Chapter 49
Mary returns the photo albums to the shelf, switches her heating pad off, collects her empty wineglass. Outside, darkness has fallen, and tree branches whip in the wind; perhaps a storm is approaching.
Owen always loved thunderstorms. The wonder in his eyes. She’d let him watch them from the covered front porch sometimes, rain occasionally blowing against the house, soaking him. He didn’t care.
In the kitchen, she contemplates a third glass of wine, fridge open, empty still in her hand.
Quickly, before the temptation grows too strong, she nudges the fridge closed, then washes the glass and tucks it onto the drying rack.
She can’t afford what a third glass would do to her.
She can’t slog through tomorrow, headache pulsing.
There’s so much more to do in the house, the appointment with the Realtor inching closer.
She must eliminate more of the clutter, more of the lived-in feel of it, before that.
Still, even if she cleans everything up, the Realtor will list off a litany of projects and repairs. She will have to be insistent. As is.
Mary turns the laundry over before she goes to bed, heaping it into the dryer.
She realizes she forgot her novel downstairs, so she opens her nightstand drawer. There, she keeps her comfort reads, as she thinks of them. Her favorite books of all time, in paperback form. Usually, all it takes is a few pages from any of them before she’s fighting sleep.
Mercifully, tonight is no different. The lull of the wine, the familiar words. She switches off the light and lets the book drop to the bed.
But there’s nothing merciful about her sleep. Mary dreams of that night, of the killing. She sees the blood and feels the terror and the understanding, gripping and horrible, that nothing would ever be the same, despite that things hadn’t been that good or happy before. Not with Ed.
How could she not dream of it? The hours in Owen’s room, the photo albums, the memories.
Mary sits up, back against her headboard, and tries to catch her breath, palm to her heart, pressing, like she can slow it that way.
And then she hears it. A gentle creak, that particular board downstairs that always squeals when it’s stepped on just so.
She sits up, reaches for the glass of water on the table beside her, and drains it, because she’s suddenly devastatingly thirsty and can think of nothing else.
But once the glass is empty, she stills, listening. She hears nothing more.
She sighs, rolls the edge of the comforter in her hands. It’s nothing, she tells herself. Or it’s just him. Moving through his home while he thinks she’s asleep. And she should be asleep. She should go back to sleep.
She turns onto her other side, adjusts her pillow. She closes her eyes. And as she tries to drift away again, she plays her favorite trick on herself, the one the therapist she saw briefly many years ago told her not to play.
She thinks of her boy. She pretends he’s down the hall, sleeping under rocket ship sheets.
That he’s still a boy, relatively untroubled.
That none of it ever happened. That he’ll wake up in the morning and he will run to her, just the way he used to.
When he was so little, he always shone when he first woke.
Grinning, hurtling into her arms, so she could tuck her nose into the sleep-smell of his hair and neck. A bowling ball of heat and curls and smiles.