Chapter 11
Thora’s heart jumped into her throat. Despite her first thought being the killer, she reminded herself that “the killer,” whoever they were, wouldn’t knock.
“Stay there,” she told Lee as she donned her robe. Picking up a brass candlestick from the table in the hallway on her way
to the kitchen, she swiped aside the fabric curtains over the window of the door.
Cody glared back at her. Her heart returned to its normal place in her chest, not at all buoyed by the person she once considered
her one true love. Thankfully, he wasn’t a serial killer, but he was not exactly a friendly face either.
“Fuckin’ A, Cody, what are you doing here?”
“Maybe let me in and I can tell you?”
She opened the door and directed him toward the kitchen table. He declined to sit, waving his hands like he was in a hurry.
“I won’t be long. I left my passport in the Wagoneer, probably in the glove compartment. And I need it because I’m headed to Mongolia soon. I tried to call you a million times but it went straight to voicemail.”
Of course he was headed to Mongolia. The globetrotting star scientist. The one with the clear path to success. Meanwhile,
Thora had so much to figure out. Camp Juniper and its mysteries were beckoning her, taking her away from why she’d come here
in the first place. The path to becoming a writer was unclear to her, but she knew the first step was to write. Something
she hadn’t managed to do while Lee was hanging around, tempting her out of the Wood Room with home cooked food and tree trunk
thighs. She might be astride one of those thighs right now if it weren’t for Cody.
“There’s no cell phone signal here.”
“Still? That’s wild. But why is George’s truck parking the Jeep in? I thought that thing didn’t run.”
“No, it’s running,” Thora said, declining to say anything further.
“With Massachusetts plates and a bumper sticker that says ‘You cannot kill me in a way that matters’?”
She hadn’t noticed the bumper sticker, but Lee’s mordant sense of humor gave her a smile. If Cody didn’t figure out the truck’s
current owner from the plates, that bumper sticker tipped him off for sure. She couldn’t hide the truth, even if she wanted
to.
“It’s Lee’s truck now. He’s here.”
Cody sat at the table. Thora understood Cody’s expressions well enough to know when he was trying to hide his surprise. As
well he should be. She couldn’t imagine walking in on such a situation herself, the questions it would raise.
As much as she had told herself that Cody wasn’t her responsibility anymore, that was easier said than done.
He was once everything to her: her first kiss, her first real boyfriend, the first guy she ever slept with, the one she had fully intended to be with until one of them died.
That was difficult to undo, if not legally, then certainly emotionally.
Keeping things light, she said, “It’s good you’re here, actually. I have a few of your things I didn’t mean to take with me.
Your winter gloves, you’ll need those in Mongolia. And that family heirloom ring you gave me.”
Cody scowled, a rare look on someone who schooled his face into pleasant expressions.
“Keep the ring. I lied about it being an heirloom.”
Far from the Mayflower-ass Margarets and Elizabeths she went to college with, Thora never needed heirlooms. What was he doing?
“Then where did you get it?”
“At the antique store in Woodhill. You were at working at Conehenge that day. Lee told me to get it; he said you would like
it.”
He was right. Dripping with garnets and pearls, the Victorian ring was a grotesque beauty, bodily and gory. It didn’t quite
fit her wardrobe of bright colors and loud patterns, but she aspired to that ring. Lee had seen her in that ring, or that
ring in her, all those years ago.
Unsettled, she excused herself. “Let me go get Lee.” She left Cody at the table and returned to the Bird Room, dropping the
candlestick off on the way.
“It’s Cody. He knows you’re here,” she said.
Lee shot out of bed. “Does he know . . .”
That they’d kissed? That she’d been holding on to him as if she were a starving animal who’d finally caught a meal? He’d been
holding her differently. Like she was a delicate artwork being moved within a museum. With hands both gentle and assured.
Experienced hands.
“I haven’t said anything. Come say hi.”
Cody said he wouldn’t be long, but that was before he knew he had a chance to reunite with his best friend. Thora’s mind raced.
Was he going to try to stay? If she told him about the phone call, the chicken, and the Blue Room, what would he say? He was
a scientist; he’d have an explanation. Well, let him explain. It would only strengthen her resolve to stay.
Lee followed her into the kitchen.
“Well, this is awkward,” Cody said.
“It’s not what you think,” Lee said.
“Oh?” Cody asked. “What do you think I think, Leaf Halliday?”
He was like an angry parent addressing their child by their full government name. Thora launched into an explanation of the
events so far, before Lee could respond. She left out some details, mainly how she hallucinated George at a swimming hole
and how Cody interrupted a makeout session that might have progressed to something Thora dared not contemplate at this moment.
His eyebrows nearly reached his hairline by the end of the spiel.
“And you still feel safe here?” Cody asked.
“Yes.”
“But not safe enough to stay here without Lee?”
When he put it that way . . .
Lee jumped in. “There’s more nuance to it than that. Thora is being kind enough to let me say goodbye to this place, and to
George.”
“Because you’re not planning to come back?” Cody asked.
Thora and Lee looked at each other, and in that moment she knew something had changed.
Lee had said it himself, that she didn’t have to blame anyone for George’s death.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t have her feelings about it, but the wall she’d put between her and her ex-husband’s best friend was rubble at this point.
She probably didn’t have to banish him from the property as she’d meant to.
Cody conducted his own investigation of the look she and Lee shared. “I realize this may be an inappropriate question, and
I realize you may not answer it honestly in any case, but I need to know. Were you two sleeping together while Thora and I
were married?”
Lee’s firm no was drowned out by Thora’s cackling. However her feelings were morphing in recent days, those past emotions were close at
hand.
“You think he was coming over to Bryony Brooks’ penthouse? The doorman was explicitly told all men were banished from the
premises after her last divorce. She had to find a new masseuse! Or you think I had the time to get out to wherever the hell
in Massachusetts Lee lives? Oh wait, maybe we did it in our marriage bed while you were out finding the next amazing dinosaur
bone!”
Then she continued cackling. Neither Lee nor Cody found it funny. She couldn’t even be mad at Cody for making the accusation.
It was a genuinely fishy situation, and maybe he’d absorbed some of her own skills of gossipy deduction. It was clear that
she and Lee were up to something. Not to mention, they were perilously close to tearing each other’s clothes off when he knocked
at the door. She almost had her hands on his chest again, but with permission this time. Even better, an invitation.
Once Thora regained her composure, she said, “Cody, the keys to the Wagoneer are hanging by the kitchen door. Go ahead and
retrieve your passport. You two have a lot to catch up on. I’ll leave you to it.”
Back in the Bird Room, she suspected the ring-necked pheasant was winking at her.
“Dirty bird,” she whispered. If she and Lee were to pick up where they left off, they either needed to go to a different room or turn the birds to face the wall. Thora couldn’t take their beady little eyes on her.
She could have tried to get back into Schuss, but she had to be honest with herself. She was, deep down, a gossipmonger. There was zero chance she was denying herself
an opportunity to eavesdrop.
Unluckily for her, Lee’s soft-spoken manner made his words impossible to make out from this distance. But Cody was a natural
communicator, with a crystal-clear voice that could hold the attention of an auditorium full of the most disaffected undergrads.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she heard Cody say. “It’s been hard.”
Had it been hard for him? Cody seemed unflappable, stoic. It was something she’d always admired. Her emotions came and went
in great gusts, whirling her around, but he was always putting along, as if borne on a steady wind. And likewise, he enjoyed
that life with her could be exciting. Cody was not icy exactly, but always at a remove, studying every situation before figuring
out how to present himself. People knew what they were getting with Thora. They were drawn to her candor and energy.
She heard another scrap of a sentence, talking about “the apps.” Good for Cody to be moving on quickly. As someone who would
never send an unsolicited dick pic or fail to hold up his end of the conversation, he’d probably do well, too.
While Thora was married, no one could resist planting seeds of paranoia about Cody cheating on her. Is there more tiresome
commentary than the theorizing what happens when a fat person dates a conventionally hot person?
She never felt paranoid. Yes, the digs he went on were full of attractive people in close quarters, a surefire recipe for romantic and sexual entanglements.
But Cody was clear about rising above that.
He wanted to be a rock-star scientist, but he studiously avoided anything that could mar his pristine reputation.
To be known as a womanizer, a sex pest, or worse would never do.
Being married to Thora was helpful for him.
He was the kind of person who stayed true to his word, and being able to claim a loving wife at home had simplified things for him out in the field.
If he devoted as much energy to being a partner as he did to polishing that sterling reputation, things might have turned out differently.
Thora was curious to know more. Cracking the door to the Bird Room, she could hear more clearly.
“Maybe someday you’ll get in a serious relationship, Lee, and then you’ll know what peace of mind feels like. I’m ready to
get back to that.”
Cody took a condescending tone with Lee, and she wasn’t sure why he put up with it. He didn’t need her to come to his defense,
but the urge rose in her nonetheless.
“I find peace of mind in other ways,” Lee said.
“Please elaborate.”
“I have a good steady job that I believe in. I get to spend time with people I care about. And who knows, maybe the last woman
I kissed will turn out to be the love of my life. Only time will tell.”
Oh, Lee was trolling Cody now. Baiting him into knocking his lack of ambition and commitment.
It worked. “You couldn’t believe in your work at the architecture firm? None of the umpteen other women you’ve kissed were
worthy of your love?”
“Cody, we’re never going to see eye to eye on this. Watching my ideas get stripped down to garbage when developers’ budgets got smaller and smaller was demoralizing. Everyone told me I needed to get used to it. I didn’t want to get used to it.”
Cody’s voice was laced with surprising venom. “When you fall off a ladder and break your neck, you’re going to be so happy
you stood on those principles.”
“I could fall off the mountain and break my neck today. My principles are all I have.”
Thora knew he meant that. Cody had principles, too, but his deep need for admiration and prestige created more inner conflict
than Lee seemed to have.
“Speaking of those principles, I need you to be honest with me about Thora.”
“She never cheated on you, at least not with me.”
“And what about now?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?”
“I don’t know, Lee, my dearest friend and my ex-wife? Sounds an awful lot like my business.”
Lee was quiet, in exactly that way he could be. Formulating his words, never speaking out of turn, never quick with a barb.
Cody should have known better, but he couldn’t stand the silence.
“I need you to tell me nothing has ever happened between the two of you. Ever.”
More silence. Thora wanted to run into the kitchen. And do what? Cause a scene? Wreck a lifelong friendship? Prove herself
an eavesdropper?
“I can’t tell you that.”
The next sound she heard was the slam of the kitchen door.