Just the Nicest Couple(56)

I leave the lights mostly off in the house. I’ve gotten in the habit of doing that and, just like closing and locking our bedroom door, it’s one of those things Lily and I do without talking about it, without saying why. But with almost no window coverings on the back of the house, a public trail just outside our back door, and what’s happened with Jake, we feel more on display than ever. Fortunately, only the first few leaves of the season have begun to fall so that the trees still hang on to most of them. They give us some coverage, but there is no fence, no physical boundary, which means there is nothing to say that people can’t just walk off the trail, past the trees and into our backyard.

In the kitchen, only the stove light is on but the TV and Lily’s computer give off light. We also lit a few candles and started a fire in the fireplace. It would be atmospheric and romantic, under different circumstances.

Over the sound of the sink water and the TV, comes a sudden, curt knock on the front door that forces me upright.

I drop the handle on the faucet when I hear it. The water slows but I don’t manage to turn it all the way off so that steady drops come from the tap, plunging into the sink.

Plop, plop, plop.

I turn around, drying my hands on a towel. My eyes go to Lily’s first. Lily heard a noise at the same time, though it was dulled because of her headphones, and I can see from the expression on her face that she’s trying to process the noise, to figure out what it is. She slips the headphones off, looking at me through the semidarkness.

“Shhh,” I say, putting a finger to my lips, wrapping my lips around the sound. I hold still, like if I don’t move, no one will see me. We’re in the back of the house, where the front windows don’t reach, but that doesn’t mean we’re completely unexposed.

My first thought is that if we wait it out long enough, whoever is at the door will go away. But then the knock comes again. “Someone’s here,” Lily whispers, really hearing for the first time and registering what the sound is. Her eyes widen. Lily is visibly shaken by the knock at the door. Innocent people don’t usually worry about things like this, but Lily and I aren’t exactly innocent. “Who do you think it is?” she whispers.

“I don’t know.”

“What should we do?”

I reach for the TV remote and drop the volume. “Just give it a minute. They’ll leave,” I say, but as I do, the pounding knock comes again for a third time, followed by the chime of the doorbell. Whoever is at the door isn’t going to leave by choice.

“What if they don’t?”

I say to Lily, “Stay here. I’ll go see who it is. It’s probably nothing.”

I leave the kitchen. I walk through the foyer to the front door, thinking of all the possibilities: a neighbor; some kid selling candy to raise money for his baseball team; a package that needs to be signed for. I turn on the foyer light so that it’s not so dark when I open the door.

I pull the door open to find a police officer standing on the stoop. I draw in a deep breath, trying to be nonreactive but, at the same time, telling myself that even innocent people feel nervous from a police officer coming to their door. A police officer at the front door is rarely good news. It either means you’re in trouble or that someone has died.

The officer is tall. He’s formidable. I’m tall, too, but this man is wide, which I’m not. His chest is broad, filling out his uniform and my front doorframe. His face is long.

“Are you Christian Scott?” he asks, my eyes still taking time to adjust to the foyer light.

“Yeah,” I say, raking a hand through my hair, “Yeah, I am. I’m Christian Scott. Is everything okay? Has something happened?”

My mind is all over the place. Someone saw Lily and me move Jake’s car. Someone knows that I’m the one who broke into Jake and Nina’s house, or that I was back there again Monday night to return the key. I was in and out quickly that time. As far as I know, it was without incident. But I could be wrong. Someone could have seen me. Someone could have known that I was there.

“Is your wife home, Mr. Scott?” he asks, now angling his head to see past me and into our house. I turn around. Lily isn’t there, standing behind me. She’s in the kitchen, where it’s still dark. I can just barely make out the sound of the basketball game on the TV from here. “I was hoping to talk to both of you at the same time.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Sure. Let me just go get her.”

I invite the officer into the house. I don’t know that I want him coming in, standing in the foyer alone, trawling the house while I go to get Lily, but it would look suspicious not to, as if I have something to hide.

“Sure,” he says, coming into the house and closing the door behind himself. “Take your time.”

Lily is at the table when I come back in for her. Her face has gone pale, her limp hair hanging into her eyes. She’s been sitting there, listening the whole time. I go to her and she reaches out for my hand. “What does he want?” she whispers. The tension in her voice, her eyes, is palpable.

I whisper back, “I don’t know.”

Lily and I stare at each other for a second, the fear in my eyes matching the fear in hers.

“What are we going to do, Christian?” she asks.

“Take a deep breath,” I say, pulling her into me, feeling her heart beat against me. “Come out when you’re ready. It will be fine. I’ll take care of this.”