Chapter 67
Henry is trying to move on.
His understanding has settled, hardened.
The wife is never going to like him. She is never going to love him.
It doesn’t matter that her husband is gone or that Henry was the one to do that for her, to free her from her unhappy marriage.
She doesn’t want to be with him. She doesn’t even want to be his friend.
Please, she said. Go. Leave. The fear on her face.
It wasn’t the husband in the way after all. The problem was her all along—why is it that every single one he picks turns out to be such a bitch?
Vivian. Sarah. Candace. Kelly. Krista. Esther. Ashley. Lacey.
Kate.
Move on.
This is what he tells himself on Wednesday evening as he stares through the front window, watching the wife’s house.
Yesterday, he’d directed the police toward her.
Later, he saw two officers arrive to pick her up.
The detectives must have shown her the email.
And she must have denied that she’d sent him her manuscript, but he’s not sure that matters, not if they already see her as a liar.
The detectives will be back to him soon.
She claims she didn’t send this, they’ll say, and he’ll double down. She would say that, wouldn’t she?
He thinks he was pretty convincing. He told the detectives that he hadn’t yet shared his feedback on the manuscript with her because the whole thing made him uncomfortable.
It was so vivid, and it seemed autobiographical.
He was sorry for not mentioning it the first time he spoke to them.
He really did want to give her the benefit of the doubt, and it seemed silly to suggest that her manuscript could mean anything, but as the days passed and no other suspect emerged, he realized that he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t tell them about it.
He doesn’t regret it. It’s what she deserved.
And she will know, obviously, that she did not send that email to him.
She will fear him even more. Her missing keys, the wedding photos, those reminders of her husband gone.
He must have unsettled her, and still, she didn’t turn to him. She saw him as the problem.
But that doesn’t matter. It was over already. And now she’s gone. He just watched her garage door rise, saw her hurriedly loading bags into her car, then slowly back out, following her friend’s car out of the driveway, then up the street.
A man is dead. But that man isn’t Henry. It’s time to move on. He feels as though it’s a loop, neatly closed—the husband dead, the wife under suspicion.
The unfairness of it, that his original plan failed, that she rejected him—rage suddenly grips him, white knuckled. He’s trying to move on, but it’s not that simple.
He turns from the window, gaze catching on a picture frame resting on the end table beside the sofa, almost exactly where his hand hangs.
It’s squat and gold, and Henry picks it up.
Inside is a photo of Laurel, her baby resting on her chest. She’s smiling sleepily and close-mouthed.
This frame has been here forever, and Henry sits here often.
He could have sworn it used to have a picture of him and Laurel when they were little.
He thought it was one of them eating sno-balls on the front porch, sticky hands clutching Styrofoam cups, lips and chins stained red.
Henry studies the image for a second longer before he hurls the frame against the wall.
It falls to the area rug with a dull thud; then a stunned silence rings out briefly, as though the house, the picture frame itself, cannot believe what Henry has done.
Henry, too, is stunned. He’s always so controlled, temper in check.
He swallows anger like it’s alcohol, lets it hum in his veins and change him until he’s ready to act.
Then footsteps pound, devouring the silence, and his mother rushes into the room, eyes cartoonishly wide.
“What was that?” she asks when she sees him standing there, her gaze darting around the room until it lands on the picture frame resting on the floor, then travels up to the hole it made in the wall, the pale-sage paint chipping, shedding drywall dust.
“Jesus, Henry. I thought someone was breaking into the house.”
“This early? Through the front?” Henry asks, cutting into her hyperbole, her melodramatic bullshit.
“What have you done?” She steps closer, so Henry backs away.
She runs a finger along the crumbling line of drywall, only a few inches long, before picking up the picture frame and examining it.
She doesn’t put it back onto the table, just clutches it against her chest like it’s a weapon she’s afraid to use.
“We are going to list this house for sale soon, Henry. You should be helping us get it ready, not throwing things at the wall. You’ll have to repair that.”
“Okay,” says Henry, but in a way that means, Yeah, right.
As if he’d even know how to repair drywall.
“A Realtor is coming on Friday morning,” his mother presses. “Dad is still at the office. He’s working on his retirement plans. We are going to leave, and I need you to help get the house ready.”
He laughs—that she thinks she can direct him like this, like he’s still a little boy.
Her face darkens.
“This is happening,” she says, tight and clipped.
“We are leaving this neighborhood. We are going to visit some condos near Laurel this weekend. And she found this adorable single-story place only a five-minute drive from her house. She started looking online for us as soon as I told her about the murder. She is so worried.”
She makes it sound like Laurel, with her worry and her baby, is a hero, like she solved the murder on her own. And wouldn’t that be a twist?
“That’s nice of her,” Henry says placidly. His anger has drained as hers has intensified.
His calmness infuriates her.
“Why did you do that?” With one hand, she waves wildly toward the damaged wall, still holding the picture frame against her with the other. “What do you have to be so angry about?”
He refuses to answer.
“You act like you are so affronted all the time, Henry.” She spits the words.
She’s sparking, rabid with anger now, like he’s never seen her before.
A switch flipped, a mask drawn down. “Like you are a victim, like nothing is your responsibility and it’s all so unfair.
But what is so unfair about your life? We have given you everything. ”
He stares at her.
“Why?” she demands again. “Why are you like this?”
She wants so badly for him to speak, so he won’t.
He won’t tell her what he did for Kate. That he watched her for weeks, for months.
That he plotted and inserted himself into her life and that even after everything, she doesn’t want him.
She never did. He won’t tell her that it wasn’t fair the way all the others treated him.
That Lacey ruined his life simply because she had the power to do so.
He wouldn’t have hurt her. He wouldn’t have hurt any of them.
He won’t tell her that her disappointment makes him feel hollow, like he is nothing.
Like she, his own mother, doesn’t love him.
He watches her, and he does not speak, and she can’t help but let her fury drive her words.
“We are moving out of this house,” she says, voice like a rubber band pulled taut. “So you need to start thinking about that. You need to start making plans. You need to figure out where you’ll go.”
Moving. Leaving this house, this neighborhood, behind. Leaving Kate, leaving the murder investigation, for a new city. A new home.
A new group of women to choose from.
Her eyes flicker over him, fearful. “Where are you going to go?” she presses, desperate now.
A shame to waste it, everything he’s done. But perhaps that’s not the way to look at things. He’s proved what he’s capable of—that he’s a person who can kill. Not just that. He’s a person who can get away with it.
Henry lets the silence ripple and rise, until his mother’s frustration is near to overflowing. Then he shrugs. “I’ll go with you,” he tells her. “Make sure the new place has a bedroom for me.”
The look on her face—at last, he feels his own anger, over the wife, over everything, releasing.
He thought he was just saying it to piss her off.
But her horror has turned him righteous, and he thinks, why not?
Why not go with them? He will share a small condo or single-story house with his parents, if that’s what he has to do to get out of here.
Someplace new. A fresh start.