Before She Knew Him(84)

“I know that he’s there, somewhere,” Hen said. “If you let me talk with him, just for a minute, that’s all I’m asking.”

“I know what you’re up to,” Matthew said.

“What am I up to?”

“You think that if you talk with Matthew that you can talk your way out of here. You’re probably thinking that he’ll let you walk out that door, and then you’ll go and tell the police everything.”

Hen paused, trying to figure out the best thing to say. Keep being honest, she told herself. It’s working. Keep being honest.

“I am going to tell them everything, you’re right,” she said. “And I do want to walk out of here. I don’t want to die. Not yet. But I’m not going to hurt you or Matthew. I just think that down deep you both want to stop what you’re doing, that you know it’s wrong, and that you know that it’s over.”

“Matthew’s a pussy. He probably would let you go.”

“That makes him strong,” Hen said. “You were strong, too. All those years you wanted to do bad things just like your dad, but you didn’t do them.”

“That’s all changed. I’ve changed now.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t change back, you know. It’s not too late.”

“I’ll go to prison.”

“You’ll go to prison, or you’ll go to a hospital. Either way someone will help you.”

“It’s Matthew who needs help. Not me.”

Hen, without thinking, yelled as loud as she could: “Let me talk to Matthew. Right the fuck now!”

Matthew blinked rapidly, pushed his chin down against his chest again. His eyes welled up with tears. “Hi, Hen,” he said after a while, his voice quiet.

“Matthew?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I just met your brother. He’s different from you.”

“It’s not all his fault. It was our upbringing. He idolized our father, and I think it twisted him.”

“Did you hear everything we talked about?” Hen asked.

“No,” Matthew said. “Was he going to hurt you?”

“I think so, yes. He scared me.”

“He scares me, too. He’s gone now.”

Hen relaxed a little, and as soon as she did, she could feel her body physically reacting to the fear, her breath shortening, her limbs flooding with a terrible heaviness. “Let’s get out of here, then. We’ll go to the police, if that’s what you want.” Her voice trembled now.

“What were you going to do?” Matthew asked. “To get away from Richard?”

“I was going to try and run through the door, bolt it behind me.”

“Could you have locked him in?”

“Uh-huh. You need a key for both sides of the door.”

“Lock me in,” Matthew said.

“What?”

“I want you to lock me in here. I want to give myself up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Please, just do it. Before I change my mind.”

Hen stood up from her chair, her legs trembling now as well. “Okay,” she said.

“Don’t leave me down here for a long time,” he said. “You’ll send someone soon for me, won’t you?”

“Yes, right away.”

Hen walked to the door, swung it open. She turned and Matthew was now sitting on the floor, holding on to one of the legs of the press.

“I’m sorry about Lloyd,” he said. “He was in my house.”

“What?”

“This afternoon, when I came home, he was hiding in my house, upstairs. I guess he was looking for something to incriminate me. Maybe he was looking for that fencing trophy.”

“Is he dead, Matthew?”

He breathed in wetly through his nostrils. “I’m sorry, but he was in my house.”

Hen stepped through the door and locked it behind her. She ran down the basement hallway toward the exit.





Chapter 39




Matthew spent most of the next forty-five minutes looking through Hen’s prints. He felt bad, violating her space that way, but he really did love her art.

In one corner of the studio was an old metal file cabinet with three drawers. On top of the cabinet was a desk lamp with a long, bendable neck, and in each of the drawers was a hefty stack of prints done by Hen. He turned the lamp on and went through the prints one by one. They didn’t seem to be organized in any specific way, although the prints in the bottom drawer seemed to be older. The images were more disturbing, clearly not intended for children’s books, but they all had captions on them, some inexplicable, some funny. The print that Matthew looked at the longest was of a fox caught in one of those leg traps.

The fox, grimacing in pain, wore a shabby suit, his tie askew. Around him, in a circle, stood more anthropomorphized foxes wearing a variety of clothes—dresses, suits, children’s outfits, a butcher’s smock. They were just observing, eyes wide and scared. The caption read: “The other foxes of the village watched, as it had been decreed.”

Matthew touched each of the foxes on the print with his index finger and said, “Fox face, fox face, fox face, fox face, fox face, fox face.” Then he laughed. He wondered if these few minutes he was spending right now in Hen’s studio, alone, were the last unobserved moments of his life. A feeling of sadness swept through him, now that it was all over. But there was also relief. He knew he would never stop thinking about what Richard had done to Michelle, what Richard had almost done to Hen.