Chapter 53 #2
And, to her dismay, it was perhaps those words that sliced the deepest.
She wanted to defend herself. But he was right. It wasn’t a book. Not even close.
“And the characters. Klara. She seems like you in some ways. And you gave her a mom like your mom.”
“She’s not like me,” said Kate, then pressed her lips together, thinking better of finishing the thought: She doesn’t want a baby, and that’s all I want.
“Is Troy like me?” Ben pressed on. “Is that how you think of me? Am I that awful?”
“It’s fiction,” she snapped. “Troy is the villain. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Ben just shook his head.
“When did you read it?” she asked. She wasn’t sure what else to say.
“This morning, while you were sleeping in.”
He made it sound like a crime. This morning, while you were cooking methamphetamine in the garage. This morning, while you were robbing Starbucks.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said, and she couldn’t tell how she felt about it. She didn’t know if she was hurt or angry, both or neither.
“It’s good,” he said, looking at his lap again. “You’re a good writer. It’s just short. I don’t know why it took you so long to write that.”
“It didn’t. I mean, I’ve been stuck. I’ve been stuck for months.”
“She kills him.”
“Yeah,” Kate said. “That’s the only part I’ve added recently.”
“Once you started wishing that you could kill me. Once you realized that you really couldn’t get pregnant and started hating me for it.”
Kate crossed her arms. “No,” she told him. “We don’t have a great life insurance policy on you.”
Ben stared at her for a beat. The creases between his brows released, and he started to laugh.
Something shattered then. The sound of it—pure and stunned amusement. She began to laugh, too, and when was the last time they’d laughed together like that?
When Ben had finally collected himself, wiped his eyes, his face fell again, solemn.
“I wish it could’ve been easy, like it is for so many people,” he told her. “If it had, if it had just happened, we’d be golden. We’d be great. The way we always were.”
“We’d be happy,” said Kate.
“We still can be, no matter if it happens,” Ben said, and he sounded so sure, like it was so simple. “I’m still happy.”
“Are you?”
He nodded, then tilted his head to the side, studying her, taking her in, his wife in her worn athletic shorts and one of his T-shirts, hair still glossy and sleek because it’s the only thing she tended to every day.
“I love you, Kate. I love you so much.”
“You do?”
His face cracked, crooked grin, lightness shining through. “Are you going to just keep questioning everything I say, or are you going to come over here?” He patted the cushion beside him.
She watched him, not sure that anything had really been resolved.
“Do you still love me?” he asked. And the fear in his voice—it made her chest ache.
“I do,” she told him. And she did. “But I still don’t feel like going to dinner at the wharf tonight,” she added tentatively, not wanting to shatter the bridge between them.
Ben smiled gently, wryly. “Next time?” he asked. “I think it would be good for you. For us.”
Kate wasn’t sure, but she nodded. “Okay.”
And just as quickly as it had started, the fight was over. They were good at that, at moving on. They always were.
“Come here,” Ben said again. There was a softness in his eyes that Kate hadn’t seen in weeks. He opened his arms.
So she went. So no, they weren’t fighting.
So she doesn’t tell the police about what they said to each other the day Ben died. And she doesn’t tell them about her novel.
Now Kate sits in her living room, the curtains cracked so that she can see the road.
The soaking rain that had begun at some point while she was being interviewed in the police station still hasn’t stopped.
Water streams down her driveway, coalescing with the runoff that rushes down the street, down the hill, toward the gaping mouth of the sewer at the base of the cul-de-sac.
She’s expecting the police back at some point. They told her they would come by today to provide an update on their investigation. It had sounded like a threat.
They interviewed her for hours. They inspected her for blood spatter.
She gave up her clothes, and she consented to them searching the house.
She isn’t trying to hide anything. She understands that she’s the wife, and she was home.
She’s the most likely suspect for those reasons alone.
She just wants them to hurry up and clear her so that they can actually figure out who killed Ben.
She hasn’t been able to eat anything since before her husband died.
She hasn’t slept. When the officers dropped her off at home, it was nearly ten in the morning.
Kate went upstairs to the bedroom she had shared with Ben.
She showered numbly beneath scalding water, then dressed in one of Ben’s T-shirts and her own shorts.
She stood beside her bed and thought about pulling back the comforter.
She thought about climbing inside. She thought about the fact that her cold feet would never again push through tangled sheets to find Ben’s warm ones. She couldn’t get in.
She sits on the sofa in her living room and watches the rain while she waits for the police.
Kate must have dozed off, because there’s a knock on the door and she’s pushing herself up from the sofa, her mind foggy, neck stiff.
She rubs her eyes and goes to the door, darkness in her vision because she stood too quickly and she hasn’t eaten, but she pushes forward, hand to the knob, and foolishly she flings the door open without looking out the side window to see who’s on the porch.
Because she was dreaming of Ben. She dreamt that she couldn’t find him anywhere in the house.
She was looking in every room, calling his name, just as she’d looked for him last night.
But she was looking in places he would never be—under their bed, in the hall linen closet—as though they were playing a game of hide-and-seek.
In her dream, she was happy, and she was laughing.
Then someone knocked on the door, and Kate went down to answer it, and there he was. Ben, standing on the front porch.
Of course, it isn’t Ben on the porch, and it was the cruelest thing she could have dreamed.
“Come in,” she tells the detectives. She leaves the door open and returns to her sofa.
She’s been expecting them, so she probably should have made coffee.
She should offer them some, or some water.
Is there a package of cookies in the pantry?
The soft white-chocolate macadamia ones that Ben used to love?
Kate won’t eat them. He used to tease her for hating any dessert that had nuts or fruit.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Harvey?” asks Detective Scott, alarm in her voice. “Can I get you something?”
“Water, please,” Kate says, relieved that she’s not expected to play host in this scenario, too lost and dazed to ask the detective not to call her that.
“We just wanted to give you an update,” says Detective Perkins as Detective Scott disappears into Kate’s kitchen. “On where things stand.”
“Perk, you want water?” Detective Scott calls from out of sight.
“No, thanks,” he replies. He settles onto the armchair across from Kate.
Ben had picked out the chair when they were in the furniture store together.
They’d selected the sofa and two chairs and angled them around the fireplace.
They were planning to put their Christmas tree in this room, in front of the windows so that its lights could greet them as they pulled their cars into the driveway.
They were supposed to sit on the area rug while their kids unwrapped gifts.
“We spoke with Ben’s brother,” says Detective Perkins, and Kate feels her head swivel toward him.
“Ben isn’t close with his brother,” she says.
That was why she’d not wanted to call him.
She’s not spoken with Chris in a year. She isn’t sure if Ben had either.
Ben’s parents died during the first five years of their relationship, and Chris lived in South America.
Perhaps that was why their bond became so close, so quickly. She was all he had.
“Well,” Perkins says softly, “that’s his family, aside from you. So we had to notify him.”
Kate nods, looks down at her lap, hot tears pooling. A glass of water appears on the coffee table in front of her, and she takes it. She drinks until the dryness leaves her throat.
“What about Ethan?” she asks, horrified, glass sliding between her fingertips. “Who will call Ethan?”
The detectives glance at each other. “Who?” asks Scott.
“Ben’s best friend. They’re very close.”
“We’ll want to speak to him anyway,” Scott tells her gently. “I’m sure he will find out very soon.”
How? Kate wants to ask; then she realizes that her nightmare has only just begun. There will be a funeral to plan. She’ll have to tell Ben’s work. Media will hover around her, around her house. Drones have probably already snapped pictures from above to post on the news.
“As far as the investigation goes,” Perkins says, “we’re processing physical evidence. It’s possible there is DNA of Ben’s killer on his body. Under his nails, for instance. We’ll get results in the next few days. The autopsy will be Tuesday.”
Kate feels herself shaking her head sharply, as though that could clear the image of Ben in a silvery fridge drawer, the sound of a saw whirring as they cut through his bones.
“We’re interviewing all of the neighbors and requesting security camera footage,” Scott adds quickly.
“It’s not really that sort of neighborhood,” says Kate.
She and Ben hadn’t even considered getting a security system or cameras.
Not even a video doorbell to look over their packages.
She’d already told them this. They’d felt secure here.
It was one of the reasons they’d left the city and chosen this quiet street.
“Some people may have them,” says Perkins, almost defensively.
“So you don’t have any idea who did it?” She can’t bring herself to say it—what happened to her husband. “I mean, what if they come back?”
“Not yet, Mrs. Harvey. But it’s not likely the person would come back. They’d surely be caught.”
Kate watches him. After he kills me, you mean? He won’t get away with it twice?
“Is there somewhere else you can go?” Detective Scott asks softly, and Kate’s eyes tilt toward her face.
She’s comically pretty, model tall and thin, her blazer austere, blouse crisp, and Kate can see the gun winking at her hip.
“If you don’t feel safe here. And it would be a good idea if you could stay somewhere else. In the area.”
Those last three words are decidedly colder. The detectives might still suspect she was involved even though there wasn’t any physical evidence on her or in her house to indicate that she was.
Kate shakes her head. She doesn’t feel safe here anymore, yet she doesn’t feel capable of leaving.
“Or is there someone who can come stay with you?” Detective Scott continues.
Kate thinks of her mom. She hasn’t called her yet.
She wonders if her mom would get on a plane and fly up from South Carolina.
Would she burn meals for Kate in her own kitchen?
Smooth her daughter’s hair and ask with indecorous interest how much money she has?
Enough to get by? Would she smile to herself as she loaded dishes into Kate’s dishwasher, thinking with misguided glee that Kate’s grand and perfect life, the life she had always so resented, has crumbled and she needs her mommy after all?
“No,” says Kate.
“A friend?” suggests Detective Scott.
“Ben is my best friend,” Kate says plainly—a nonanswer, and that’s when she starts to cry. Because Ben is gone, he is past tense, but mostly because she feels as though it’s all her fault.