Lie in Wait (8 page)

As she opened the door to get into her car, North hurried behind her. “You—­”

She spun on him. “You are
not
my superior. You are not my partner. I don't answer to you or—­”

“Listen, you—­”

“I'll share what I learn.”

She got in and slammed the door.

As she wheeled her Peugeot around, she cranked down the window and said to North, “And don not ever put your hand on me again.”

It all sounded good. But it didn't make her feel any less mortified.

She pulled out on to Canaan Road, her hands trembling, finally taking her first full breath of the past half hour.

 

PART II

 

Chapter 15

B
ABY
J
ON CRIED
softly in Bethany's arms while Bethany waited for Jon at the Willow Inn's registration desk. The lobby smelled of potpourri, and the throw rugs on the pine floors depicted upland scenes of feathery setters and flushing game birds, hunters at the ready with shotguns. Frosted glass sconces cast a tarnished light on the dark woodwork, lending the air of a tobacconist's shop to the space. It was all too much for Bethany, the naturalist romanticism was tired and staid to her mind. Just because the inn had been built in the 1860s, did it mean the décor had to be ancient too? Perhaps the market expected doilies and gun dogs, so that is what it got. How would she know, she wasn't in the bed and breakfast industry. Whatever the case, the place would have to suffice. For now.

Jon burst into the lobby from the blustery day, stamping his wet boots as he pecked Bethany's cheek and put out his pinkie for baby Jon to squeeze. Baby Jon ignored the gesture.

Jon tapped the ser­vice bell, too loudly, so the tinny ring seemed to clang in Bethany's skull.

A woman bustled from the back room where a television played
Family Feud
. She fastened her white hair behind her head with bobby pins, then smoothed out the front of her corduroy dress. Even a Marriott or Double Tree would have been better than this, if there was one within fifty miles, Bethany thought.

The woman took a key down from a pegboard shaped like a maple leaf. She gave Jon and Bethany a broad smile that seemed genuine enough but must have gotten tiring after a while.

“We have you in the Ruffed Grouse Room,” the woman said. “A crib has been set up.” She put the key on the counter. Jon snatched it up.

“We offer a full breakfast in the Ethan Allen Fireplace Lounge,” the woman continued. “Right behind you through the French doors. Dial zero if you need anything. Anything at all. Anytime. I'm here all night.” She smiled.

“Thanks, Anna,” Jon said. How he knew the woman's name, Bethany did not know, or care. He knew everyone's name, it seemed.

Jon put his hand to the small of Bethany's back, picked up the suitcase, and guided Bethany up the stairs.

I
N THE
R
UFFED
Grouse Room, Jon and Bethany collapsed on the edge of the canopy bed.

The mattress was too soft and the place smelled musty.

Jon tugged off his boots. The room exuded the requisite colonial charm: the antique armoire, a dry sink, a stone fireplace, crown molding, wainscoting. The bathroom doorway was outlined with stenciled vines. A Homer knock-­off print of waterfowlers caught in a gale graced the wall above the fireplace. Doilies lay on the bedside tables. Doilies, doilies. It felt more like a museum than a place to spend a night.

The room was cool and drafty. Around the window, cold air bled in from the outside. The lace curtain rippled. “Can you turn up the thermostat in here?” Bethany asked.

Jon looked around the room helplessly, then went to the fireplace and flipped a switch. From beneath faux ceramic logs, gas lit to weak flames with a whoop and the faint smell of propane.
At least we don't have to build a fire from rubbing two sticks together
, Bethany thought and sagged against the headboard with the baby. She didn't know if Jon could start a fire from scratch. Not without bitching. Anything manual, Jon ended up bitching.

The events of the past day had left her beleaguered and bitchy herself.
Is nothing ever good enough for me
? she wondered. Her mother had often thought not.

Baby Jon whimpered. “Shhh. Baby,” Bethany said. “Momma's tired.” Her voice was a frayed thread about to break.

Jon touched Bethany's cheek and, unexpectedly, Bethany began to weep, taken aback by her own tears. She was so tired. So scared. Whoever had killed the girl in their house was still out there. What if they had been hoping she and Jon had been home, and killed the babysitter as a consolation? What if they still had sights on Jon and Bethany? And why did she keep thinking it was
they
. Two killers? It was irrational. The cops needed to locate the boy, whoever he was.

“I'm sorry,” Jon said and put a hand on her shoulder as she stifled her tears. She despised crying.
Put a good face on it
, her father had said when she was upset as a girl, tilting a martini glass or waggling his practice putter at her for emphasis.

“It will be all right,” Jon said.

“No. It won't.”

“I promise.”

“You can't promise that.” She clutched baby Jon.

“You'll see,” Jon said.

“I'm not going back there.”

“That's why I arranged to come here. We'll rest, give ourselves a break and—­”

“I'm never going back.”

Jon lifted his hand from her shoulder. “What are you saying?”

“I can't live there.”

“It's our
home
,” he said. “Your dream home.”

“Not anymore. Sell it. Sell everything in it. Sell the clothes and the furniture. The appliances and TV. Everything. I don't want anything from that place. Burn it to the ground for all I care.”

“The house didn't
do anything
.”

“You're shouting,” Bethany said.

“I am
not
shouting.”

“You're scaring the baby.”

Jon looked up at the ceiling and shook his head, as he always did when she called him out.

He let out a long breath, as he always did. Predictable Jon. “A person did it,” he said.

“A sick person. We had a monster in our house. Because of
you.
”

Jon cringed. “It was that boy, whoever he is,” he said, but his voice held no conviction, and the lost, searching look in his eyes seemed to betray thoughts to the contrary. “And they'll get him. They will. And we'll move back in just like we were. And that will be that.”

Bethany sat up rigid against the headboard. The baby was awake now, struggling to get loose of his swaddle and mewling. Sometimes the kid sounded like an animal instead of a human, Bethany thought. “No.
That won't
be
that
,” she said. “That girl will still be dead. That house will still be where she was murdered. I'll still be the one who found her. And I'll still be the one who insisted we go out to dinner. Pushed. To have my way, knowing you'd go if I pushed.
That
is
never
that.” Her gaze wandered about the room as if her eyes had come loose in her head.

“Fine,” Jon said. “You want me to sell it. I'll sell it. Sell everything. But
you
need to rest. Collect yourself.”

He attempted to help her lie down, but she shrugged him off.

“Sell it,” she said.

“I said I would.”

How did our conversations ever devolve to such a state
? Bethany wondered as she closed her eyes and tried in vain to wish it all away.

 

Chapter 16

I
N THE B
ATHROOM,
Jon splashed cold water on his face. He removed his glasses and set them on the sink edge, avoided his reflection. Often, he went weeks—­sometimes months—­without looking himself square in the eye, never really seeing himself. Just enough to shave. He'd done this for as long as he could remember. Since. Well. Now, he looked. Stared at a tired man pushing forty. In his mind he pictured himself as twenty-­five, still in law school, a time when he thought he'd had his future figured out, and his past behind him. A time when the architecture of his master plan to find peace through success was first set in motion.

He glanced in the mirror now to glance at the reflection of Bethany, who was now asleep on the bed behind him through the doorway. Her son was asleep, safe under her arm. What had happened in the house had crushed her. Jon had thought she'd suffer it better. The girl may have seemed nice, but Jon knew better. She'd been screwing in his home, for starters. Jon had known girls like Jessica in high school. He had all right. At the only party he'd ever attended, a bunch of girls who'd seemed shy in the school hallways had, with a few wine coolers in them, writhed in bikinis around a bonfire like genies wriggling from bottles. A girl in a kimono had handed him a bottle of schnapps. He'd taken a drink. And another. And another. His first taste of alcohol. A joint was passed. The girl in the kimono slipped her arm around him. “I'm, Suzy,” she'd said.

“Sushi,” Jon slurred as he swayed.

Underneath Sushi's loose kimono peeked powder-­blue terry-­cloth shorts and a tube top. She drank. Jon drank. She removed her kimono, took his hand and led him to the beach.

They laid on their backs on the lakeshore, drinking. Stars fell. The night hot. She'd lain on top of him. Her mouth on his. His head pounded. His hands searched. He'd wanted them down her shorts. Inside. He wanted, for once, to feel normal. To do what other teens did. To
be
normal. That night had been his chance.

They'd kissed. She'd moaned. Her eye shadow glittered. She'd pressed against him. Ground against him. He'd rolled over to lie on top of her. Her neck fiery hot. So soft. Such softness. His first feel of female flesh.

His heart had buzzed. He'd chewed her neck. She'd arched her back. The stars fell. She'd bitten his jugular. His head full of stars. He couldn't breathe. He'd inched her top down. “Hey,” she'd said. He'd put his mouth on her bare breast. “Hey.” His fingers had slipped in her waistband. She'd grabbed his wrist. He'd kissed her. She turned her face away and tried to speak. A racket in his head. All the jocks in school who had girls fawning over them got their way because they were confident. Aggressive. That was the way of things. So easy for them. So damned easy for everyone fucking else.

He'd kissed her harder. A window opened in his mind. A cold breeze blew through. He'd pushed two fingers into her. God. She'd scratched at his back. Clawed. He'd read about this. The throes. Three fingers. The fourth wouldn't go. Just wouldn't. He'd needed time, to keep working her, because something was wrong. He was not ready. He'd curled his fingers into a fist of rage.

He looked down on her. His knees had somehow pinned her arms. Sickened, he pulled his fingers from her and wiped them on his leg as she'd scrambled from underneath him and shrieked, “You fucker. You creep.” She rubbed her wrists where he'd held her. “Don't you know anything, you idiot?”

His neck hurt from looking up at her from where he lay in the sand, but he feared that if he tried to stand she'd run away. His skull felt fragile.

“You do this often?” she said. “Get girls drunk and—­”

“I've never even—­. You got me drunk.”

“It doesn't matter. A boy can be drunk, a girl can't. That's how it works.”

“You're creeping me out now,” he'd said, confused. Always so confused.

“Good. You should be creeped out. You're lucky I didn't scream rape.”

The word slammed inside him. Echoed in his head. He'd felt sick and terrified, and angry. So fucking angry and confused. Anything but normal.

He'd reached for her.

She'd slapped his face, hard, and run off.

He'd never gone to another high-­school party. Never looked at another girl. He'd feared the humiliation. Ridicule. Condemnation and disgrace. He'd had no way to know if what he had done was aberrant or typical. He had no friends to afford perspective. He'd had only himself and his grandparents, who were so out of touch with any generation that had come after their own.

For years, he'd feared what he was capable of doing and how to cultivate and to maintain an image of normalcy.

He thought of Jessica in the cellar of the creamery.

Everything that had come before had led to that moment.

He was a fly caught in the web of his own lies.

J
ON LAY
IN
bed beside Bethany, not quite touching her.

He watched her sleep. Her eyeballs shifted beneath their lids, as if still trying to see.

She was lovely. So lovely.

Each time he watched her sleep, the sweet calm of her face left him overcome with a sense of sorrow, guilt for all the times he'd treated her poorly, argued, turned away.

He wanted to wake her, felt an urge to confess to her things he had never told another soul. He felt compelled to lay himself bare. Let her see him, know him, for who and what he was, whatever the cost. Even if he lost her. If he did not do it now, he never would. He felt the truth in him. It lay burrowed deep, cold and sour, a slow-­working poison he needed to bleed out.

He thought about the messages he'd erased from his voice mail.

That voice.

It turned his blood to dust.

He slipped his cell phone from his pocket and brought up the e-­mail with the

subject line: “You Should Have Helped Me.”

The e-­mail read:

You have a week to confess on your own.

Then, I tell them how sick and evil you are.

Jon deleted the e-­mail, knowing it would do no good. Nothing was ever hidden forever, he'd begun to realize.

He rested a fingertip on his wife's wrist, his hand shaking uncontrollably.

Her wrist was so slender, so warm. His own flesh cold.

He felt a pulse at his fingertip but he did not know if it was her pulse or his own.