Before She Knew Him(77)
“It’s still my fault. I was the one—”
“Let’s just say it’s all Lloyd’s fault and leave it at that, okay? I’m kicking him out of my house, by the way. I just decided. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that he might be looking for a place to stay.”
“He’s not staying here.”
“I don’t really care where he stays, Joanna, so you don’t have to say that for my sake.”
“Okay,” she said.
There was another pause, and Hen realized that there was nothing left to say. She said, “I’ve got to go now. Thanks for talking with me.”
“Stop being nice. I think I’d feel better if you yelled at me or something.”
“Well, thanks for talking with me, and fuck you for everything else.”
“Thanks, that’s better. Sorry again.”
Hen hung up, put her phone down on the arm of the ragged upholstered chair she was sitting on, and felt a surge of energy, half anger and half . . . something else—maybe excitement, although that wasn’t the exact word. It was more like anticipation. Everything was changing so rapidly. Lloyd was not who she thought he was. Not even close. The cheating was one thing—people were flawed and made mistakes—but the outright deceit, not just toward her but also toward Joanna, who suddenly seemed more like a fellow victim instead of the enemy, was something else altogether. She stood up, shook her hands out, and wondered what to do next. Her body was buzzing, like there were tiny wires sparking just under the surface of her skin. In a way, it reminded her of times when she was manic, but that wasn’t the case now. Any mania she was experiencing was strictly related to what was going on in her life.
She decided that what she really wanted to do was to just go home and send Lloyd packing, but she knew he was going to resist, claiming she was in danger. Maybe she should go somewhere else—a nearby hotel or maybe a friend’s house (Darlene, their old neighbor in Cambridge, would definitely welcome her)—and not tell Lloyd where she was going to be. She was excited by the thought, decided that she should do it, then realized that she would need to go home and pack first. She had to pack clothes, but more important, she needed her meds. The problem with going home, of course, was having to deal with Lloyd. She decided to call him first, tell him she was coming home to get some things but didn’t want to have a conversation. His phone went to voice mail; she didn’t leave a message. They had a landline in the house—it was part of the bundle that got them cable and Wi-Fi—and she tried that number, just on the off chance that Lloyd wasn’t near his cell phone. But there was no answer on the landline, either.
Maybe he’s gone for a walk, she thought, and wondered if she had time to drive home, get her things, and leave before he came back. While she was thinking this, the lights in her studio suddenly went out, and the room was plunged in darkness.
“Hey,” she said aloud.
A hollow, distant “Sorry” came back, and the lights turned back on. Yuma something or other, who was a watercolor painter on the other side of the basement level, came and popped her head into Hen’s studio.
“Sorry ’bout that,” she said. “You didn’t hear me call out? I thought I was the only one down here.”
“No, sorry, I didn’t hear you. No big deal. Am I the last one here?”
“As soon as I leave, you will be.”
Hen almost asked Yuma to wait up, that she was leaving, too, but instead said, “I’ll make sure to turn the lights out when I leave.”
She listened to Yuma’s footsteps as she made her way down the hall. The CD in her player was changing over and a Morphine album began to play. She looked at the copper plate that she’d begun to prepare earlier, briefly considered trying to do just a little bit of work, but knew she should go home and pack. It was going to be another scene with Lloyd, but the quicker it began, the quicker it would end. She could come back tomorrow and get work done.
Hen grabbed her jean jacket from the back of the chair, put her sketchbook in her bag, and was about to turn out the lights in her studio when she heard footsteps coming back down the hall. Was Yuma back? No, the footsteps were louder and heavier. She kept her hand on the switch, listening to where they were going. She almost shouted out “hello,” but something stopped her. The footsteps were coming toward her studio.
Chapter 36
At Logan Airport, Mira stepped out through the automatic doors into the cool air and turned left toward the line for taxis. She wondered briefly how much it was going to cost to take a cab all the way to West Dartford, then pushed the thought away. That was the least of her worries. When everything turned out to be fine, she and Matthew could laugh at the credit card bill, laugh at how Mira panicked during her trip to Wichita and returned early.
That will most likely never happen and you know it. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Mira had woken early that morning in the hotel room. She’d left the curtains open and was greeted by the enormous Midwest sky, its clouds edged in pink. She’d had terrible dreams, the most vivid being one in which her house had burned down. In the dream Matthew and she had toured the remains. Everything was gone except for charred bodies, hidden everywhere in the smoldering house. Most were men—Jay Saravan, a frequent visitor in Mira’s dreams, was there, of course—but some were children, small blackened bodies that Mira knew were her own, the babies Matthew and she had never been able to have.