“Yes.”
“And you said to delete it, and I did. And after I did it I had the thought that I would probably never hear your voice again.”
He waited.
“And I went to work, and I wondered what was going to happen, and when it was going to happen. And I told myself it wouldn’t be for a few days, if it ever happened at all. And I didn’t know what I wanted, I really didn’t. So I worked my hours, and I smiled and talked nice to people and did my job the way I always did my job.
“And I went home, half expecting him to be there when I walked in the house. But he wasn’t there and his car was gone, and there were no phone messages, and I took a soak in the tub and kept waiting for the phone to ring, but it didn’t.
“And then the maid woke me to tell me the Sheriff was waiting downstairs in the front hall. But that was all she could tell me, because he hadn’t said anything to her. And I got dressed, and I made sure I was wearing something comfortable in case I was going to wind up wearing it in jail.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, I didn’t know what was going on. But I had to go downstairs, and I did, and I got the girl to bring us coffee in the living room, and he told me he had some bad news, and I learned that George murdered a young woman in her apartment, that she shot him while he was strangling her but it didn’t keep him from finishing the job, and that then he went nuts and wrote his confession on the wall. And went and shot himself, and now he was dead.”
She frowned. “And I was waiting for the rest of it, you know? Waiting for the questions, waiting for him to spring the trap. But he didn’t, he was all sympathy and consideration, and did I want a doctor? Did I want someone to give me a sedative?
“And he went away, finally, and then it all went on playing out, with his kids and everybody’s lawyers and a woman from the local weekly who thinks she’s Brenda Fucking Starr, and throughout the next couple of days I just acted numb and dazed and brain-dead, and it wasn’t an act.
“And all the time, where is Doak? Where the fuck is Doak?”
“I couldn’t—”
“Oh, I know that. I knew it then. The one thing you couldn’t possibly do was get in touch with me.” She put a hand on his chest. “But then something strange happened. You disappeared.”
“I disappeared?”
“Uh-huh. From the county, the state. You didn’t live here anymore. You just drove away. That’s what I decided must have happened.”
“After the—”
“After it happened. But then that shifted, too.”
“How?”
“You spoke to me, and you told me to get rid of my phone. And then you got in your car and disappeared.”
“I never went to Stapleton Terrace.”
“That’s right.”
“And what happened there—”
“Happened the way Sheriff Radburn said. They had a fight, he started choking her, she shot him, he finished killing her, he realized what he’d done, and—”
“And so on.”
“Right. And so on.”
He thought about it. “The little gun, the Browning with the malachite grips. You left it in your car for me. How’d Ashley wind up with it?”
“You gave it to her, told her he might get violent and she might need it for protection. Or you just slipped into the house and left it where she could find it.”
“All loaded and ready for use.”
“I guess.”
He let it play through his mind. “Well, it could have happened that way. And I can see how it would be emotionally convenient if it did.”
“Because it’s nobody’s fault. Except George’s, and he paid for it.”
“ ‘God forgive me.’ ”
“Huh?”
“On the wall.”
“Oh, yes, of course. For a moment I thought you were—”
“Praying?”
She looked off into the middle distance. “I was alone,” she said, “and he was dead, and it wasn’t my fault.”
“And I was out of the picture.”
“And you were out of the picture, so I didn’t let myself think about you, because what was the point? There was this man I used to know, and for a little while we loved each other, and then he went away.”
“You didn’t really think it.”
“That you had run off? I don’t know what I thought or what I made myself think. I didn’t expect you last night. I must have looked stunned.”
“Well, I could tell you were surprised. But you didn’t show much.”
“The perfect hostess,” she said. “Poised and unflappable. ‘You’ll be dining alone this evening? Right this way, sir.’ ”
“I didn’t know how I’d feel, seeing you.”
“I didn’t know how I felt. And then to have to meet you at the mall. How could I do that? I’m so glad you found this place. If we’d had to go back to that room—”
“No, that was never an option.”
“Although we had some moments there, didn’t we? Telling each other stories. Did you bring me any stories today? No?”
He drew a breath. “After the incident—”
“That’s a good word for it.”
“Afterward, I never left the house until yesterday. I watched old movies and waited for them to arrest me.”
“You thought that would happen?”
“I knew it would. I sat there with a gun in each hand waiting for a knock on the door.”
“Somewhere,” she said, “there’s a Jehovah’s Witness with no idea what he missed. Until yesterday, you said. What changed your mind?”
“Time.”
“The great healer. And until then it was just you and some old movies. No juicy phone calls from Real Estate Girl?”
“That’s over.”
“Really?”
“Really. I spoke to her earlier and managed to scare her off.”
“I won’t ask how. And Pregnant Girl? But you don’t want to talk about Pregnant Girl, do you?”
“Not now.”
“Okay.”
“What I should do now,” he said, “is tell you what happened that night.”
“I guess it didn’t just happen by itself.”
“No.”
“Darling, we can just—”
“Skip it?”
“Oh, I guess we can’t, can we? Lie close to me, and let’s pull the covers up over us. And could you do what you did once before? Could you put your finger inside me while you tell me? I don’t know why that should make me feel safer, I really don’t. But it does.”
Thirty-eight
He told it straight through, from his arrival at the house on Stapleton Terrace to his return to Osprey Drive. His voice was level and unemotional throughout, his narrative limited to a recital of uninflected facts. I did this and I did that and I did this and I did that...
She heard him all the way through without interruption. When he was done she lay still and remained silent. Their bodies were almost touching, and the blanket covered them like a cocoon.
Her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and even. Softly, he said, “Lisa?”
“I’m awake.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“I was there with you just now, you know. Standing at your shoulder watching it all happen. How awful it must have been for you.”
“I think we can safely say it was worse for them.”
“But then it was over, wasn’t it? For them, but not for you.” She reached to touch his face. “What shocked me, when he came and told me—”
“The girl.”
“It never once occurred to me that she would be part of it.”
“There was no way to leave her out,” he said. “Not that I could think of. If George gets killed, even if he drives into a creek or gets sucked into a sinkhole, they’ve got to come looking for you. The only way I could think of that would work was for him to kill himself, and to stage that and make it look right, you had to have another person on the scene. And she had to be the kind of witness who couldn’t contradict you.”