The German Wife(86)

No. I shook my head, frowning. My brother wouldn’t throw something at a perfect stranger, even under these conditions. “We don’t know these people, Cal. We certainly can’t take their word over Henry’s.”

“Sweetheart. I really need to get to the bottom of what happened,” Cal said quietly, but firmly.

“So we’ll talk to him,” I said impatiently. “He’ll tell you she’s making the whole thing up.”

“I’ll have a chat with him tonight and straighten this out.”

“We can do it together,” I suggested. Calvin shook his head, and as the last of the water poured onto my vegetables, he reached down to take the empty watering can from my hands.

“This is one of those conversations that will be better man-to-man.”

“But—”

“Sweetheart,” Cal said, and he dropped his voice. “I don’t want Henry to feel like we’re ganging up on him. Please, let me do this alone.”

“How did it go?” I asked, as Calvin came into my bedroom later that night. He quietly closed the door and sat on the end of my bed.

I was sitting up in my nightgown, an untouched magazine on my lap. Calvin had invited Henry out onto the porch for a beer after dinner and I’d been waiting anxiously ever since.

“He said Sofie Rhodes is lying. There was no cake.”

“See?” I said, triumphant. “I told you.”

“And he does walk past the German homes, but you were right. It’s just on his way to and from work. Sofie Rhodes has only been here for a few weeks and I’m sure it’s easy to misread situations when she’s navigating a strange country in her second language. I’m still confused about the cake story, but Henry was adamant, and we have to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“So are you comforted?” I asked.

“I’m still concerned about that dream he had,” Calvin said hesitantly. He flicked a glance at me. “I’m horrified that the police went to the Rhodes house. I did try to ask Henry how he feels about that dream now, but he seemed so uncomfortable, I dropped it. I suppose he’s embarrassed.”

“That was weeks ago, anyway,” I said. “He’s been so much calmer ever since.”

“It’s just...he does seem different, doesn’t he? He’s distracted. For all of Henry’s challenges over the years, he’s never seemed that way to me before.”

Distracted. That was the perfect word. Even when Henry was looking right at me, it seemed like his mind was somewhere else.

I had plans to see Becca the next morning. She and Kevin had purchased a new house a few blocks away—a great big two-story place on a huge, empty lot—and they were keen to put in a garden.

“I’ll do it for you,” I offered when she called. I was excited about a new project—already thinking about how it might come together.

Becca laughed and said, “Don’t be silly, Lizzie—I couldn’t ask you to do that. Kevin has already found a gardener to do it. I just wanted some advice about what to ask him for.”

I’d grown numb to my own boredom for the most part. I had a good life—and it was plenty busy when I wanted it to be, between chores and salon visits and dinners and lunch dates. But every now and again, something triggered a memory of a time when I thought my life would look different.

Even as I prepared to go to Becca’s house, I was reliving the disappointment of the moment when she told me someone else would do the gardening. Oh, how I would have loved to pull my boots on that day, to pack my gardening gloves and a notepad to sketch out plans. I’d have thrown myself into a project like that with wild abandon. The yard was a blank canvas, but I’d have turned it into green art.

As I locked the front door, I glanced down at the pavers, thinking about the splash of water I’d seen a few days earlier. Why would Sofie Rhodes make up such an absurd lie? It made no damned sense. I started to walk down the path toward the drive, but at the last second I spun around to stare at the porch, trying to remember exactly which pavers had been wet.

I didn’t believe the story about the cake. Of course I didn’t.

I set down my handbag and bent to inspect the pavers, feeling disloyal and foolish as I did. I was gratified to find no trace of smeared cake. But as I reached out to use the pillar to steady myself on my heels, I noticed a little chip of white ceramic embedded in the brick, just above my hand. As I brushed it with my fingertip, the ceramic chip fell to the pavers.

I looked around again, seeing my front porch with fresh eyes. If she had been standing at the door and she extended the cake toward him, and Henry took it from her and then lost his temper—

No.

That white chip in the brick was tiny. It could have been anything—even a tiny stone baked into the brick when it was crafted. There were other explanations here and my brother deserved my trust.

I scooped my bag up again and started toward my car, but I skimmed my gaze across the young red buckeye plants in the garden bed along the front of the porch. I felt a pit form in my stomach. He’d missed one jagged shard of ceramic about halfway along the bushes, sitting among leaves. When I bent to retrieve it, I found it sticky with light-colored frosting and a smudge of dark cake, rich with tiny black seeds.

And when I checked through the trash can, I found one unholy mess of cake and plate and dirt, wrapped in newspaper and buried in the bottom.