Chapter 19 To Kind of Kill
To Kind of Kill
Mitch’s love life hadn’t been particularly extensive, but Anna was the most selfless woman he’d ever known.
In the early hours of the morning, while she still slept deeply beside him, her leg curled softly around his, he wouldn’t have moved for anything in the world.
Gazing at the ceiling, he found himself wondering if any of this was real.
To reassure himself, he breathed in the scent of Anna’s skin, realizing in that moment that being intoxicated by a woman’s scent while she sleeps was already love.
“The workers aren’t coming in today,” she grumbled, half asleep.
“Sorry to hear that,” he replied, though he wasn’t sorry at all.
“It’s some religious holiday. Don’t ask me which one.”
“So we can spend the day together?”
“What about the shop?”
“Closed for religious reasons.”
“You’re getting better at the little white lies.”
“There’s a pretty lake about ten kilometres north of here. We could rent a rowboat.”
“About ten kilometres south, there’s my restaurant. We could put up the wall sconces in the dining room, deep-clean the kitchen equipment…”
Making Anna happy made Mitch happy, so to him it sounded like a perfect day.
* * *
He held the drill in one hand, a pencil clamped between his teeth to mark the places where the holes would go, while Anna held the sconce against the wall to make sure it was perfectly straight.
When it was mounted and lit, both Mitch and Anna felt as if they’d crossed some kind of threshold.
Anyone watching them would have been struck by their obvious ease and intimacy, and no one would have believed they’d spent only a single night together.
Some time later, Mitch was planing the pantry door (Anna had insisted, while putting dishes away in the china cabinet, that it rubbed at the top of the frame) when she suddenly froze, a sauceboat suspended mid-air.
“Don’t you want to know why?” she asked.
“Why the gravy boat should be on the lowest shelf?”
“Why I killed a man.”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“I’d rather not, actually. But if you ask me, I will.”
Mitch turned the planer back on and continued shaving down the door. “Was it an accident?” he asked, over the noise.
A splinter jabbed deep into his thumb.
“Not exactly,” Anna replied, moving a salad bowl only to set it back exactly where it had been a few seconds later.
“Murder?”
He yanked the splinter out, and his thumb started bleeding.
“Kind of,” she answered, her tone detached.
Mitch wondered, while she bandaged his thumb, what she meant by kind of.
If she’d said I kind of like him that would have made sense, but I kind of killed him made none at all.
Unless it had been an accidental murder, he thought.
He had no idea if an accidental murder was even possible, given that those two words contradicted each other.
There was no such thing as a kind of murder.
Killing someone while driving drunk, for example, was an accident, but it was still killing.
And Anna didn’t strike him as much of a drinker.
She’d brought tea to their riverside picnic, and they’d had water with their lobster fettucine at dinner.
Unless she was a recovering alcoholic? But Mitch dismissed that theory almost immediately.
He went back to work with the planer again – at the rate he was going, there would soon be room to climb over the door – and the more he thought about her kind of the more it gnawed at him.
If Anna had killed someone accidentally, she wouldn’t have needed to flee the country.
Even if she’d pushed an attacker off a balcony without meaning to send them over the railing, that would count as self-defence.
Anna didn’t have a violent temperament. But if she’d only kind of killed someone, then maybe she was only kind of responsible. That conclusion reassured him.
“One question,” he said at last, hanging the door back on its hinges. “Just one. Do you regret it?”
“No.”
Mitch left it at that. For the next half hour, neither of them said a word, each working busily in a silence that spoke louder than words.
Then, abruptly, Mitch was forced to reconsider his judgment of Anna’s temperament.
She had picked up a large hammer, and there was a look in her eyes that he had never seen before.
She smashed it into the tiles above the double sink, methodically destroying the lowest row, then the one above it.
She paused to assess the damage, then struck again, even harder, not stopping until she’d completely obliterated the third and fourth rows up.
“They weren’t straight!” she panted, on the verge of tears. “The grout will end up cracking and water will get in, and then mould will contaminate everything…”
Through the haze of dust, Mitch saw something in her eyes that went far deeper than misaligned tiles. He knew exactly how she was feeling.
“Pushing back the restaurant opening won’t fix anything. You’ve got stage fright, and that’s totally normal. You’re so talented, Anna. Everything is going to be fine.”
“Because there’s nothing to say it won’t,” Anna murmured, echoing her neighbour in the Great White North.
Mitch walked out to the little shed behind the restaurant, returned with a broom and a dustpan, and quietly swept up the dust and debris. He took one load to the trash, then made a second trip, this time returning with a box of fresh tiles and a tube of grout.
While he was repairing the damage, a truck pulled up in front of the restaurant, and two deliverymen began unloading stacks of tables and chairs.
Mitch watched Anna direct them as they arranged the furniture, changing her mind again and again until they abandoned everything in the middle of the dining room and left without even asking for a tip.
Watching them go, Anna wondered if Mitch’s faith in her bright future wasn’t slightly misplaced.
“You know,” he called from the kitchen, “for the bar – I have a great cocktail book. I’m sure if I had a good read-through, I could manage pretty well. I’ll come back tonight… er, after I close the shop. I should probably open for a few hours. Better for my wallet.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you know it’s a great cocktail book if you’ve never read it?”
Mitch was silent for a moment. Then: “What I meant to say was, if you need a pair of hands, mine are at your disposal.”
Anna kissed him. Game, set, match.
* * *
By eight o’clock that night, the dining room was starting to look more like an actual restaurant.
The walls were dry, the floors polished and the chandelier spilled a soft, golden light over the tables and chairs, though these were still a mess.
As Anna took in the results of a long day’s work, her nerves came rushing back.
Taking her in his arms, Mitch asked her to tell him honestly what she was thinking.
“Oh… it’s just that…” Her voice faltered.
“What’s wrong? Just say it,” Mitch coaxed.
“I don’t want you to judge me. I know how much trouble you’ve gone to help me. But today… I just felt like giving up.”
“And yesterday?”
“The same.”
“Okay. How many times have you felt this way, in total, since you started doing up this place?”
“At least ten.”
Mitch chuckled.
“It’s not funny.” She glowered.
“Ten times? Child’s play. When I was fixing up the bookshop, I almost threw in the towel about a hundred times.”
Anna caught sight of herself in the mirror and winced.
“The worst is behind you,” Mitch went on, pulling her close again.
He didn’t want to leave. Truthfully, nothing sounded better than spending another night with her. But one glance at his own worn and dishevelled appearance made the decision for him. If he hurried, he could still catch the last train.
Anna pulled a key from her pocket and, nodding to the van parked outside the restaurant, offered to drive him home.
“I rented it,” she said. “I have to go to an auction tomorrow. If I get lucky, I’ll come back with everything I still need for this place – and it’s a long list.”
* * *
As soon as they were on the road, Mitch offered to accompany Anna to the auction tomorrow; she’d need help loading up whatever she found.
“That’s sweet, but you still have a bookshop to run, and readers counting on you to make up for the five years of book shopping they’d lost to some absurd law. I’ll manage perfectly well on my own.” She always had, and she didn’t plan on changing that now.
They stopped for gas and grabbed dinner (sandwiches and chips) at the service station. They finally made it to Mitch’s apartment around midnight.
Admiring the bookshelves lining the walls of the living room, Anna noticed one thing she and Mitch didn’t have in common. There were no family photos displayed in her home.
They made love in the shower and collapsed into bed.
“If I close up a little early, I could come meet you,” Mitch murmured softly.
“You could just leave the heavy stuff in the van. The dishwasher, the freezer, the fridge – they must weigh a ton, and if you’ve already unloaded everything else, I can help set those up. That’s not such a bad idea, right?”
But Anna was already asleep. Or pretending to be.
* * *
When Mitch woke up the next morning, he found a note on the pillow next to him.
Be good. Look after your customers and don’t worry about me. I’ll come and see you as soon as I can. Don’t you dare come to me.
Kisses (on the lips),
Anna
He read it twice. It was brief – but the thought of those kisses was enough to brighten the rest of his day.
By mid-morning, while he boxed up unsold books (always leaving a copy of each behind on the shelf, just in case), Mitch caught himself wondering whether his thirst for revenge still burned as intensely.
The answer, he realized, must be no – or he wouldn’t be asking himself the question.
But as soon as he’d answered that one, a new question crept in: could he ever be truly happy if he let it go?