Before She Knew Him(46)
Imagine being in her apartment—everything is white if her Instagram is telling the truth—and being able to smell the sweat on her body. What if I was the only one who showed up? The thought is too much, so I go to Craigslist and look at the Women Seeking Men section for Boston MetroWest, nearly writing an email to HuNgRy for BaD DaDDy in Billerica. I’ve seen her posts before (no pictures, of course), but I just can’t bring myself to write her. I don’t know if I trust myself.
My father found out about my mother and the man at the swimming pond. I know because he made her wear her bathing suit around the house for weeks. She’d wear that suit when she ate her meals on the kitchen floor. Matthew says she used to eat on all fours like a dog, but I don’t remember it that way. Matthew doesn’t remember the time she returned to her old seat at the kitchen table when Dad was out of the room on a long phone call. She didn’t hear him come back into the kitchen, and he smacked her face down onto her dinner plate, shattering it. I saw the whole thing. I never knew Dad could move so fast. Afterward, Mom just sat there, her head tilted forward, blood from her nose spilling all across the porcelain tabletop with the yellow flowers. Matthew doesn’t remember it because he’s phobic about blood, but I remember it well. Mom never tried to stop the bleeding, never put her handkerchief to her face, and I remember thinking that she hoped the blood would just keep coming out of her, that it would never stop.
I keep reading articles about the death of Scott Doyle. In the last one I read it mentioned that he’d been engaged to a teacher from Sussex Hall, where Matthew works. And now I really do wonder if he had anything to do with Scott Doyle’s death. The teacher’s name is Michelle Brine, and she doesn’t have Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, but there’s a picture of her on a LinkedIn page. A thin face and thin brown hair, and the kind of lips that have no color whatsoever, just the color of her flesh, but she has a long, slender neck, and it would be just like my brother to think he was saving her from the big bad wolf. She looks like she needs saving.
So I don’t go to yoga and meet Haley Petersen and I don’t send an email to the HuNgRy girl from Billerica, and I decide to devote all my energy and resources to finding out what I can about Michelle Brine. She’s more of a challenge, a girl like that, someone who doesn’t put herself out there. Someone who doesn’t think anyone is looking.
I could just ask my brother about her, but I don’t think I’ll do that. He’ll get defensive, the way he does.
Besides, he hasn’t called me in a while even though I know Mira is away again. Maybe I’ll drop in. He can’t hide from me forever.
Part 2
From the Living to the Dead
Chapter 23
“I suppose I want you to know the truth,” Matthew said, his heart beating in his chest louder than it had when he’d killed Scott Doyle.
Hen’s forehead creased, and then she laughed. “Please leave,” she said again.
“Okay,” Matthew said, taking two steps backward so that he was standing just inside the open door of her basement studio. “If you change your mind, I just want to talk with you sometime.”
She kept her eyes on him. He realized that stepping back had been the right move.
“Why’d you kill Scott Doyle?” she asked.
Matthew shrugged. “He was a creep. He deserved it. I know his girlfriend and she’s a good person. He wasn’t.” It wasn’t just what he did; it was that he was so pleased with himself. I killed him because he was a smug, arrogant fox face, and I would do it again.
Now Hen really laughed. “What makes you think I won’t go straight to the police after this conversation?”
“Go ahead. I’ll deny it.”
“You’re in a public space. Someone will have seen you come in here.”
“I won’t deny I came here. I’ll tell them I came to have a reasonable conversation with you, to ask why you’ve decided to persecute me, to ask you to please respect the protective order. I’ll say that’s all we talked about. Who are they going to believe?”
He watched her think about it. “I still don’t understand why you’re here.”
“When you’re like me . . . when you have needs like mine . . .” His heart was beating fast again, like he was on a date that wasn’t going well. “You realize I can’t talk with anyone, not even a therapist—”
“I am not your fucking therapist.”
“God, no. I wasn’t suggesting. I’m just trying to explain the special nature of our relationship. I can tell you anything, and you can’t do anything about it. It could go both ways, too. That girl in college that you attacked. Was she really after you?”
“Daphne Myers? No, she wasn’t. I was mentally unwell and paranoid. Look, I’m so happy that you think we have some kind of special relationship, but we don’t. I know who you are, and the police will know soon, too. Now leave before I call them.”
Matthew saw her glance over to a cloth bag that probably contained her cell phone.
“Okay,” he said. “But if you change your mind, I think it will be worth it to you. You will never be in any danger. I don’t kill women. I would never hurt you. Even if I was threatened by you.”