Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Julia doesn't offer me wine, which is how I know it's serious.
I'd walked Luna down to her place in the last cool of the morning, my arm finally out of the strapping. The freedom made it ache.
Julia met me at the side gate in running clothes, hair up, wearing no makeup. She still looked beautiful. She took one look at my face and said, "Okay. Kitchen. Let's talk."
Her house is all glass and water and pale stone, a home right out of a magazine.
She's arranged it so that wherever you sit you're looking at the lake.
Normally she'd be telling me what she wanted to do to the room before we'd even sat down.
Today she just puts coffee in front of me and sits down to wait, her hands folded on the stone.
Luna lies on the floor between us like a referee.
So I bring her up to speed.
I tell her about the gun. David's gun. About the app that watches us both, and how it caught me at Henry's and David called it a glitch.
About a name on David's phone just after seven.
Lena Holloway. How he stepped out for party errands and drove to the hospital instead, and never picked up when I called.
About how I sat up watching a green dot until half past ten.
Then I tell her about Henry. The room at his house. The victims. The place where I felt more like myself than I've felt in two years.
Julia listens to all of it without moving, which is not like her. When I finish she doesn't say anything at first. Then, very carefully, she says, "I want to say the David things first, because they're easier."
"They're not easier."
"They're easier for me to say to you." She turns her cup.
"Starting with the gun, because the gun's the one I can explain away for you.
A man can keep a gun for a hundred dull reasons.
Two years forgotten in a cupboard is more sad than sinister.
It isn't proof of anything beyond a forgetful mind.
The deeper question is what else is in that house you know nothing about.
" She sets the cup down. "But the name, and the hospital.
" She clicks her lips. "A strange woman calling him at seven, and a lie about where he went.
Mallory. You know what that adds up to, in any other kitchen in America. "
I raise a protesting finger. "Don't."
"An affair. That's what it looks like. That's what it looked like the second you said the name.
" She holds up a hand. "I'm not saying it's true.
People lie about ordinary things every day.
I'm saying that if my David had a Lena calling at seven and then lied about going to the hospital, I'd have looked a little closer at his phone by now, and I wouldn't have felt bad about it. "
"He's not cheating, Julia. He wouldn't." But I hear how it comes out. Julia hears it too. Neither of us says anything for a second, and the lake sits there being beautiful.
"Whatever," she says. "Park David. Because David isn't the one I'm frightened of. Answer this. The night the Ericksons died, the police went house to house down this whole road. They sat in my kitchen for the best part of an hour. They sat in yours. So they sat in his. What did he tell them?"
I shrug. "I don't know. I wasn't in the room."
"It hasn't once come up? Where he was, the night two people were killed?"
I exhale. “His alibi must have checked out." I hear myself reaching for it before I can stop. "The cops worked the whole street, and they never went back to him. If there'd been a loose thread, Rodriguez would have pulled it."
"Or there was nothing to pull, because there was no way to put him anywhere. He’s been on this road, what, a fortnight?
" She turns her cup on the stone. "I looked him up, by the way.
Middle of the night, like the sad case I am.
Henry Westburn, Hunts Point, security consultant.
There is almost nothing. No trail at all.
Everyone has something, Mal. Social media.
An ugly grad photo. He has less than nothing, and less than nothing takes work to build. "
That makes me laugh, and it surprises us both. "That isn't evidence. Not everyone is like you, Julia. He’s a man who likes his privacy."
"Maybe." She lets it go and comes at it from the side, which is how she always corners me. "The security system he put in your house. Does it keep what the cameras see?"
"Some of it. We haven't had it long." I don't know why I answer, except that it's true and she'd have it out of me either way. "It uploads to the cloud. You can pull it from a phone, a laptop, anywhere there's a signal."
"So a system like that, at his house, would show exactly where he was that night. Or where he wasn't. You know... whether it squares with whatever he told the police."
"We don't even know he's got it running at his place. He just moved in. And I'm not asking him, Julia. I am not going to stand in his kitchen and ask for his alibi."
“I will.”
I narrow my gaze. “No.”
"Then ask Rodriguez."
"And say what? That I've got a feeling?" I set the cup down harder than I mean to. "They wouldn't listen. And I'm not doing that to him, Julia. Henry's been kind to me."
"I know." She says it gently enough that it stops me.
"I know he has. But something about him still feels wrong, and I can't talk myself out of it.
Blame the podcasts if you want. I listen to four a week.
I see killers in delivery drivers and men buying oat milk.
" She holds my eyes. "You don't feel it? Not even a little?"
I don't answer. I just shrug. I watch her clock the shrug.
"He's in security," she says, quieter. "If anyone alive knows how to walk into a house and put an alarm to sleep, it's the man who fits the alarms."
"I thought of that," I say. "So I looked. The Oregon families didn't use the same company. Some didn't have a system at all. There's no thread there, Julia. No installer who touched all of them."
"Or he didn't need to be their installer."
That stops me for a second, because it's the one answer I didn't have ready.
And that is where I stop letting her run.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, he pulled two men off me in the dark, Julia. He saved my life."
"Yes. Funny how he was there."
I shake my head. “Oh, now you sound like David."
"There's a difference. David doesn't want another man in your life. I don't want you dead." She doesn't blink, which is worse. "You can't see it, because you've got a vested interest in those cases."
"Julia, listen to yourself for a second.
" I turn on the stool to face her. “Days ago it was David.
Now it's Henry. You've got two men in the frame and not one motive between them.
Why would Henry Westburn move here and kill two people he'd never laid eyes on?
He doesn't need their money. He doesn't want their house. He sure as hell doesn’t want attention.
" I let it hang there between us. “But do you know who did lock horns with Peggy and Brant?
More than once, in front of people? Chris. "
It's cruel and it's true, and I watch it go in.
"I'm not saying it wasn't Chris." She doesn't flinch, and that's worse than if she had. "God knows I'd put less past him this week than I used to. I'm saying Henry is hiding something. He's a little too good to be true."
"Why," I say, as dry as I can manage, "because he's single?"
“Yeah, he lives alone, has no history, and turns up out of nowhere being kind to lonely women." She counts it off on her fingers. "That should make you wonder, Mallory."
And it's so exactly her, so exactly the two of us, that I laugh, and then she's laughing too. For a second, it's an ordinary morning again, the two of us laughing over cold coffee.
Then she stops laughing and leans in.
"But wouldn't you like to know," she says. "For certain. Where he was that night. I could find out if he has a security system."
My head feels like it's going to explode.
"Don't." I see it coming and I get there ahead of her.
"And don't you get any ideas, either. You're not letting yourself into that man's house.
Not after a break-in on this road and two people dead.
You'd be on someone’s camera inside a minute and the police would throw the whole book at you. Absolutely not."
"I wasn't thinking of me." She lets the next part land soft. "I was thinking of you. He's warmed to you. You're the one he opens the door to. You’ve already been invited in. You'd only have to keep your eyes open while you were standing there."
"You're joking, right?" It comes out fast. "I'm not going through a grieving man's home, picking through his things, on the strength of a feeling in your gut. That's a vile thing to do to a person. I won't do it."
"Then let me." She says it like she's offering to pick up milk. "Your birthday's at the golf and country club, isn't it? You'll be there. David will be there. Henry, too, if he's working this hard to be part of your life."
"Julia."
"I'm just saying the house would be empty."
"No."
"That house will sit empty for hours. I would be quick. You could text me if he leaves the party."
"Absolutely not."
"Fine. I won't, but you really are a buzzkill." She lifts both hands. "Just think. If I don't show up, everyone will assume Chris is being Chris, which is depressing but convenient."
"That is not funny."
"It's a little funny."
"It's not."
Her smile fades first. "Come on, Mal."
"Stop." I put my hand on the stone between us. "Stop, Julia. I'm not being part of this."
"You wouldn't be part of anything. That's the whole point of it."
"No, because his place is probably locked up like a bank," I say over her. "He works for a security company. He may well have installed the system himself. It's the one house on this road you can't just wander into."
"Is it installed, though?" She tips her head. "He told you himself he hasn't finished unpacking. Boxes in every room. If he hasn't found his kettle yet, has he gotten around to wiring his cameras? Maybe there's nothing there to catch you at all."
"Then there's nothing to find, is there?" I open my hands. "No footage either way. And whatever else that man is, he is not someone who'd let himself be caught on a system he installed. Don’t be stupid. You’d be risking everything just to see what’s inside."
She goes quiet for a second. She looks past me for a beat, then back. I assume I've got through to her, relieved that common sense is winning.
"Maybe I'd find something else," she says. "Not the alibi. Something else he doesn't want found."
“You don’t give up. There's nothing else, Julia, and you're not looking for it,” I say. "Leave it. Please."
Finally, she nods.
She lets it go so easily that the knot under my ribs loosens all at once. I'm grateful, and I don't stop to wonder how a woman who has circled one thing for a whole hour can set it down between one breath and the next. I'm just glad. We leave it there.
Chris comes in while we're not looking.
He's just there, suddenly, in the doorway to the deck, shirtless and sweating and holding a protein shake. He’s thirty-two years old and built like it's a job. The temperature of the room changes, the way it always does when Julia sees him.
Luna is up off the cool floor before I've finished turning, a low sound starting somewhere in her chest. Chris looks down at her and says, "Hey!
" It’s just one syllable with a boot behind it, and she folds herself back down against the tile.
It's the same thing he does to Julia, only pitched down for a dog.
"Ladies." He says it like a wink. "What are we gossiping about today?"
"Girl talk," Julia says, and her voice has gone bright, a completely different tone. I watch her become smaller in her home.
"Don't let me interrupt." He comes to the island and reaches past Julia, his hand settling on the back of her neck.
The gesture is casual, almost proprietary.
She goes still beneath it, and I recognize it instantly.
The same way I go still under David's hand.
I know that. I know it from the inside. Then he's gone again, back out to the deck, and the room breathes.
Julia doesn't turn around right away. When she does, she pulls the collar of her top straight. As the fabric shifts, I see four small marks on her shoulder, going yellow-green at the edges. Fingermarks. A few days old.
“He grabbed me,” she says. “Tuesday. It doesn’t matter why.
It’s never really about the thing.” She says it lightly, and the lightness is the worst part.
"It's been getting worse for a while now.
The grabbing is new. I keep telling myself it's a bad patch.
That he's just stressed from searching for work and it'll pass.
Because that's easier than deciding it's just who he is now. "
She smooths the collar down.
“He held on longer than he needed to. He looked at me the whole time and told me, calm as anything, that I remembered it wrong. That I was making it into something. And for about an hour, Mallory, I believed him. I stood in my kitchen and rearranged what happened until it felt smaller, because that was easier than admitting what it was.”
“Kick him out," I say plainly, the way a friend is supposed to. "Julia. He could be gone by this evening. You know I'd help you. You know David would."
"This, from the woman who won't look at her husband's phone." She says it gently, but we both know what it is. A way out of the harder thing.
Then her face changes.
"I know what it's like," she says, "when a man decides what happened for you. When he tells you what you saw, what you felt, what you meant." Her eyes shine, but she doesn't let anything fall. "That's why I'm frightened for you. Not because I listen to too many podcasts. Because I know the look."
I reach across the island and take her hand. For a while we just sit there, two friends in a glass house over the water, both of us with men who decide what we remember.
Julia walks me to the gate. Luna leans against her leg, and Julia crouches, takes the dog's face in both hands, and says something to her I don't hear.
"Promise me something," she says, standing.
“What?"
"Promise me you won't be alone with Henry.
Not in that room, not in a car, not in your kitchen with David gone.
If you want to look at his files, you bring me, or you bring David, or you meet him somewhere public.
But not alone." She holds my eyes. "I can't do anything about the man in my house.
Let me handle the one on our street. Promise me. "
I love her. She sees people more clearly than anyone I know.
"I promise."
I say it standing at her gate in the morning sun, and I mean it.
That's the thing about a promise made to the person who sees you most clearly. For one warm, dishonest second, saying it feels close enough to being saved.