“Uh, Mrs. Purvis?” It was Bart, calling from the showroom doorway. “Did you know you have a flat tire? The mechanic just pointed it out to me.”
Dazed, she turned and stared at him. “No. I . . . I didn’t.”
“How can you not notice you have a flat tire?” Dwayne said.
“It might have—well, it seemed to handle a little sluggishly, but—”
”I don’t believe this.” Dwayne was already heading for the door. Walking away from me as always, she thought. And now he’s angry. How did everything suddenly become my fault?
She and Bart followed him to her car. Dwayne was crouched down by the right rear wheel, shaking his head.
“Can you believe she didn’t notice this?” he said to Bart. “Look at this tire! She shredded the fucking tire!”
“Hey, it happens,” said Bart. He gave Mattie a sympathetic glance. “Look, I’ll ask Ed to slip on a new one. No problem.”
“But look at the rim, it’s all screwed up. How many miles you think she drove on this thing? How can anyone be that dense?”
“C’mon, Dwayne,” said Bart. “It’s no big deal.”
“I didn’t know,” said Mattie. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you drive it like this all the way from the doctor’s office?” Dwayne glanced at her over his shoulder, and the anger she saw in his eyes scared her. “Were you daydreaming or what?”
“Dwayne, I didn’t know.”
Bart patted Dwayne on the shoulder. “Maybe you should lighten up a little, how ’bout it?”
“Stay the hell out of this!” snapped Dwayne.
Bart retreated, hands lifted in submission. “Okay, okay.” He shot a last glance at Mattie, a look of good luck, honey, and walked away.
“It’s only a tire,” said Mattie.
“You must’ve been throwing sparks all down the road. How many people you think saw you driving around like this?”
“Does it matter?”
“Hello! This is a Beemer. When you’re driving a machine like this, you’re upholding an image. People see this car, they expect the driver to be a little smarter, a little more hip. So you go clanking around on a bare rim, it ruins the image. It makes every other Beemer driver look bad. It makes me look bad.”
“It’s only a tire.”
“Stop saying that.”
“But it is.”
Dwayne gave a snort of disgust and rose to his feet. “I give up.”
She swallowed back tears. “It’s not about the tire. Is it, Dwayne?”
“What?”
“This fight is about us. Something’s wrong between us.”
His silence only made things worse. He didn’t look at her, but turned, instead, to watch the mechanic walking toward them.
“Hey,” the mechanic called out. “Bart said I should go ahead and change that tire.”
“Yeah, take care of it, will you?” Dwayne paused, his attention shifting to a Toyota that had just driven into the lot. A man climbed out and stood eyeing one of the BMWs. Bent close to read the dealer’s sticker on the window. Dwayne smoothed back his hair, gave his tie a tug, and started walking toward the new customer.
“Dwayne?” said Mattie.
“I got a client here.”
“But I’m your wife.”
He spun around, his gaze suddenly, shockingly, poisonous. “Don’t. Push it. Mattie.”
“What do I have to do to get your attention?” she cried. “Buy a car from you? Is that what it takes? Because I don’t know any other way.” Her voice broke. “I don’t know any other way.”
“Then maybe you should just stop trying. Because I don’t see the point anymore.”
She watched him walk away. Saw him pause to square his shoulders, put on a smile. His voice suddenly boomed out, warm and friendly, as he greeted the new client on the lot.
“Mrs. Purvis? Ma’am?”
She blinked. Turned to look at the mechanic.
“I’ll need your car keys, if you don’t mind. So I can move her into the bay and get that tire on.” He held out a grease-stained hand.
Wordless, she gave him her key ring, then turned to look at Dwayne. But he did not even glance her way. As if she was invisible. As if she was nothing.
She scarcely remembered driving home.
She found herself sitting at the kitchen table, still holding the keys, the day’s mail stacked in front of her. On top was the credit card bill, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Dwayne Purvis. Mr. and Mrs. She remembered the first time someone had called her Mrs. Purvis, and the joy she’d felt at hearing the name. Mrs. Purvis, Mrs. Purvis.
Mrs. Nobody.
The keys spilled to the floor. She dropped her head in her hands and began to cry. Cried as the baby kicked inside her, cried until her throat ached and the mail was soaked with her tears.
I want him back the way he was. When he loved me.
Through the stuttering of her own sobs, she heard the squeal of a door. It came from the garage. Her head shot up, hope blooming in her chest.
He’s home! He’s come home to tell me he’s sorry.
She jumped up so quickly that her chair tipped over. Giddy, she opened the door and stepped into the garage. Stood blinking in the gloom, bewildered. The only car parked in the garage was hers.
“Dwayne?” she said.
A strip of sunlight caught her eye; the door leading to the side yard was ajar. She crossed the garage to close it. She had just pushed it shut when she heard a footfall behind her, and she froze, heart thumping. Knew, in that instant, that she was not alone.
She turned. Halfway around, darkness met her.
SIX
MAURA STEPPED FROM THE AFTERNOON SUNSHINE into the cool gloom of the Church of Our Lady of Divine Light. For a moment she could see only shadows, the vague outlines of pews, and the silhouette of a lone woman parishioner seated at the front, her head bowed. Maura slipped into a pew and sat down. She let the silence envelop her as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. In the stained glass windows above, glowing with richly somber hues, a woman with swirling hair gazed adoringly at a tree from which hung a bloodred apple. Eve in the Garden of Eden. Woman as temptress, seducer. Destroyer. Staring up at the window, she felt a sense of disquiet, and her gaze moved to another. Though she had been raised by Catholic parents, she did not feel at home in the church. She gazed at the jewel-toned images of holy martyrs framed in these windows, and though they might now be enshrined as saints, she knew that, as living flesh and blood, they could not have been flawless. That their time on earth was surely marred by sins and bad choices and petty desires. She knew, better than most, that perfection was not human.
She rose to her feet, turned toward the aisle, and paused. Father Brophy was standing there, the light from the stained glass casting a mosaic of colors on his face. He had approached so quietly that she hadn’t heard him, and now they faced each other, neither one daring to break the silence.
“I hope you’re not leaving already,” he finally said.
“I just came to meditate for a few minutes.”
“Then I’m glad I caught you before you left. Would you like to talk?”
She glanced toward the rear doors, as though contemplating escape. Then she released a sigh. “Yes. I think I would.”
The woman in the front pew had turned and was watching them. And what does she see? Maura wondered. The handsome young priest. An attractive woman. Intent whispers exchanged beneath the gazes of saints.
Father Brophy seemed to share Maura’s uneasiness. He glanced at the other parishioner, and he said: “It doesn’t have to be here.”
They walked in Jamaica Riverway Park, following the tree-shaded path that led alongside the water. On this warm afternoon, they shared the park with joggers and cyclists and mothers pushing baby strollers. In such a public place, a priest walking with a troubled parishioner could hardly stir gossip. This is how it always has to be between us, she thought as they ducked beneath the drooping branches of a willow. No h
int of scandal, no whiff of sin. What I want most from him is what he can’t give me. Yet here I am.
Here we both are.
“I wondered when you’d come by to see me,” he said.
“I’ve wanted to. It’s been a rough week.” She stopped and gazed at the river. The whish of traffic from the nearby road obscured the sound of the rushing water. “I’m feeling my own mortality these days.”
“You haven’t before?”
“Not like this. When I watched that autopsy last week—”
“You watch so many of them.”
“Not just watch them, Daniel. I perform them. I hold the scalpel in my hand and I cut. I do it almost every day at work, and it never bothered me. Maybe it means I’ve lost touch with humanity. I’ve grown so detached that I don’t even register it’s human flesh I’m slicing. But that day, watching it, it all became personal. I looked at her and I saw myself on the table. Now I can’t pick up a scalpel without thinking about her. About what her life might have been like, what she felt, what she was thinking when . . .” Maura stopped and sighed. “It’s been hard going back to work. That’s all.”
“Do you really have to?”
Perplexed by the question, she looked at him. “Do I have a choice?”
“You make it sound like indentured servitude.”
“It’s my job. It’s what I’m good at.”
“Not, in itself, a reason to do it. So why do you?”
“Why are you a priest?”
Now it was his turn to look perplexed. He thought about it for a moment, standing very still beside her, the blueness of his eyes muted in the shadows cast by the willow trees. “I made that choice so long ago,” he said, “I don’t think about it much anymore. Or question it.”
“You must have believed.”
“I still believe.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Do you really think that faith is all that’s required?”
“No, of course not.” She turned and began walking again, along a path dappled with sunlight and shade. Afraid to meet his gaze, afraid that he’d see too much in hers.
“Sometimes it’s good to come face-to-face with your own mortality,” he said. “It makes us reconsider our lives.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
“I’m not big on introspection. I grew so impatient with philosophy classes. All those questions without answers. But physics and chemistry, I could understand. They were comforting to me because they taught principles that are reproducible and orderly.” She paused to watch a young woman on Rollerblades skate past, pushing a baby in a stroller. “I don’t like the unexplainable.”
“Yes, I know. You always want your mathematical equations solved. That’s why you’re having such a hard time with that woman’s murder.”
“It’s a question without an answer. The sort of thing I hate.”
She sank onto a wooden bench facing the river. Daylight was fading, and the water flowed black in the thickening shadows. He too sat down, and although they didn’t touch, she was so aware of him, sitting close beside her, that she could almost feel his heat against her bare arm.
“Have you heard any more about the case from Detective Rizzoli?”
“She hasn’t exactly been keeping me in the loop.”
“Would you expect her to?”
“As a cop, no. She wouldn’t.”
“And as a friend?”
“That’s just it, I thought we were friends. But she’s told me so little.”
“You can’t blame her. The victim was found outside your house. She has to wonder—”
“What, that I’m a suspect?”
“Or that you were the intended target. It’s what we all thought that night. That it was you in that car.” He stared across the river. “You said you can’t stop thinking about the autopsy. Well, I can’t stop thinking about that night, standing in your street with all those police cars. I couldn’t believe any of it was happening. I refused to believe.”
They both fell silent. Before them flowed a river of dark water, and behind them, a river of cars.
She asked, suddenly: “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, and his hesitation made her flush with embarrassment. What a foolish question. She wanted to take it back, to replay the last sixty seconds. How much better to have just said good-bye and walked away. Instead, she’d blurted out that ill-considered invitation, one that they both knew he shouldn’t accept.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I guess it’s not such a good—”
”Yes,” he said. “I’d like to very much.”
She stood in her kitchen dicing tomatoes for the salad, her hand jittery as it gripped the knife. On the stove simmered a pot of coq au vin, wafting out steam fragrant with the scents of red wine and chicken. An easy, familiar meal that she could cook without consulting a recipe, without having to stop and think about it. She could not cope with any meal more complicated. Her mind was completely focused on the man who was now pouring two glasses of pinot noir.
He placed one glass beside her on the counter. “What else can I do?”
“Not a thing.”
“Make the salad dressing? Wash lettuce?”
“I didn’t invite you here to make you work. I just thought you’d prefer this to a restaurant, where it’s so public.”
“You must be tired of always being in the public’s eye,” he said.
“I was thinking more about you.”
“Even priests eat out at restaurants, Maura.”
“No, I meant . . .” She felt herself flush and renewed her efforts with the tomato.
“I guess it would make people wonder,” he said. “If they saw us out together.” He watched her for a moment, and the only sound was her knife blade rapping against the cutting board. What does one do with a priest in the kitchen? she wondered. Ask him to bless the food? No other man could make her feel so uneasy, so human and flawed. And what are your flaws, Daniel? she wondered as she slid the diced tomatoes into a salad bowl, as she tossed them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Does that white collar give you immunity to temptation?
“At least let me slice that cucumber,” he said.
“You really can’t relax, can you?”
“I’m not good at sitting idle while others work.”
She laughed. “Join the club.”
“Would that be the club for hopeless workaholics? Because I’m a charter member.” He pulled a knife from the wooden block and began to slice the cucumber, releasing its fresh, summery fragrance. “It comes from having to help out with five brothers and a sister.”
“Seven of you in the family? My god.”
“I’m sure that’s what my dad said every time he heard there was another one on the way.”
“So where were you in that seven?”
“Number four. Smack in the middle. Which, according to psychologists, makes me a natural born mediator. The one always trying to keep the peace.” He glanced up at her with a smile. “It also means I know how to get in and out of the shower really fast.”
“And how do you go from sibling number four to being a priest?”
He looked back down at the cutting board. “As you might expect, a long story.”
“One you don’t want to talk about?”
“My reasons will probably strike you as illogical.”
“Well, it’s funny how our biggest decisions in life are usually the least logical. The person we choose to marry, for instance.” She took a sip of wine and set the glass back down. “I certainly couldn’t defend my own marriage on the basis of logic.”
He glanced up. “Lust?”
“That would be the operative word. That’s how I made the biggest mistake of my life. So far, that is.” She took another sip of wine. And you could be my next big mistake. If God wanted us to behave, He shouldn’t have created temptation.
He slid the sliced cucumbers into
the salad bowl and rinsed the knife. She watched him standing at the sink, his back to her. He had the tall, lean build of a long-distance runner. Why do I put myself through this? she wondered. Of all the men I could be attracted to, why does it have to be this one?
“You asked why I chose the priesthood,” he said.
“Why did you?”
He turned to look at her. “My sister had leukemia.”
Startled, she didn’t know what to say. Nothing seemed appropriate.
“Sophie was six years old,” he said. “The youngest one in the family, and the only girl.” He reached for a dish towel to dry his hands, and neatly hung it back on the rack, taking his time, as though he needed to measure his next words. “It was acute lymphocytic leukemia. I suppose you could call it the good kind, if there’s any such thing as a good leukemia.”
“It’s the one with the best prognosis in children. An eighty percent survival rate.” A true statement, but she was sorry the instant after she’d said it. The logical Dr. Isles, responding to tragedy with her usual helpful facts and heartless statistics. It was the way she’d always coped with the messy emotions of those around her, by retreating into her scientist’s role. A friend just died of lung cancer? A relative left quadriplegic from a car accident? For every tragedy she could cite a statistic, drawing reassurance in the crisp certainty of numbers. In the belief that behind every horror, there is an explanation.
She wondered if Daniel thought her detached, even callous, for her response. But he did not seem to take offense. He simply nodded, accepting her statistic in the spirit she had offered it, as a simple fact.
“The five-year survival rates weren’t quite so good back then,” he said. “By the time she was diagnosed, she was pretty sick. I can’t tell you how devastating it was, to all of us. To my mother, especially. Her only girl. Her baby. I was fourteen then, and I was the one who kind of took over keeping an eye on Sophie. Even with all the attention she got, all the coddling, she never acted spoiled. Never stopped being the sweetest kid you could imagine.” He still wasn’t looking at Maura; he was gazing at the floor, as though unwilling to reveal the depth of his pain.
“Daniel?” she said.
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