The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)(83)

I walked to my car, wondering what I was going to do with my day. There were a few errands, of course, but not enough to fill the long stretch of hours ahead. I drove into Boston, filling up already with commuter traffic, and parked near Copley Square. I spent most of that day in the Boston Public Library, finding and finishing The Green Marriage, then finding a biography of Margaret Cogswell, and reading the sections that talked about my father and their affair. I knew the story, of course. My father was a young, up-and-coming writer, married to Clarissa Pavlow, his first wife, and Margaret was engaged to Robert Rutherford, the painter. The two couples had met on the island of Crete, where my father and Margaret had been invited to a Marxist literary conference. The affair did not begin in Greece but back in London over the winter months, my father and Margaret meeting in secret at a friend’s flat in Maida Vale. Reading the account, it occurred to me that all the players in that particular farce were now dead. Margaret, of course, and Clarissa, my father’s first wife. The painter Robert Rutherford had been dead now for thirty years, and so was the owner of the love nest in north London. It was only my father who was left to remember the true specifics of what had happened that winter.

I left the library in the early afternoon, then bought some supplies and drove one last time out west. It was another pretty fall day but there were puddles on the road and it was clear it had rained at some point during the night. I spotted the muddy parking lot for a state-run conservation area and pulled in. I was the only car there and spun through a deep puddle a couple of times to splash mud onto my car. Then I got out and plastered mud onto my license plate, obscuring enough of it so that it would be impossible to read. I didn’t know if it was necessary, but I knew it wouldn’t hurt.

I left my car at a glorified convenience store in Dartford center, the type of place that sold local trail mix and organic wine along with lottery cards and potato chips. There was a gas station next to the convenience store and in the restroom I changed into the hiking pants and the fleece hoodie I’d bought in Boston. I also took out my nose ring, depositing it down the drain, and scrubbed my face of makeup. At the convenience store I bought bottled water and ham-and-cheese croissants, plus a map that showed the trails that crossed through Dartford. I didn’t think I’d need the map—I’d spent part of the day memorizing the multiple ways to get to Joan’s house—but, again, I figured it wouldn’t hurt.

Most of the public trails in Dartford were essentially dirt sidewalks along the roads, separated from the sparse traffic by a single line of trees. But every once in a while, a trail would divert from the road and cut across old farm fields or through pine forests. Joan’s house was only two miles from the center of town as the crow flew, but it took me over an hour to reach it through the adjacent woods, settling in the shadow of a large boulder where I had a view of the narrow backyard, and the screened-in deck. I watched the house for twenty minutes or so, and when I had detected no movement inside, I snuck around to the front driveway. The silver BMW was gone. Maybe it was possible someone else had the BMW and Joan was in the house, but I doubted it. I checked the front door, which was locked, then worked my way back around to the deck. The screen door was open but the sliding glass doors that led to the interior of the house were locked. I’d brought tools to deal with a locked door but decided to check the windows first, and I found one that slid open. I dropped into the dark room and shut the window behind me.

After waiting for a minute in order to listen to the house, I made my way to the kitchen. Inside the refrigerator there were two bottles of chardonnay, one opened, with about a half bottle left, and one still sealed. There was also a large plastic bottle of vitaminwater.

Before Joan returned, I was able to look at the rest of the house. It was a strange mix of dated furniture and high-end new pieces. The walls were all painted the same beige, and the kitchen had been remodeled at some recent point, the floor a dark slate, the backsplashes subway tiles. Both Joan Grieve and her departed husband, Richard Whalen, had grown up in the area and this was clearly one of their parents’ houses. There were four bedrooms upstairs, the master plus three small rooms, one of which had been converted into a storage area, filled with boxes and old furniture. That was the room I waited in, creating a comfortable nook between the far wall and an unused bookshelf.

I didn’t hear the car in the driveway, but I did hear the front door slam. It was midafternoon, and I settled in to wait.

She came upstairs once in the afternoon, probably to change, and then went back downstairs. I wasn’t nervous. There was absolutely no reason to think she’d decide to pop into this particular room. Even if she did, I was ready.

Sometime around seven I could hear the distant sounds of the television. After three hours I decided she had most likely passed out in the television room but told myself to wait another twenty minutes just to be sure. With five minutes to spare, I heard the television turn off then listened to Joan’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. She went down the hallway, away from the room I was hiding in, toward the master bedroom. The light in the hallway went out. I waited another hour.

It was midnight when I stood above her in her bedroom. She’d left the light on in the adjoining bathroom and the door cracked so I could easily see her. She was on her back, one hand pressed against a cheek. It looked as though she’d spun around at one point, the sheets twisted diagonally across her chest like a toga, her left breast exposed.