Before She Knew Him(75)
Matthew left the guest room and walked to the room at the front of the house, a small room with a sloped ceiling that once upon a time was going to be a nursery. It was now Mira’s sewing room, the walls painted a cheerful yellow, made more cheerful by the late-afternoon sun streaming in through the room’s single window. There was a closet in this room as well, a half-closet really, more of a crawl space. The door was shut, and Matthew stood for a moment, eyeing it. If there really was someone hiding up here, then this was where they were.
He put his hand on the doorknob just as the door flung open and a man bolted out, his head going directly into Matthew’s solar plexus, knocking him backward, both men sliding along the floor.
With the billy club that he still held, Matthew took a swing at the intruder, catching him in the shoulder. The man roared, more from fear than pain, probably, and raised his head. It was Lloyd, his teeth gritted, his eyes wide. He pushed himself up off the floor with his arms so that he was on all fours like a dog. Matthew, sitting up now, swung the club again, catching Lloyd on the bridge of his nose. There was a splintery crack. Lloyd’s roar turned into a howl, and blood spilled from his broken nose onto the hardwood floor.
Matthew, still sitting, scuttled backward, kicking out with his legs. Lloyd shook his head rapidly and blood sprayed from side to side, then he crouched, wiping at his face, smearing the blood. Both men stood, Matthew still holding the billy club, Lloyd clenching his fists, swaying slightly.
“I heard you,” Lloyd said.
Matthew took a step toward him. “You’re trespassing,” he said.
“I heard everything, you freak,” Lloyd said, as Matthew swung the billy club.
Chapter 35
Just being in the studio, with its low lights and clanking pipes, surrounded by everything she needed in order to create art, Hen was finally able to slow down her thoughts, to begin to rationally think about the events that had happened to her in the past few weeks.
She made herself chamomile tea, put on Iron and Wine on the CD player, and set about cleaning up and organizing her space, a ritual she often did before settling down to more serious work. As she became calmer, she internally listed out her current problems in order of importance, something she’d taught herself to do years earlier when small problems would sometimes make her feel as though her life was unlivable. The idea was then to focus on one problem at a time. The other purpose of the exercise, of course, was to show yourself that your problems—no matter how crippling—were often not so bad when you listed them out. But that was clearly not her current situation. Her number one problem right now wasn’t even the cheating husband and whether her marriage could be saved; it was the psychotic murderer who lived next door. After those two issues, nothing else seemed to matter much. Still, she forced herself to list her additional problems. She needed to visit her parents more, especially now that they were getting older. Also, she was a little past her deadline for the next two illustrations for the Lore Warriors book, although she hadn’t heard anything threatening yet from her agent so she wasn’t too worried. Besides, it was only work. It could wait for a little while.
That left her two main problems, and they were big ones: what to do about Lloyd and what to do about Matthew. It made sense, what Lloyd had said, that they should go away. It would get the two of them out of harm’s way for a little while and allow them to work on their marriage. The problem was that she didn’t want to work on the marriage. Ever since she’d discovered what he’d done, a part of her knew, down deep, that they were over. She wasn’t an overly jealous woman—she was pretty sure she could have forgiven a one-night fling—but there was something about the year of sneaking around behind her back, about the constant lies. And there was also something else: she felt wronged, definitely, and pissed off, but she didn’t feel overly hurt. Her heart wasn’t breaking. She loved Lloyd—she’d always love Lloyd—but she could imagine her life without him. And wasn’t that an indication . . . that maybe it wasn’t a marriage worth saving?
If it wasn’t for the situation with Matthew next door—the potentially dangerous situation—then she’d tell Lloyd to go live somewhere else for a while, that they needed a break so she could figure things out. Maybe she should just make him do it anyway. He was the guilty party, after all, and she should be able to make him leave. Where would he go? she wondered. He’d probably wind up moving into Joanna Grimlund’s place in—where was it?—Northampton. She tried to think about how that made her feel, and she wasn’t sure. She just didn’t care very much, although she did wonder if it really was over between Lloyd and Joanna, the way he’d claimed. She also wondered what their affair had been like. Was it intense, the two of them talking about their future lives together? Or was it one of those relationships that always felt stamped with an expiration date from the moment it started? What did Joanna think about what had happened?
Maybe I’ll call her, Hen thought, and as soon as she had the thought she decided to actually do it. She wanted to hear Joanna’s voice. She wanted to hear what she had to say for herself. Joanna had always been someone whom Hen had liked. As mutual partners of two best friends, they’d been forced into a lot of time spent together, but happily, not reluctantly. Joanna had an irreverent and dirty sense of humor. While Rob and Lloyd got drunk and high and reminisced about shit they’d gotten up to in college, Joanna and Hen would drink wine and have intense conversations. Hen had told her almost everything about her psychotic episode in college, and Joanna told her about her alcoholic father who was now in prison for securities fraud. When Rob and Joanna split up, Hen had thought about getting in touch with Joanna directly, maybe even meeting up, but she’d never done it. Lloyd, clearly, had had the same thought.