Chapter 42
The wife isn’t home. Henry’s father is at work, and his mother is out—lunch with a “girlfriend” again—so it’s the perfect time. He’s tired of watching, of waiting. He needs more.
He must be sure before he can determine precisely what he’s going to do and how he will do it.
It’s midday, sun high, the heat-index warning keeping the kids who don’t have summer camp this week inside with their screens.
Henry goes around the back of the house as though he’s supposed to be there, as though he’s merely cutting between the yards. He’s wearing khaki shorts, a polo tucked in. He doesn’t look like a burglar, with his neat beard and the logo on his shirt.
He scans the back of the house for cameras, then moves across the patio, slipping a pair of gloves onto his hands—just in case.
He tries the ground-level door first, which leads into the walk-out basement.
Locked, so he steps onto the deck, tugs at the sliding door. It glides smoothly along its track.
The wife probably sat out here earlier, on the wicker armchair, put her coffee on the matching end table. She forgot to lock the door when she went inside.
He’s in, and it’s too easy.
The family room—a curving sectional, low glass coffee table, and flat-screen television across the room.
Nothing on the coffee table except for a few coasters.
He moves into the kitchen, its countertops gleaming, clutter minimal.
There’s a fruit bowl with a pair of bananas, three oranges.
Two empty coffee mugs rest in the sink, along with a glass dish, remnants of a pasta dish.
Henry’s lip curls; the wife must have left in a hurry.
The foyer is tidy, like a house listed for sale. No shoes on a rack or littering the doormat, no family photographs. There’s a swath of dove-gray wall clearly intended for a console table, but instead it’s bare.
He must hurry because the wife won’t be gone for long.
She’s never gone for long, only brief errands, garage door sliding closed behind her car before he can see her climb out, see the bags on her arms. Or an appointment, like the one he followed her to before—Dr. Frances Singh it’s time to go. He’s seen enough. He’s seen exactly what he needs to see.
He’s certain now. He’s been right about everything, all along.
Ours is a tale of murder.
He leaves the house, all stealth, all care, all speed. Indeed, he thinks, it is.
His shirt is drenched: the heat, the nerves, the thrill of what he did. It was bold, but what does he have to lose really? While what he has to gain is her—the wife—and his plan is becoming clearer.
Safely inside his own house, he goes straight into the basement. He drops his polo into the washing machine before entering his bedroom to retrieve a new shirt and slide the gloves into a dresser drawer.
His mother will almost certainly have to do laundry before he does.
She does his father’s laundry for him, too.
She irons his work shirts while she watches old episodes of Downton Abbey.
When Henry is down here, and he hears her footsteps, slow and steady on the stairs, he should probably offer to help her carry the laundry baskets down, then back up again when the laundry is done.
He should probably even offer to do the laundry for her.
That’s what a good son would do. But he doesn’t think she’s a good mom, so why should she reap the benefits of a good son?
He’s hoping she won’t be home from lunch with her “girlfriend” for another half hour, so he takes advantage of being alone in the house to raid the fridge.
But as he stands there, the frosty air swirling, he hears his mother clattering into the house.
He’s too far from the basement stairs, so there’s no time to sneak down and avoid her, not unless she doesn’t come into the kitchen straightaway.
But of course, she does. Henry can see immediately that she’s tipsy. Her eyes droop downward at the corners. Her face is flushed.
He closes the fridge, and her buoyant expression seems to fall a few millimeters when she sees him standing there.
“Looks like lunch was a success,” he says.
“What does that mean?” she asks. But her voice is mushy, words slurring together—Wahdoeszatmean?
“Jesus, Mom. Did you drive home like that?”
She turns to him, slams down the glass she just removed from a cabinet. “Don’t be an asshole, Henry.”
He’s stunned. She has never spoken to him that way before.
“I had a nice lunch with my girlfriend,” she adds primly, with deliberate annunciation. “I was perfectly fine to drive.”
“Sure,” he says. He steps around the island, moving past her, heading back toward the basement stairs.
“Any luck today?” she asks abruptly, shrilly.
“What?” He freezes, sighs warily, although he knows what she means.
She’s in a fighting mood now, but he’s not.
He just wants to shut himself back in his basement bedroom and close his eyes, to see the wife, the imprint of her face.
He wants to think about what he just did, to languish in the success of it.
“Did you submit any more applications? Schedule any interviews?”
“Of course I did,” he says patiently. “I do that every day.”
“Then—why, Henry? Why aren’t you having any luck?” There’s a sadness in her voice now, a sudden weariness, her anger short lived, as though she’s the one who’s searching for work, as though she’s the one who’s failing.
“Trust me when I say that it’s much more frustrating for me than it is for you,” he says crisply.
His mother sniffs. Her arms are crossed in front of her chest, eyes watery. The glass still rests on the counter behind her, her need for a drink apparently forgotten.
“It just doesn’t make sense, Henry. You’re so smart. You always did well in school. You worked for years. The market isn’t that bad right now.”
He hates the way the compliments warm his chest. He can’t help the tiny twinge, that he still craves his mother’s approval.
“You didn’t get laid off. Did you, Henry?”
But just like that, it’s gone. He’s ice cold, every part of him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. He turns away again, takes another step toward the basement.
“Henry,” she says tiredly. “I’m talking about Vivian Harris.”
Another slur to her words, the name mush. Henry discerns it anyway. He freezes.
“Remember her? She was in the band with you in eighth grade. Played the clarinet.”
Of course he remembers Vivian. She was the first.
He’d been a gifted trumpet player in middle and high school, always sat first chair. Directly in front of him was Vivian. Her hair was ink black, and it held the shine of the fluorescent lights that blazed so brightly above them.
“You used to follow her around. You put notes in her locker, and you never signed them, but someone saw you doing it. She wanted you to stop. She cried to her mom about it, and her mom called me.”
He doesn’t turn. Just stands there and listens to her words. He wills them to slide off his back.
“I had to talk to you about it. I told you to leave her alone. ‘I just have a crush on her, Mom,’ you said. And I told you not to. I told you to stop.”
Vivian. There was no reason she shouldn’t have liked him back.
They could have held hands while they walked down the hall like the other eighth-grade couples.
They could have experimented with kissing, with other things, behind the school’s brick wall between the end of the last class and the start of band practice.
But she didn’t like him. They never like him. That’s why he makes them pay.
“You were so talented. You were so good at the trumpet. But I used to secretly wish you’d quit, just so that you wouldn’t have to be around her anymore. It was hard for you, and for her.”
He listens, stunned. She’s never told him this much.
He waits for her to mention the last note he left in Vivian’s locker—one final note. He was so young, and it was thrilling to insult her like that. She must have crumpled it and not told her mom. He was less bold back then, unsure how precisely to punish them.
“Next it was Sarah Davenport, in ninth grade,” his mother continues, unstoppable now, as though hurtling down a hill.
“Her mom called me, too. She was so condescending about it, like she felt bad for me. She said you were making her daughter uncomfortable. That you’d invited her to the homecoming dance, and she told you no but you were always looking at her.
And you used to call her after school almost every day. ”
“And she answered,” says Henry. He can’t help but defend himself. “She talked to me.”