She couldn’t not sit after that. She wedged herself in the corner opposite MacAuley.
“You certainly don’t have to worry right now,” MacAuley said, smiling again. “And if you’d like, we’d be glad to drop you off at a friend’s or neighbor’s when we go. If your husband isn’t home yet. Do you expect him soon?”
“By dinnertime,” she said. “He didn’t say he’d be gone longer than that.”
“Where’s he off to?”
“Errands, I guess. I was in the shower when he left.”
“When was that?” Kevin said.
MacAuley shot him a look. “I’d hate to leave you alone out here if you feel uncomfortable,” he said. “Do you have someone you usually stay with?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know. If things blow up and one or the other of you has to cool down.”
“You mean Randy and me? We don’t fight like that.”
“No?” His expression invited confidence. “I’ve been there myself. You’re young, married, money’s tight, one or the other of you is always working… you mean to say you never fight?”
“Of course, we have fights. I mean… not so’s one of us has to leave.”
“He’s never gotten a little rough?”
She was genuinely outraged. “No!”
He raised his hands in surrender. “Whatever. I don’t like to interfere between husband and wife.” He smiled. “Has your husband ever mentioned a woman named Becky Castle?”
Her heart jumped so hard she knew he must have seen it in her throat. She shook her head.
“I’m sorry?”
“No,” she said. “Kevin asked us if we knew her. Earlier.”
He leaned forward. “I don’t want to upset you, here, but… have you ever suspected your husband might be seeing someone else?”
“No!” She glared at Kevin. “Kevin, what’s this about?”
This time, he kept his mouth shut. “Becky Castle was the young woman who was assaulted today,” MacAuley said. “The poor thing was beaten so badly she had to undergo surgery to stop her internal bleeding. Somebody punched her and kicked her and hit her until she was so much raw hamburger.”
The words, the images, were so ugly she wanted to slap her hands over her ears and howl until they burned themselves out of her brain.
“We think your husband might be able to help us in our inquiries,” MacAuley went on. “It’s important we talk with him as soon as possible.”
She forced herself to nod. “Of course. I’ll have him call you as soon as he gets home.”
“Is there anyplace he’s more likely to be? At a bar, or a friend’s house? Time is important. You know, we always say the first twenty-four hours of an investigation are the most important. ‘The golden hours,’ we call them. We want to be able to talk to anyone who may know something as quickly as possible.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He was at Mike’s earlier. Mike Yablonski.”
MacAuley glanced at Kevin, who nodded once.
MacAuley stood, startling her. “Okay, then. Thanks, Mrs. Schoof.”
She unfolded herself from the couch and joined the two police officers heading for the door. She didn’t understand. She had thought he would keep at her. Ask her more about her husband. “I’ll be sure to have Randy call you as soon as he gets home tonight,” she repeated.
MacAuley smiled at her, eyes crinkling, bushy brows rising. “We’d sure appreciate it.”
“Um… is there anything else I can do to help?”
He smiled even more broadly, looking less like Santa and more like the cat who swallowed the canary. “Why, yes,” he said. “Can we have a look around the house?”
Clare looked into the burgundy surface of her wine. If she sat very, very still, she could see her reflection. Or rather, the reflection of her eye. For now we see through a glass, darkly, she thought.
Hugh thumped his glass against the table. They were sitting in the kitchen. The only other spot to sit face-to-face downstairs was in her living room, where she and Russ had been talking. By mutual, unspoken agreement, Clare and Hugh avoided that room when she returned downstairs dressed in a sweater and jeans.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at a loss for words,” Hugh said.
“There’s nothing to say.” In a way, she was telling the truth. For close to two years now, she had kept her mouth soldered shut, refusing to even think about the unthinkable. She had cracked and admitted it to herself; eventually, she had admitted it to Russ. It terrified her to think that the truth was so close to her surface that she was on the verge of admitting it to a nice man she saw every six or seven weeks. “There’s nothing to say,” she repeated.
“Is he going to divorce the little woman?”
That made her look up from the depths of her glass. “No.”
“Are you planning on chucking the whole priest thing and living a life of wickedness as a kept woman?”
She couldn’t help it; her lips twitched. “No.”
“Bit of a sticky wicket, eh?”
“You sound like someone in the 1939 version of The Four Feathers. ” She took a sip of the Shiraz. They had discovered, on her first trip to New York, that they shared a common devotion to prewar British films.
“The fellow who went blind and gave up the girl because it was the right thing to do, no doubt.”
She smiled into her wineglass.
He swallowed a gulp of wine. “Where do you think this thing is going? With you and me, I mean.”
She was surprised. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Good Lord. You must be the only single woman over thirty I know who isn’t thinking about how to get herself married off.” He spread his arms and looked down at himself. “Am I not eligible? Not repulsive, don’t drool or pick my teeth in public, ready for housetraining.”
She took another sip, uncertain if he was joking or not. “Hugh, are you proposing? Or just looking for more affirmation that your shirt looks okay?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why you don’t at least eyeball me as potential husband material.”
She sighed. “Because for the past six or seven years, I’ve thought of myself as someone who is never going to get married. It’s not as if I’ve had men throwing themselves at me. Believe me. When I realized my calling, it sort of dovetailed with my spectacular lack of a love life. I figured I was meant to be a celibate.”
“Okay.” He ticked off one finger. “So, aspirations to be bride of God. Anything else?”
“Hugh.” She interlaced her fingers and propped her chin on the back of her hands. “Look at you. You’re urban, you’re trendy, your job involves travel and parties and reveling in the spoils of capitalism. I’m a priest who has settled in a little Adirondack backwater. Can you honestly see any way of me fitting into your life? Or you fitting into mine?”
He ticked off another finger. “Lifestyle differences. Anything else?”
I’m in love with somebody else. Something in her face must have given her thoughts away, because he held up a third finger. “Emotional complications.” He waggled the fingers at her. “It’s rather like choosing a substantial investment, isn’t it?”
“Spoken like a true venture capitalist.”
He took another sip of wine. “You have two candidates vying for your investment.”
“I don’t-”
“One is old enough to be your father, entombed in the same small town where he was born, and, oh, yes, is married.”
She drained her glass and poured herself another.
“The other,” he spread his arms again, showing off the floral shirt in all its splendor, “is handsome, youthful-comparatively speaking-amusing, well educated, has a healthy bank account and a career that gives him some flexibility in relocating as you climb the ladder to ecclesiastical success. Oh, and is single.” He leaned back in his chair. “And,” he stressed, “is Anglican.”