Before She Knew Him(41)
He rang her cell phone.
“I was going to call you,” she said, answering the phone. He could tell from her voice that she knew what had happened.
“I’m so sorry,” Matthew said. “I just heard the news. What happened?”
She took a ragged breath. It was clear that she’d been crying.
“I kept trying to call him on Sunday, just to find out how the show went, and he wasn’t picking up. It’s funny, because I knew that something awful had happened. I felt it. And then Jeremy called me and told me. I was driving back from my parents—”
“Who’s Jeremy?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not making any sense. Jeremy was in Scott’s band. He was the drummer. He called me and told me that Scott was dead, and I almost said, ‘I know.’ That’s how inevitable it felt. I don’t know . . . Maybe I’m crazy.”
“You’re not crazy. You’re just in shock, probably.”
“The thing is, we broke up, right before I left on Friday. You’d have been so proud of me. I asked him one more time if he wanted to come with me to visit my dad—that he was doing so much worse—and he said he couldn’t because of the gig and how important it was. So I suggested he drive out with me on Friday night and just visit briefly, and he could take my car back on Saturday afternoon, and I’d take a train, and he actually said that he needed to be in a good headspace for his performance, and I just told him to fuck off . . . well, not quite, I told him I thought we should break up, and he fought me . . . a little bit, anyway, but then we did it. We broke up.”
Matthew thought she sounded proud for a moment, almost as though she’d forgotten that Scott was now dead, but then she made a sudden exhalation, almost a groan, and she was crying.
“Maybe . . .” she started to say, then didn’t continue.
“Do you know what happened? Was it a robbery?”
She took two deep sniffs and said, her voice relatively normal again, “It was after the show. He had a flat tire, and while he was fixing it someone hit him on the head. I went to the station. They wanted to know if he had any enemies, and if he was faithful to me, and why we’d broken up.”
“You told them that you’d had a fight and broken up on Friday?” Matthew asked.
“Yeah, I told them everything. It’s not like I’m a suspect. I was in Pittsfield all weekend.”
“So how do you feel?”
“God, I don’t know. Name an emotion and I have it. I was actually happy this weekend that I’d finally shed myself of Scott. I mean, I wasn’t happy, exactly, because my father is so much worse than my mother’s been saying, but I felt relieved. And now I don’t know what to feel. Am I supposed to grieve for him? I’m just so confused.”
“You should take the week off work.”
“God, no. That’s the last thing I want to do. If I have to spend any more time alone here in my apartment I’m going to go crazy. Hey, I don’t know if I should ask this or not, but I don’t really care. Are you free? Can you come over, or is that a strange thing to ask?”
Matthew rapidly considered his options. If he was going to tell Michelle that he’d been accused of the murder by his unhinged neighbor, now would be the time. On the other hand, she hadn’t heard yet, and she might never hear. Clearly, the police hadn’t even bothered to show her a photograph of him. It was a very good sign that they didn’t take Henrietta Mazur at all seriously. He decided not to tell her. If she found out later, he’d just say that he didn’t want to upset her further.
“Actually, Mira is sick right now,” he said.
“Oh no, I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing serious, but she gets migraines, and they just knock her out.”
“No, no. Totally. Forget I asked.”
“If you do wind up going into school tomorrow, let’s get together after classes. Maybe get coffee and talk.”
“Sure,” she said.
“And call me back later, okay, if you need someone to talk with. Don’t hesitate.”
After they ended the call, he knew she wouldn’t call back. He sat for a moment, his mind flipping through images of what it would be like to go over to Michelle’s place—she lived in one of those apartment developments built to look vaguely Tudor-ish and with a name like Courtly Estates or something. How would it feel to comfort a woman whose boyfriend (ex-boyfriend) he’d hunted and killed? And how would it feel when he told her he had to leave, and she pulled him into a hug, pressed her lips against his? He went so far as to allow himself a moment to imagine her sliding back onto her bed, lifting her hips so he could pull her jeans down her long trembling legs. He shuddered a little at the image and thought of Mira in her cocoon of darkness. He had never cheated on her, and he never would. Cheating was what his father did. That wasn’t what he did.
And besides, as tempting as it was to visit Michelle, released forever from the physical manifestation of Scott Doyle, Matthew found that he was still thinking of Henrietta Mazur. What would it be like to visit her? What would she say to him if he knocked on her door? It wouldn’t be her, though; it would most likely be her husband, Lloyd, who’d probably punch him in the face. Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about her and how much he wanted to know what she was thinking. He knew this much: she’d been thinking about him, too. Nonstop. And sometime within the next twenty-four hours she’d be getting the protective order that barred her from interacting with him and Mira. Would they leave the neighborhood? He doubted it. He also doubted that she would stop interfering with his business. It gave him a perverse thrill that he couldn’t quite understand.