Before She Knew Him(89)

“So you’re going to stay?”

“I am,” Hen said. “I’m going back to the studio today to see how that feels, but, yes, I want to stay, Iggy.”

“Good for you,” he said.

Hen ate an apple for breakfast, then stepped onto the porch to see what the day felt like. It was in the midforties, the sky a patchwork of thin clouds. Back in the house, she pulled on a thick wool turtleneck, then her old jean jacket, the one with the frayed collar that she’d been wearing the last time she went to her studio. She was grabbing her sketchbook when Vinegar emerged from the basement. She scooped him up and held him for a moment. He meowed at her—his protest meow—and she replied that it was just the two of them now, but they were home.

It was a school day and Sycamore Street was quiet, most of the driveways empty of cars. Walking toward the studio, however, she felt eyes on her, neighbors peering through curtains, wondering if that really could be that poor woman whose husband had been killed by the now infamous psychopath. Whether she was being watched, she still felt the eyes on her. It was going to be the hardest part of coming back to this town, but it wouldn’t last forever. Nothing lasted forever.

After buying coffee at the Starbucks two blocks past Black Brick, Hen doubled back and let herself into the basement level of the studios. The lights were on, which meant that someone else was down here, a comforting thought even though she didn’t necessarily want any social interaction. When she got to the door of her studio, she tried it first but it was locked, and she used the key the police had returned to her and entered, turning on the lights. She quickly scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary, but it looked exactly the same as when she’d left it last. She went toward the chair she’d been sitting on when Matthew/Richard had her trapped, when she thought she was going to die in this room, and touched it, dropping her sketchbook onto its fraying seat. She had already decided that the first half of her day was going to be spent clearing out some of the junk from the studio. It would be symbolic, in a way, but she also wanted to do some physical work, to move a little bit, before settling back into artwork. She flicked through the pile of CDs by her player and finally decided to listen to Exile in Guyville. She set the volume low, then went to the back of the studio, where there was a stack of boxes that had been sitting there since she’d moved into Black Brick over the summer. Some of the boxes went all the way back to college, and she’d been meaning to go through them, to throw away what she could, and to put what she wanted to save into one of the new Tupperware boxes she’d bought for her old artwork.

She pulled the top box off the stack and onto the floor, then sat down next to it and started to sort. Most of what was in the box were failed prints, either too dark or too light, or simply images that didn’t work. She recognized the pieces as being from a few years ago, back when she lived in Cambridge. Some were worth keeping, but most she put into a pile that would go into the large recycling bin on the ground-level floor of the studio.

At the bottom of the box there was a sheet that had clearly been pulled from one of her sketchbooks. She turned it over and there was the sketch she’d made of Dustin Miller, a few months before he’d been killed by Matthew Dolamore. In the sketch he sat on the edge of his bed in his apartment, his chin raised, his eyes humorless and arrogant. She’d done it the only time she’d been to his apartment. It was during a week in which Lloyd had traveled down to Fort Myers with two high school friends to attend some Red Sox spring training games. Two nights that week she’d walked to the Village Inn, sitting at one of the booths with her sketchbook, sipping at a bourbon sour, and drawing people at the bar.

Dustin had approached her during her first night there and asked to look at her drawings. He was younger than her, and so ridiculously handsome that she didn’t particularly find him attractive. But she let him look at some of her sketches and buy her drinks. In retrospect, she was already manic at that point and immensely flattered that he had approached her. He radiated a kind of green aura of energy, and when he sat across from her at the booth she could feel that energy pricking at her skin.

“Can you do a drawing of me for me to keep?” he asked, on the second night they were hanging out.

“Sure,” she said, and flipped to a blank page.

“No, not here. At my place.”

“Why?” she asked, instead of simply laughing at him or telling him no.

“It’ll be more special. For me. Come on. I want you to see where I live. I promise I won’t be creepy.”

“You’re already being creepy,” she said. But she went with him anyway, pulled by something she didn’t totally understand. Maybe it was the thrill of embarking on something in which the outcome was not known. Maybe she was challenging the strength of her love for Lloyd. Or maybe it was something far less complicated.

He didn’t live far from the Village Inn, and when they got to his second-floor apartment in a Victorian very close to Hen’s own house, Dustin rushed in first, quickly tidying things, then getting them each a beer.

“Where do you want me?” he asked.

“Wherever,” she said.

“What if I sit on the edge of my bed and you can sit here,” he said, leading her toward his bedroom, then clearing clothes off a T-back wooden chair. Hen sat down, sketched for about twenty minutes, then tore it out of her book and gave it to Dustin. She thought she’d caught him: his confident youth, the lines of his face, his posture, the intimacies of the setting.