Yes, he’d told Charlotte he’d continued to hear the chit chit chit as he went down the hallway, but maybe he hadn’t shaken the dream by that point. Maybe he was half sleepwalking.
What pained him was that he and Josh had had such a nice — albeit short — time together, aside from the troubling aspects of the Batman movie. And Paul had sabotaged it at the end.
Damn it.
But Paul was pretty sure he could fix things with Josh. He’d make this right. The next time Josh came out from the city, they’d do something really special. Maybe go for a drive to Mystic, check out the aquarium.
Maybe Charlotte would even want to come.
Things definitely seemed better with her. They’d hit a few bumps in the road, but if there was any upside to his nearly getting killed, it was that it had made Charlotte reassess not just their marriage, but also the expectations she had for herself. As she’d told him more than once since the incident, she’d been questioning where she was in her life. Was she where she’d hoped she’d be ten years ago?
While she was doing respectably as a real estate agent, it had never been her goal. She’d entertained, at one time, the idea of a career in, well, entertainment. Living in New York, she’d done off-off-Broadway, even had three lines one time as a day care operator in a Law & Order episode. (Paul suspected Charlotte had actually gone on a date or two with one of the stars, on the Law side, but she would never confirm nor deny.) Sadly, she never got the big break she’d strived for and reached the point where she had to make an actual living. She’d held sales jobs, worked hotel reception. When Paul met her, she was the early-morning manager of a Days Inn. So, where her career was concerned, she had settled.
If there was little glamour in being a real estate agent, there was even less in being married to a West Haven College professor. Yes, it was a decent place to teach, but it wasn’t Harvard, and it lived in the shadows of nearby Yale and University of New Haven. If Charlotte had ever viewed what he did as a noble calling — molding young minds into leaders of tomorrow, ha! — Paul doubted she did anymore. Before the attempt on his life, she’d rarely asked him about his work, and why would she? It was boring. What was there for him to aspire to now? Where did one go next? The dizzying heights of department head?
So this was what Charlotte’s life had become. Selling houses in a drab Connecticut town, married to a man of limited ambition.
And then there was the baby thing.
Paul had not brought up the subject in a long time, but he’d hoped he and Charlotte would one day have a child. Had he stayed with Hailey, he was sure Josh would have ended up with a baby brother or sister. Hailey had as much as said she and Walter were trying. But Charlotte had not warmed to the idea of becoming a mother herself.
Well, fuck all that.
This was a new day, Paul told himself. This was the day when he took control. This was the day when he stood up to the demons. This was the day when he would start rebuilding himself and his marriage.
He was going to tackle this Hoffman thing. He was going to write something. He was going to write something beyond the notes he’d already made. He was going to write something good. He didn’t yet know what shape it would take. Maybe it would be a memoir. Maybe a novel. Maybe he’d turn his experience into a magazine piece.
It had everything.
Sex. Murder. Mystery.
Coming back from the brink of death.
The fucking thing would write itself, once he decided which direction to take it in. This was the key to putting his life and marriage back together. He wasn’t doing this just for himself. He was doing it for Charlotte. He wanted her to see that he could be strong, that he could get his life back.
Enough of this sad-sack bullshit.
Maybe he could even be the man she’d want to have a child with.
But hey, let’s take things one step at a time.
Paul reflected on how he’d come across these last few months. Christ, even Bill seemed worried he might kill himself. Yes, he’d been depressed. He’d been traumatized not just by the event itself — the nightmares, the anxiety — but also by physical manifestations. Headaches, memory lapses, insomnia. Who wouldn’t be depressed?
But suicidal?
Had he come across as that desperate? Maybe.
“See how you are when you’ve got Kenneth Hoffman visiting your sleep every night,” he said to himself.
Shit.
Of course.
The typing he’d thought he’d heard was clearly part of a Hoffman nightmare. Paul must have been dreaming about those two women typing out their apologies. Charlotte’s gift of that antique Underwood had triggered a Hoffman dream that zeroed in on that aspect of his crime.
That was the chit chit chit he’d heard in the night. Jill Foster and Catherine Lamb tapping away.
Paul got out his phone. Josh was very likely at the game now, so Paul wasn’t going to call him. But Josh might see a text.
Paul quickly wrote one.
Hey pal. Luv you. Sorry about this morning. Ur Dad was a jerk. Hope u r having fun at the game.
He sent it. Paul stared at the phone for a long time, waiting for the dancing dots to indicate his son was writing him a reply.
When none came after three minutes, Paul put his phone back into his pocket.
Thirteen
“So, Gavin, how did you spend your weekend?” Dr. Anna White asked as the two of them settled into their respective chairs in her office.
Gavin appeared thoughtful. “Reflecting.”
Anna’s eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. “Reflecting?”
He nodded. “About the hurt I’ve caused, and if there’s any way I can make amends.”
“Amends.”
“Yes. Do you think it would be possible to arrange a meeting with the people I’ve wronged so that I might apologize?”
Anna eyed him warily. “I don’t know that a face-to-face would be the way to go. I think it could end up badly for all concerned.”
Gavin, innocently, asked, “How so?”
“I think the woman whose cat you hid would be too fearful, and that father you called...” At this point she shook her head. “I hate to think what he might try to do to you if you were in the same room.”
“You might be right,” he said. “Maybe I should write something instead.”
“We’ll get to that. But besides reflecting, what else did you do with your weekend?”
“Not much,” he said. “Well, I worked Saturday. I usually work evenings at Computer World, but they’re not open Saturday night, so I did a day shift.”
“Did you work Friday night?”
Gavin nodded. “I did.”
“What time did your shift end?”
“Nine,” he said slowly. “Why are you asking me?”
Anna hesitated. “A troubling thing happened to someone on Friday night.”
“Someone? You mean, someone you know?”
Anna slowly nodded.
“Another one of your patients?” he asked.
Anna studied him for several seconds, weighing how to proceed. She ignored his last question and continued. “Someone did a very sick, very cruel thing to her.”
“This person you know who might be a patient,” Gavin said.
“Her dog was recently run over by a car. Someone snuck into her house and hung a dead Yorkshire terrier in her bedroom. According to the tag, the dog had belonged to a family in Devon. They were making up the missing posters when the police notified them.”