Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The argument about the gun happens while I'm arranging olives, which is not where I meant to have it.
Henry is due at eight. It's ten to. David is opening the wine he brought last night, the same wine he carried in without once asking what time our guest was coming. He hasn't mentioned Henry since I texted him, and I haven't brought it up. I empty olives into a bowl because my hands need a job.
And then I say it without planning to.
"You had a gun in the house for two years."
David doesn't stop with the corkscrew. "Yes."
"And you never thought to tell me."
"No."
"That's it? No?" I say. "I thought we agreed we wouldn't have any secrets."
"Would you have let me keep it if you knew?"
"No."
"There you go."
There's a pause.
"When did you get it?" I ask. “And why?"
He sets the bottle down. He's still in the good half of the evening, the pre-dinner calm, and I watch him decide how much of this to discuss now, with a guest ten minutes out.
“Look, I bought it in Oregon," he says. “We were moving to a house on a dead-end road.
You aren't driving. You were sleeping badly.
I was going to be away for work. I planned to tell you.
I just wanted to know that if something ever happened, you had an option.
But nothing did. And I forgot about it. I mean, think about it, Mallory.
We've been here two years and it's been so peaceful.
" He says it evenly, full of reason. It’s the same voice he uses on frightened families in corridors.
"I keep it latched. I keep it where you'd never go. I’ve never once taken it out. "
"Until two nights ago, when a police officer asked and you said yes, right there in front of me. That's when I found out my whole marriage had a locked cupboard in it I didn't know about."
"Mallory, let’s not blow this out of proportion.”
"I keep asking myself why you didn't tell me." I hear my voice climbing and bring it down, because of the time. "And the only answer I get is that you knew what I'd say."
Now something comes into his face, the first real thing all evening.
"You'd have said get it out of the house.
I would have argued. You'd have cried. It would have become this enormous thing between us about safety and control and what you can bear.
And at the end of it I'd either have a wife who felt unsafe in her bed, or a gun in a storage unit doing nobody any good.
" He spreads his hands. "So I made a call.
" He picks the bottle back up. "I'm sorry. I should have told you."
"It's not about the gun," I say quietly. "It's that you can keep a thing from me for two years, completely, and I'd never know. That's what I found out the other night. Not that we own a gun. That you can do that."
He goes still.
The doorbell rings. Its new chime, which we're both still learning, sounds absurdly cheerful in the kitchen. David holds my eyes a second past the moment, his jaw tight.
"That's your guest," he says.
Then he goes to answer the door, and the moment closes over like water.
Henry has brought flowers, which is exactly wrong and exactly right. You bring flowers to a woman who has been through something. It's a kind thing to do, and it makes David stand a half-inch taller in his hallway.
"For the house," Henry says, handing them past me to David, which is clever, giving them to the man. David takes them, because what else do you do? Now my husband is holding a bunch of white stock flowers like a groomsman who's lost the wedding.
"Henry," David says. "Please, come in. I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done. Today. The other night. Everything."
"Ah, I just did what anyone else would have."
"You're too modest," David says. "Not everyone would."
And they just look at each other in the hallway, the two of them, and it's almost warm, almost the thing it's pretending to be. Then we go into the dining room.
It goes wrong so slowly that I can't point to where or when it happened.
The food is fine. The wine is better than fine, and I drink more of it than I should.
I watch the two men be careful with each other across the table.
David asks Henry about the security business.
Henry answers easily, unhurried, and every answer is the one you'd expect.
Monitoring contracts, installs, callouts.
It occurs to me that his whole trade depends on people being frightened.
"One thing I did notice today," Henry says. "You'll want that back wall of the addition closed up before winter. It's still open boards and weather wrap out there. From a security standpoint, it's the weakest part of the house."
David tells him the contractor stopped returning his calls, and the plywood has held off the rain well enough since.
"It isn't urgent," Henry says. "Just something I'd move up the list."
David nods once. "I'll chase the contractor. Or find another.”
Then he sets his glass down.
"So," David says, "how did you end up getting interested in the Oregon murders?"
"My sister," Henry says, casually taking a sip of his wine.
He'd told me this, on his step, the first day I met him. I watch him tell David, and it's almost word for word the same. I find myself listening not to the story but to the telling of it, the evenness, the way it comes out already worn smooth.
"They never caught whoever was responsible?" David asks.
"No," Henry says. "It's believed it's the work of one man. They call him the Cascade Killer."
"How could they be sure?"
"Of?"
"That it's one man."
Henry's hand tightens around his glass. "He assaulted the females."
"I imagine with advancements in DNA, finding him might become possible," I say.
"If he left behind his DNA," Henry says. "It's a costly endeavor. It requires a police department willing to follow that trail. And from what I can see, no one has pursued it. The murders stopped two years ago."
"I'm sorry," David says. "That's a terrible thing to carry."
"It's why I got into security.” Henry turns his glass.
"You can't fix the one that happened. So you spend your life making sure it can't happen to the people near you. I know it’s not rational.
My therapist would tell you it's grief with a tool belt on.
" He smiles. "But it put four cameras on your home today, so. "
"And we're grateful," David says, before rising from the table and collecting the empty bottle. "More wine?"
"I'm good, thanks," Henry says.
As David gets another bottle, Henry calls out.
"So, David, Mallory said you worked at the hospital?"
"Yeah, I'm an attending surgeon. Though that might change with the Division Chief promotion," David says.
"Ah," Henry says, cocking his head.
David returns.
"It's still to be decided." He takes a seat.
"So that's what brought you out here from..."
"Oregon," David says.
"Oregon. Right." Henry sets his glass down. "Attending surgeon. I imagine that takes you out at all hours."
"It does."
"And how do you find that, Mallory?" Henry asks.
I exchange a glance with David.
"It has its challenges, but it's his career, so I support him in that."
Henry nods, his gaze moving between us.
"That's why I appreciate what you did the other night," David says, taking another sip of his drink. "I forgot to ask. What were you doing nearby? There was a storm, right?"
"You don't have to answer that," I say.
"No, it's fine. I got caught out in it, on my evening walk." Henry says it gently, still smiling. "And look, I understand the question. Having your neighbor turn up out of nowhere. I'd be wary of me too."
David doesn't answer that, and the not-answering is loud.
It's the mention of the Ericksons that moves the conversation forward.
"So what do you think about the Ericksons?" I ask.
I bring them up because we’ve sat here for an hour and nobody has said their names, and that makes them the only thing I can think about. I say something about Rodriguez, about how he doesn't believe it was random either.
"You've been looking into it," Henry says.
“No,” David says before I can reply. "She's been resting. Isn't that right, Mal?"
He says it lightly, over the top of me, and I feel my hand go flat on the table. I've seen him do it before. It still lands like a slap.
"I've been doing a little reading," I say. "That's not the same as looking into it."
"Mallory."
"I have a laptop and two working eyes, David. I've been reading the news like everyone on this road."
"And I asked you not to. Your therapist’s been asking you not to, and you're doing it anyway."
He’s just told Henry from up the road that I have a therapist. I watch him realize it a half-second after I do.
And then he does the thing he does, the appeal to the other adult. "Henry, talk some sense into her. You'd know, wouldn't you? You've been through something like it. You went looking, after your sister. Tell her honestly whether it helped."
And Henry looks at me. Not at David. At me.
"It didn't help," he says. "I'd be lying if I told you it did.
" He turns his glass a quarter turn on the cloth.
"But I don't know that I'd have survived not doing it, either.
That's the part nobody warns you about. You aren't choosing between the healthy thing and the unhealthy one.
You're choosing between two things that cost you. "
David says nothing.
"Can I ask you something?" Henry asks, and he's still looking at me. "Those clippings. The ones that came to your door by mistake." A pause. "They're all from Oregon. You said you were a crime journalist. Do you remember any of those cases?"
The table goes quiet.
Something turns over in me, slow and cold, a déjà vu with no picture attached, gone before I can hold it. I open my mouth.
"That's enough," David says.
He doesn't raise his voice. He sets his knife and fork together on his plate, careful and deliberate, then looks at Henry.
"You have to understand, Henry, Mallory has a diagnosis," David says. "A real one. Her memory was affected by a car crash a couple of years ago. Her old line of work isn't something I want dredged up for the sake of interesting table talk. She's been through enough. We both have."
"Of course," Henry says at once, all contrition. "My apologies. I wasn't aware you were in an accident. You're right. That was thoughtless of me. I'm sorry."
I wave him off. "Henry, it's fine. With David being a doctor, he tends to be slightly overprotective."
"Some would call that caring," David adds, raising his eyebrows.
I reach over and squeeze his hand. "And I love you for it, hon, but you heard Kane. I'm making progress."
I sit between the two of them, my hand over David's, pretending everything is fine, and I think, why is he so frightened of me remembering?
I mean David.
Henry says nothing. He watches my face as I search for the answer, as though the searching tells him more than the answer ever could.
After the evening is over, David steps outside with Henry. They talk on the porch, and I hear it because my good ear faces the open door, and I’ve learned in this house to listen.
I'm clearing plates I shouldn't be lifting. Their voices drift back to me in pieces over the cicadas, David's low and level, Henry's lower.
"...appreciate everything you've done," David is saying. "I mean that. Oh, and what I said earlier about not encouraging her with the Oregon thing. I realize that may have come out harsh. It's just that Mallory's fragile in ways that aren't obvious, even to her."
"How does that work, anyway?"
"It's dissociative amnesia," David says. "The trauma is walled off. She kept everything else, language, competence, the years before it. What she lost is the night itself and the months on either side."
"And it doesn't come back?"
"It can. It doesn't always. And forcing memories back can be highly dangerous and psychologically destabilizing."
I go still at the sink, listening to my husband explain my condition to Henry.
What follows is a pause and the scuff of shoes on the driveway. "It's a good life you've got here, David. Truly. The house, the view, her. A man could look at all this and understand exactly why you'd want to keep the world out of it." Another pause. "I'd protect it too. Whatever it took."
I stand in my kitchen with a stack of plates against my strapped arm and I wait for David to answer.
He doesn't.
Then a car door closes. An engine growls. I hear the gravel and see bright headlights flash across the ceiling. Then Henry is gone up the dark road. David comes back in. He doesn't look at me. He looks at the plates in my arms and lifts them from me, gently, and sets them by the sink.
"You shouldn't be doing that," he says.
"David. What was that, out there?"
"Nothing." He runs the tap. "I find Henry a little odd. Don't you?" I don't answer. David won't meet my eyes. He watches the water. "Go to bed, Mal. You look tired."
I go, because my shoulder is screaming and the wine and the pills have made a fog of me, and I can't make sense of what he just said.
But at the top of the stairs I stop and look back down at my husband standing at the sink with his back to me, not washing anything, just standing, both hands flat on the counter and his head down.
And I think, for the first time, that my husband is frightened.
Not of Oregon, but of the man we just had at our table.