The House in the Pines(31)

“Oh. So, can I . . .”

“You need a ticket.”

She thought of her job as she handed over her credit card and reminded herself to call out sick again. She couldn’t afford to mess things up with work. She took her ticket and walked down a wide flight of stairs to the aquarium. This had been her favorite part of the museum when she was little. A cavernous room with dozens of glass tanks built into deep blue walls. Maya walked from one end to the other. Orange clown fish peered out through the purple fingers of anemones. Baroque-looking seahorses bobbed alongside her as she passed. If Steven had been here, he must have moved on. He was probably the only guard at the museum.

Upstairs she found the annual exhibit of Christmas trees decorated by local schools and businesses. Maya walked through all three rooms of the exhibit, an indoor forest of bauble-laden pines. Hand-sewn garlands and painted ornaments, mostly the work of children.

She found Steven resting against the wall in the room of taxidermied birds, but when he saw her, he quickly stood up straight. He was heavier than in his profile picture, but she recognized the round, cherubic face and bald head. His eyes were sad, puffy from recent crying or too little sleep, but his uniform was crisply ironed.

“Hi,” she said, walking toward him.

“Hi?” He seemed shy, not thrilled about being approached. “Are you looking for the restroom?”

“No.” She gave him her friendliest smile. “I was looking for you. My name’s Maya. I messaged you yesterday, not sure if you saw it . . .”

Steven’s face flushed.

“I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”

“Do you realize you’re the fifth person who’s contacted me about that video? Apparently, I’m the only one of Cristina’s friends anyone can find online.”

Maya sagged. Of course random people had theories about Cristina’s death. She thought of the waitress.

“You’re the only one who’s tracked me down in person, though.”

“I’m so sorry.” Maya looked down at her feet. “I can see why that would be upsetting.”

He waited for her to leave.

She didn’t. “I lost a friend once too,” she said. “What happened to her was a lot like what happened to Cristina. That’s why I’m here. I just want to understand.”

Steven sighed. “Look,” he said, “I get that everyone deals with grief in their own way. Maybe you need to find someone to blame. But I want to remember Cristina as she was while she was alive. I’ll leave her death up to the police and the coroner, not to amateur sleuths who happened to see the video online.”

Maya opened her mouth, then closed it again. It was no small thing to accuse a man of murder. “I think,” she said, “that Frank had something to do with what happened to her. To both of them.”

“Such as?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure.”

He nodded slowly. “Right. I didn’t like Frank either. But Cristina was an adult. So was I. I saw the path she was following him down and didn’t do anything about it.” His eyes flashed with emotion. “Am I guilty too?”

Just then, a woman walked in with two young children. Steven adopted a professional pose while Maya studied a barn owl. Its ghostly white face stared back at her. She waited as the woman and her children perused the exhibit.

Maya caught Steven looking at her by his refection in a glass case and wondered what he saw. She had taken a shower, washed her hair, and assembled herself a mask of her mother’s concealer, but that wouldn’t have covered up the spun-out look in her eyes. The desperation and possible paranoia. “American tree sparrow,” said the smaller child. She pronounced the words slowly, as if learning how to read. “Raven.” When the woman and her kids drifted into the next room, Steven drifted after them. Away from Maya.

She followed. She walked alongside him past a wall of sparkling quartz specimens in the Rocks and Minerals Gallery.

“You look like her,” he said.

“Frank has a type.”

Steven nodded, piecing it together.

“We dated when I was seventeen.”

He stopped walking. Maya had him cornered beside a meteorite. He crossed his wide arms over his chest and peered down at her. He was twice her size but seemed fragile, unable to maintain eye contact.

“You didn’t like him either,” Maya said. “Why?”

“Because he was bad for her. I think part of what drew him to Cristina was that she was unattached. Her parents hadn’t talked to her since she left the church, and her only friends were a bunch of meth-heads back in Utah. And me.”

“You were close.”

His lips trembled. He let his arms fall to his sides. “Things were great before Frank came along. When Cristina started working here, she had just finished her residency at MASS MoCA. That was a huge deal for her. She was completely self-taught. She’d been clean for two years.”

“I’ve seen her work online,” Maya said. “She was talented.”

“She could’ve been famous. When I met her, she was living out of this little studio she rented. Painting every day. Then she met Frank and he was her new drug. She was obsessed. Started canceling on me all the time.”

Maya’s stomach tightened. He could have been talking about her seven years ago. “Did you ever see them together?”