The Other Widow (29 page)

“So why did you call Jon?” she says when they're on the highway to Waltham. “I'm happy for the ride.
Ecstatic
for the ride! But, this is a little weird, isn't it, Edward?”

He shakes his head.

“So are you stalking me?”

“Jesus, Karen. I was worried about you. I called to remind you to set your alarm and you didn't answer, so I phoned Jon. Call me an alarmist.”

“Good one!” Karen says, but Edward just looks at her blankly across the front seat. Definitely not a punster. Karen yawns, adjusts her seat belt. The play was strangely restful, far less dramatic than her life at this point—a handful of characters milling around, saying meaningful and esoteric things.

She turns up the music whispering from Edward's dash—an old CD. “
Bringing It All Back Home
,” she says. “Wow. Love it!” In the striped pulse of streetlights, Edward smiles.

He pulls into her driveway and pushes against his heavy door, comes around to walk her inside.

“Thanks, Edward. You saved me.” Karen swishes her hand around her purse, fumbles for her keys in the dark of the front porch.

Edward takes a step toward the front door. “Where's Antoine?” he says. “Shouldn't he be yapping his annoying little head off by now?”

“He's had a trauma,” Karen says.

“The break-in. Right. Are you okay with being here alone?”

“Well, yeah.” She turns the key and Edward tromps right along with her into the foyer. “I guess so. I mean, they only took a couple of things, and I should get the iPad back tomorrow.”

Edward nods, but he doesn't look as if he's in a hurry to leave. In fact, he moves a little closer. He moves very close. “Karen,” he says, and his voice is low. Soft. For a split second, Karen thinks about her dream. That silly dream. She takes a step backward, but Edward moves along with her, puts his hand on her shoulder, leans forward as she takes a few more steps away.

An earsplitting sound cracks the night. A siren. The alarm. “Oh,” she says. “Oh shit!” Antoine runs from the back bedroom, yapping and snarling. The phone rings in her bag. She stands frozen in the doorway.

“Turn it off!” Edward yells into the racket. “Turn the damn thing
off
!”

Her hands shake on the monitor, the tiny screen. Three. Six. Nine. Four. No, she thinks. Wait. Three. Nine. Four. Six. She punches in the code and hits
DISARM
and the sound stops, leaving only Antoine's barking and the ringing phone. She empties her purse out on the sofa and grabs her cell. “It's okay,” she tells the caller. “It's me. I just forgot to punch in the—”

“Password?”

“I just put it in.”

“No. Not the code. It's a word. When you set it up, you gave us a password.”

“Oh,” she says. “I think my husband . . .” What was it? She can't think. Antoine's making so much noise. “
Antoine!
” she yells.

“Right. That's it. You have a nice night, Mrs. Lindsay.” The woman hangs up. Antoine whimpers. When Edward moves forward, Antoine snarls and snaps.

“Listen,” Karen says. “I'm really tired, Edward. I hate to be rude, but—”

“Sure.” He shoots Antoine a scathing look and reaches for the door. “I'd reset this thing before you go to bed,” he says. “But do me a favor and wait until I'm long out of here.”

“Thanks again,” she calls from the doorway, but this time Edward doesn't even turn around. He waves his hand above his head and beeps his car door open, and Karen stands freezing on the front porch for a minute, watching him go. She closes the door and resets the alarm, coaxes Antoine out from under the couch, where he's flattened himself after all the drama in the foyer.

XXXV

DORRIE

D
orrie stands for a second on her front porch, searching the street before she turns to close and lock the door behind her. Lily glances up from the dining room table, where she sits, a pile of books and papers stacked in front of her. “What happened, Mom?” She chews on her pen.

“My car broke down.”

“So—all this time?”

“I went to see Jeananne before that,” Dorrie tells her. “She's coming around. We even had a conversation. Sort of.”

“Wow! That's really awesome, Mom!”

“So did you guys eat?” Dorrie opens a can of vegetable soup and pours it in a pan, switches on the burner.

“I've been munching. Dad wasn't home, either.”

“No?”

“Uh-uh.” Lily turns back to her papers. “What do you think about global warming?”

“Totally opposed to it.” Dorrie grabs a loaf of ciabatta bread. “Could you eat a grilled cheese?” she says, and Lily nods.

“Can I interview you on it? Global warming? We have to interview six people for science, but two can be family members.”

“Sure. So did your dad call?”

“Yeah. He called from work to say he'd be late.”

“Did he say why?”

“No. He might have said he was going to a meeting,” Lily says. “I can't remember.” She mumbles this. She has her hands full with global warming.

When Samuel comes in, Lily's gone upstairs to talk to Michael from science class. Very cute, apparently, the science nerd. And, from what her daughter's told her, also something of an authority on global warming.

“Car's in the driveway.” Samuel glances at the soup in the pot. “Did you eat?”

“Well, yes, Samuel. It's eight thirty. Where were you?”

“Where
was
I? Fixing your car!”

“Before that, though. Lily was a little worried,” she lies.

“I called her. She didn't sound worried.”

“So
where
were you?”

“At a meeting,” Samuel says. “And, by the way, Dorrie.” He stops. He takes his bowl of soup to the table.

“I made an extra sandwich,” she says. “It's in the toaster oven.”

“Thanks.” Samuel grabs a plate and sticks the sandwich on it, tromps back to the dining room.

“ ‘By the way, Dorrie,'
what
?”

“Your car,” he says, but his voice is muffled with grilled cheese sandwich. “Someone messed with one of the ignition wires.”

“The . . . wires? I checked them, actually. They all
seemed
to be—”

“They weren't.”

“So . . . what? Maybe I went over a bump too fast or something?”

Samuel shakes his head. “It's fixed now,” he says. “I taped it back together but it's just an emergency fix. I need to replace the wire.”

“Thanks, Samuel.” Dorrie slumps down at the table.

“What's going on, Dorrie?” Samuel has stopped eating. He stares at her. His lovely eyes are steely gray, squinting over the grilled cheese sandwich.

Dorrie looks away. “I don't know.” She'll give him crumbs, glimpses, state the obvious. “I mean everything is— There's what happened to my boss and then Jeananne's accident. And now my car! It's very . . .
disturbing,
to say the least.” Samuel doesn't answer. He sits, watching her as if he thinks she might say more, tell him what's going on. “Could it have happened by accident?” she says, breaking the silence, chipping at the wall of lies between them.

Samuel looks up. “I mean, I guess it's
possible
. Not likely, though. Have you had anyone check your engine lately? Put in oil?”

“No one besides you. Would it be dangerous? The wire being cut?”

He shrugs. “Not really. It would just mean you were stuck wherever you were when it happened.”

Dorrie gets up and clears the table, bangs the plates around in the sink.

“So who would want to do that, Dorrie? Who'd want to screw with your car?”

“I don't
know
.” She turns to face him, because at least here she's being totally honest. “I have no
idea,
Samuel!”

“Mom?” Lily stands in the doorway.

“What? Sorry, honey. What?”

“The interview.” Lily fidgets with a steno pad. “It's due on Thursday.”

Dorrie nods. Samuel looks confused.

“Is everything all right?” Lily plunks down next to Samuel at the dining room table.

“Sure. Everything's— It was scary, that's all. Being stuck like that.”

“Why don't I interview Dad first then?” Lily clicks her pen. “I can get you after.”

“Hey, go for it,” Samuel says, and Lily writes his name at the top of a blank sheet of paper and underlines it three times.

Dorrie bumps the dishwasher door closed with her hip and strolls to the living room to sit down, to get her breathing under control. Nothing is safe. Nothing
feels
safe, so nothing is exactly as it was before. Everything looks slightly different, insubstantial, and temporary. Purrl jumps in her lap and Dorrie buries her face in the soft fur, feels the cat's heart beating quickly. At least
she's
the same. Purrl, with her tummy troubles and her penchant for half-and-half from Trader Joe's—possibly the
cause
of her tummy troubles. Purrl jumps down, trots out to the kitchen toward her bowl, ma-a-a-aing as she walks, and Dorrie knows she has to talk to somebody before she goes the rest of the way over the edge. She finds her cell phone in her purse and puts in Brennan's number. “Hello,” she says. “It's Dorrie. I think I really need to talk to you. Tonight.” She presses
URGENT
.

Pick you up at your house?
Brennan texts her back within a few seconds.

Yes
.

Okay. Fifteen minutes
.

I'll be on the porch
. Dorrie texts her address, wonders if this will only make things worse. She walks back to the dining room, tells her family she's going out for a quick coffee with a friend from work. “My nerves,” she says. “I need to get my mind off this whole business with the car.”

Samuel looks up sharply. Lily taps her pen against a steno pad.

“Which friend?” Samuel says, and Dorrie tells him it's one of the temps from the office, from a few months ago. “Maggie,” she says. “Her name's Maggie. You can come out and meet her if you want,” she adds, but Samuel shakes his head.

“I'll pass.” He leans back over the table toward Lily and the interview, and when Brennan pulls into the drive, he doesn't come outside. Still, Dorrie sees him at the window, peering out as she gets in the Land Rover, as the inside light illuminates Brennan for a second before the car door closes—checking, she supposes after what Viv told her—wondering if her friend is male or female.

She and Brennan make halfhearted small talk in the car—the weather, the good news about Jeananne's hit-and-run driver turning himself in. They touch on the other night, Dorrie's stalker, but, although Dorrie asks about her date, Brennan only smiles. “It was fine,” she says, and concentrates on pulling in to a diner in Jamaica Plain. “This okay?”

Dorrie orders an herb tea from the counter, and together they sit down at a small table under harsh, cheap lights.

“So?” Brennan seems preoccupied. She checks her phone and then she slides it into her bag. “Sorry,” she says. “I put it on vibrate so we can talk. Work.” She shakes her head and Dorrie knows the call she's looking for has nothing to do with work. She smiles. It must be the guy from the other night. Good for Brennan.

“I didn't know who else to call.” Dorrie takes a sip of tea. What she needs is a martini. Or four. “I feel like I'm coming unhinged. My life, really. Crumbling. And I'm in the middle of it, grabbing at all these crumbling, disintegrating things that used to be walls.”

“Poetic,” Brennan says. “But can you be a little more . . .” She takes off her coat and slings it across a chair. “Direct?”

Dorrie knows she's stalling, trying to sort through what to say and what not to. “Somebody messed with my car today,” she says finally.

“Where?”

“At work,” Dorrie says. “In the parking garage.”

Brennan doesn't look all that surprised. She looks worried. “Was your car locked?”

“I can't swear to it,” Dorrie tells her. I always lock it, but I was running late this morning . . . I can't be sure.”

“Because if it was locked and the lock wasn't tampered with, then someone would've had to have had your key. Or access to it anyway.”

“I'm the only one with a key,” she says. “And my husband. Samuel has an extra key.” Fuck.

“Does he know about cars?”

“Well,” Dorrie says. “Yeah. He just fixed mine. He's the one who told me about the wire being cut.”

Brennan takes a swig of her tea. “So who was at work today?”

Dorrie shrugs. “Me, Francine, the new temp—forget her name, Marlene or Maureen—the IT guy, Len. You know; the usual suspects. Or. Wait. Not
suspects
, really. I just meant—”

“Was Edward there?”

Dorrie thinks back. “Part of the time. He was in and out.”

“Did anyone have access to your keys?”

“My . . . Sure. I guess so. I mean, I left my purse in my office when I went down the hall to work with Francine.”

“Any other times?”

Well, yeah. Every time I went to the ladies room or anything. Yeah. It's in a drawer—I mean, I don't leave it out in plain sight, but. Yeah.”

“So, really, anyone at work could have just lifted your keys, messed with your car, and then waited until you went to the ladies room or whatever to stick the keys back in your purse.”

“Yes. Edward, you mean.”

Brennan takes a gulp of her drink. “Damn,” she says. “This stuff tastes like mud.” She walks over to the counter and comes back with two half-and-halfs, which she pours into the murky tea. “Did you see anyone? Hear anything? In the garage?”