a sex thing, that maybe he wanted to try out something in the bedroom, a thought that wasn’t entirely objectionable, but not exactly enticing, either. The last time he’d gotten a little bit kinky—this was over a year ago—he’d asked her to keep her black stockings on while they had sex. That part had been fine—it actually did feel pretty sexy—and it had been equally fine when he’d flipped her over onto her stomach and finished from behind. What hadn’t been fine—what had been fairly awful—was that afterward, when she’d turned to look at him, he’d looked back at her with an expression of complete disgust on his face, very brief but it was definitely there. Then he’d flushed bright red and couldn’t meet her eye.
“That was fun,” she’d said, hoping to salvage the situation, but he was already heading to the bathroom to shower.
It had definitely occurred to her, even before he plied her with crab dip and alcohol, that maybe he’d suggested the Portsmouth Arms getaway in order to try something else new in the bedroom. With that in mind, Mira had purposefully not brought black stockings on this trip. She never wanted to see that almost hateful look on his face again.
As it turned out, as soon as they got back to their room she’d sat down on the edge of the bed and the whole room had listed to one side like a boat in bad weather. She remembered Matthew gently tucking her under the covers, and her wondering if she’d ever get to sleep with the room churning the way it was, but that was all she remembered about that night.
The next day she’d woken early, as she had this morning, and gone to the bathroom and taken four ibuprofens, washing them down with three glasses of the tinny hotel tap water. Her stomach roiled, but she was able to fall asleep again. When she next woke up, Matthew, already dressed, hair damp from a shower, was carrying a tray of room service breakfast across the room. He’d ordered her a tomato and cheese omelet, her favorite, and after a tenuous first bite, she’d gulped down the rest with three slices of buttered toast and decided that she was going to survive.