Miracle Creek(48)

Matt stumbled. It was as if Mary’s shove had set off a hundred pinballs in his chest, colliding into one another, his ribs, his spine, making it hard to stand straight. “She … she what?”

Mary stepped back, her face still overflowing with distrust but softening at Matt’s obvious confusion. “You didn’t know? But…” She clenched her eyes shut and rubbed her face. Her scar turned bright red against her paled skin, like lava oozing crookedly down a mountain. “She said she knew. She said you told her everything the day before the explosion.”

Blink, and he could see it: in their bedroom the night before the explosion, Janine’s arm reaching from behind, holding Mary’s latest note. I don’t know why we need to discuss it. Can’t we just forget it ever happened? Janine’s disembodied voice from behind him—“This was in the closet. What’s this about? Who’s it from?” The lie he’d told, how he’d been sure she’d bought it. Had he been wrong?

“Well? Did you tell her or not?” Mary said.

Matt focused on Mary’s face. “She found one of your notes, but I told her it was from an intern who made a pass at me and got embarrassed. Janine believed me, I know she did. She never mentioned it again. When did she talk to you? Where?”

Mary took her ponytail to her lips then let go, letting it fall away. “The night of the explosion, around eight. Right around here.”

“Eight? Here? But I talked to her. I called to tell her the dive was delayed and I’d be late. She didn’t say anything about driving here or you or—”

“She knew about the delay? But she said…” Mary’s voice trailed off, her mouth still open but no words coming out.

“What? What did she say?”

Mary shook her head as if to refocus her thoughts. “I was waiting for you, here. She came up, said you told her everything. I said I didn’t know what she was talking about, and she said you were too nice to say, but I was stalking you and I’d better stop. She said you weren’t coming to meet me, that you couldn’t be bothered, and you’d already left and asked her to take care of getting me to leave you alone.”

Matt closed his eyes. “Oh my God,” he said. Or maybe he just thought it. It was hard to tell. His head was spinning.

“I kept saying I had no idea what she was talking about, but she had this bag, and she…” Mary’s voice faltered. “She took out a cigarette pack and threw it at me. And matches and a note, too, yelling that it was all mine.”

Matt wondered if this was a dream, and he’d wake up and everything would make sense again. But no, dreams felt logical when you were in them. The surreal feeling that was drowning him now came after, not during. “And then?”

“I just said they weren’t mine and walked away.”

Matt pictured his wife standing here, enraged, cigarettes and matches by her feet and him inside an oxygen chamber mere minutes away. Blood swooshed in his ears.

“Do you think the cigarettes she threw are the ones Elizabeth found?”

Matt nodded. Of course they were. The only unknown was what, if anything, Janine did with them before Elizabeth found them.

After a minute, Mary said, “Were you planning to meet me that night?”

Matt opened his eyes and nodded again. His head felt hollow, and the motion seemed to knock his brain against his skull. “Yeah,” he forced himself to say out loud, his voice hoarse as if he hadn’t used it in days. “I figured we’d meet later, after the dive.”

Mary looked at him, didn’t say anything, and he tried to figure out what he saw on her face. Was it longing? Regret?

Mary shook her head. “I have to go. It’s getting late.” She walked away. After a few steps, she stopped and turned to him. “Do you ever feel guilty? Like maybe we should tell everything we know, and let whatever might happen just happen?”

Matt felt his arteries constrict, sending his organs into panic mode, his heart forced to pump harder, blood to rush faster, lungs to inflate bigger. Yes, he’d worried about his shenanigans with a teenager coming out. But that was laughable, child’s play, compared with what the jury would think—and let’s be honest, what he himself was thinking—if they found out that Janine was here before the explosion and lied about it.

“I’ve thought about it.” Matt forced his words to sound slow and calm, as if he were considering an interesting side point in a lecture. “But I don’t think we have anything relevant to offer. What you, Janine, and I were doing has nothing to do with the fire. The note, the cigarettes—sure, it’s interesting to speculate where they came from, but at the end of the day, that has nothing to do with who actually set the fire. I’m worried we’ll just confuse the issue. You’ve seen how these lawyers twist everyone’s words.”

“Yeah,” she said. “You’re right. Good night.”

“Mary.” He stepped toward her. “If you say anything, I mean anything, our families, all our futures—”

Mary put up her palm like a stop sign and looked into his eyes for a long moment. Slowly, she put her hand back down, turned, and walked away.

When she went around a bend and he could no longer see her, Matt breathed slowly. His arteries seemed to dilate, sending blood rushing to his organs, which were tingling as they unclenched one by one. Matt felt something itch. He looked down. A mosquito sat on the crook of his arm, leisurely sucking on his blood. He slapped at it, fast and hard, and removed his hand. The mosquito lay crushed in his palm, a black smudge stuck in the splatter of the crimson blood it had sucked up in the moments before its death.