CHAPTER SIX #2
She pulled into the driveway at quarter past four, gathered her bag from the back seat, and headed inside.
The living room was lit warmly against the gray afternoon outside.
Allen was on the couch with Michael tucked against his side, a picture book open across both of their laps.
Allen was reading in the slightly theatrical voice he used for stories, giving each character a different register, and Michael was watching intently.
Neither of them looked up immediately when she came in.
Kate set her bag down quietly by the door.
Then Michael saw her. His eyes brightened, but he was not torn away from the book. Instead, he scooted over to make room for her on the couch. She sat down beside him and he pulled the book into her lap to show her the page they were on.
Allen looked at her over Michael's head.
Whatever he saw in her face made him reach over and squeeze her hand once before going back to the story.
She leaned back into the cushions and settled into the comfort and familiarity of it all…
the lamp in the corner, the picture book, Michael warm against her side.
Outside the window, the last of the afternoon light was going gray.
The afternoon petered on and Kate did her best to keep the sight of Carol Paige’s dead body out of her head. But it came and went like a fleeting phantom as they prepared dinner and then ate right around six.
Kate helped Allen clean up afterward and they sat together for a while at the kitchen table with cups of tea, while they gave Michael his half an hour of evening screen time.
As Michael watched a cartoon with talking dogs, Allen asked about the case in the careful way he had developed over the years—seeking details, but not too many.
She gave him a broad outline. A woman found dead in her home.
No clear motive yet. A lot of doors that opened onto nothing.
"You'll find it," Allen said. He said it without inflation, as a statement of ordinary fact.
"Probably," she said, and meant it. “Or rather, Sloane will. She’s really coming into her own.”
Allen smiled at that as he topped up her tea without being asked.
From the living room came the sound of the cartoon, something busy and percussive that Michael had been watching with the solemn focus he brought to everything he considered important.
He was three and a half going on fifty, that kid.
Allen had developed a theory that Michael had simply arrived in the world already having strong opinions about most things.
He liked his peanut butter without jelly.
He liked the dogs in his books, but was indifferent to actual dogs.
He liked music but only wanted to hear the same four songs.
And just that very week, he had decided that preschool was, as he had put it with complete certainty, "good and fun.
" And fun was not a word that her son used loosely.
The words had meant something to Kate when Allen had told her.
It was not a spectacular pairing of words—not the kind of report a parent shared at a dinner party.
But she had been thinking about preschool for months before it started, weighing it from every angle.
It wasn’t that she and Allen were pressed for time anymore; in fact, their schedules were quite conducive for raising an almost-four-year-old.
But Michael was exceptionally bright and had been asking about preschool after meeting a few kids at the playground who’d told him how fun it was.
"Tell me how today went," she said. "The whole thing… from drop-off to pick-up."
Allen looked up from his tea with another smile. "He let go of my hand at the door."
"He did?"
"Yep. That first day…God, remember how I told you…”
“He held on until you were inside.”
“Yeah, and I had to wait until he found something interesting enough to let go of. Today, he just..." Allen made a small releasing gesture with one hand. "The teacher said good morning and he walked in. Like it was nothing."
“Any new updates on friends or… not-so friends?”
"Oh, a few." Allen shook his head, a little amused and a little awed.
"There's a boy named Owen he has decided is his best friend. Owen, apparently, also likes trains but does not like the color orange, which Michael finds deeply suspicious." He paused long enough to shake his head. “You’re feeling guilty, aren’t you?”
“A bit.”
“Don’t. Kate... it was just one day.”
“And it’ll likely be tomorrow, too.”
“Maybe. But believe it or not, I can handle the deep and perplexing routine of pre-school drop-off.”
“I know, but…”
He covered her hand with his and gave it a squeeze. “But nothing. It’s fine, Kate.”
"I know. I’m just worried, I guess. Worried that even with this next-to-nothing schedule I might not be around enough. Whether he'd even notice the difference between a full-time mother and whatever I am now."
"He knows. Kids always know."
She thought about a picture Michael had drawn a few weeks ago, that was now stuck on the refrigerator.
It had been done with crayon on printer paper.
In the picture, the three of them were standing outside what was clearly, based on the yellow square of a window and the lopsided tree, meant to be their house.
She was identifiable only by the dark scribble of her hair and the fact that Allen had apparently told him to add a little rectangle in her hand that was meant to be her phone.
The trio of figures were smiling with wide crayon grins.
Michael had put her in the picture exactly as she was, and he had given her a smile, although she felt the presence of the damned phone meant something she wasn’t ready to admit just yet.
She heard the cartoon in the other room reach some kind of climax — a swell of music, a dog doing something unlikely — and then Michael's delighted laugh.
Allen looked toward the sound and then back at her. "Go in there," he said. "You've got twenty minutes before bed."
She found Michael on the rug with his legs crossed, tilting toward the television at an angle that could not have been comfortable.
He registered her arrival without turning his head, the way he did when he didn't want to break his concentration, but also wanted her to know that he wanted her to sit down.
She sat on the couch behind him. After about thirty seconds he got up and climbed up beside her, positioning himself against her side and nestling into her.
He pointed at the screen and said, "That one has a red collar."
"I see that," Kate said.
"Red is a good color."
"I agree."
He leaned into her a little more, and she put her arm around him, and they watched the rest of the cartoon together without saying another word. She breathed it in, wondering how she had ever gotten so lucky.
She was in bed by ten. Allen was reading beside her and she lay with her eyes closed and let herself drift toward sleep.
And, with no real surprise, elements of the case arrived in the last few minutes before sleep.
Not the whole scene, just the specific details that had lodged themselves somewhere during the day and not let go.
The broken wine glass, three pieces and a pale stain on the rug.
The lamp burning on the end table. The folded blanket on the arm of the couch, still neat. All of that blood.
She saw Carol Paige in her navy dress, one arm extended, having come home from the best evening she'd had in years, unlocked the back door for a friend and having a glass of wine.
Kate lay still and let the image run through without pushing it away. She had learned a long time ago that pushing it away didn't work. You looked at it, you acknowledged what it was, and then you let it settle into the part of you that held these things and kept working.
She would go back in the morning. She would sit down with whatever Sloane had pulled on the financials and the restaurant footage and whatever else had come in overnight, and she would start again from a different angle.
Allen turned a page beside her and with the shape of tomorrow secure in her head, Kate finally fell softly into sleep.