Before She Knew Him(67)
She hit End on her phone and went and found Lloyd’s cell, underneath the blanket by the couch. And then she began to really worry. Had he gone to the police to tell them about Matthew? Or maybe he’d gone directly to Matthew himself. But that didn’t make sense, because why would he take the car to do that? He’s gone to pick up breakfast, Hen told herself. He’s driven to that amazing bakery in Dartford Center to get those apricot scones that I like and two large coffees, and he just forgot to bring his phone with him. She told herself this, but didn’t quite believe it. It was something else, something bad.
She went to the living room window and looked across to Matthew’s house. His car was gone as well, which made sense, since he’d be at school by now. There was nothing to see, but she stayed there anyway, looking out at her neighborhood, not knowing what to do next.
Richard
I didn’t know that blood could jump like that, almost like it wants to leave the human body, get as far away as possible. I’d read about it, of course, in books, and I’d seen it in movies, the way arterial blood will spray. But to see it in reality, to see the life of it, that was something . . . something I can’t even express in words.
Dad loved blood, too. I know that not just because he showed me that bra once when he returned from his business trip—the bra with the bloodstain on it, the bra I still have, hidden away with Dad’s things. No, I know it because after he broke Mom’s nose at the dinner table, and she just sat there, immobile, and let the blood run out of her face and spill out over everything—the broken plate, the porcelain tabletop, the dinner napkins, the linoleum floor—I caught Dad pulling one of the napkins from the laundry basket. It was brown and stiff from all the blood, and when he saw me looking at him, he winked and said, “Another souvenir.”
I wonder if Dad ever saw what blood can really do when you unleash it. I wonder that a lot, and for a time I sought out unsolved murders, looking at the places where he used to go most frequently on his business trips. I always found something—every town in America has murdered girls in it, their murderers unknown—but I could never know for sure that it was my father who had done it.
It’s possible that I now know what he never did, that blood has a life all its own.
Matthew now knows about what I did to his girlfriend Michelle. He knew it the moment I left him the keys, of course, but he had to go and see it for himself. I watched him from a distance, wondering what he’d do about it once he found out for sure. Would he go straight to the police and turn me in? So far he hasn’t. At least not that I know of. I just don’t think he will. Mom never went to the police, and Matthew is the one in the family who’s most like Mom.
No, Matthew is much more likely to try to deal with me himself. Keep it in the family, he’d say. He killed Dad, after all, even though he swears to me that he didn’t. But we both know that it was him. Matthew got bigger than Dad by his junior year of high school. He “sprouted,” to use the word Mom liked to use. Dad must have noticed, because he got a little more careful around the house, a little more restrained when it came to the games he played on Mom. And Mom, never one to waste an opening, took advantage. I remember how she used to drop other men’s names into conversations. “Oh, Porter,” she’d say. “Ran into Dick Humphries this morning. He told me to tell you he hopes you’re feeling better soon.” This was when Dad had the bad back. It made him meaner, but there was less he could do about it. The last time he threatened Mom, grabbing her by the throat while she was doing dishes, Matthew shoved him so hard he went down on the kitchen floor and just stayed there for an hour, his back seizing up. Mom asked him if he wanted his dinner down on the floor.
The reason I know that Matthew was the one who shoved Dad down the cellar stairs was that Dad never went down there, at least not that I know of. Our cellar was just half the size of the first floor, a glorified fruit cellar, really, nothing down there but some moldy boxes containing the few keepsakes that Mom had taken from her parents’ house after they’d both finally died. There was one of those giant freezers down there, where Mom used to keep frozen meat and Swanson dinners, but it had stopped working one summer, and after Mom threw out all the spoiled meat, she’d never gotten it fixed or bought a new one. No one in the family went down to the cellar, so it made no sense when Dad was found at the bottom of the steps, dead from a head wound. It happened when both Matthew and I were at school, and Dad was home with the bad back. I know how easy it would have been for Matthew to sneak away from the school, cut through the woods to our house. Matthew was strong enough then, and Dad was weak enough, that Matthew could have carried him to the cellar stairs and thrown him down himself.
I was the one who found him, of course. My father, reduced to a rag doll with a head that turned the wrong way. There was no blood anywhere. All the death that happened to my father happened inside of his skin.
Michelle thought I was Matthew, of course, just like Sally Respel had. By the time she realized I wasn’t, it was too late. I was in her house, the door shut behind me. In the light of her sad apartment she could see my face.
I dream again about the dark house with its many rooms. I have the dream so often now that I know I’m dreaming when I have it. And I know that the person I’m looking for can’t be found. There are too many hallways and too many rooms, too many places for him to hide.