She perches on the bed. There isn’t any other place to sit, really. It’s the bed or the straight-backed chair pulled up to the table near the kitchen. She takes off her boots. They both know why they are here. Tomas sits beside her but not too close. He looks at the fire escape, at the small opening at the bottom of the window, and for a few seconds, neither of them speaks. There is only the crunching sounds of Spike at his bowl, voices floating down the hall, up and down, a cadence, words she doesn’t understand, the clang of dishes. Somewhere there’s a delicate, faint sound, a teaspoon on a china cup.
Tomas leans toward her. He cups her face in his hands, and she moves her head slightly, kisses his rough palm. He touches her hair, light, tentative, and it comes undone, drops around her shoulders; hairpins fall across the blanket and he kisses her. Soft. The bed sinks down in the middle; the springs are worn, the mattress falls inward slightly, forms a valley when they make love. He is gentle, whispering her name and other words that Karen can’t quite hear or doesn’t want to, endearing things, sweet things, fragments. The mattress puffs up around them. She closes her eyes and sees the print of a chenille bedspread, Tomas’s. Or was it somewhere else? Was it another time? Another room? Joe’s, or someone else’s? Through the wall she hears a radio or maybe a TV, the news in Spanish, mixing with the oddly distant sounds of her own climax.
She opens her eyes. Sunlight leaks through the smudged window. Spike watches her from the bureau; his eyes are yellow in the near dark of the kitchen.
“Come here, Spike.” She pulls her hair back from her face, feels the bones of Tomas’s arm against her back. “Here kitty-kitty.” Spike yawns. He jumps down from the bureau and Tomas gets up, opens the window, closes it again as the cat slinks out to the fire escape.
“He is going for a smoke,” Tomas says.
They lie together, not speaking. Tomas lights a candle, pulls a cigarette from a pack on the bedside table, leans to light it from the flame, a votive candle in a glass. Like in a church, she thinks, like candles for the dead.
“I have to go.” She leans up on her elbow. In the darkness of the room, Tomas is gray. His cigarette burns orange, crackles. His body underneath the sheets looks shrouded. Sacred.
He nods. “I love you,” he says. At least she thinks so. He says it so quietly, she isn’t sure. She doesn’t answer. She isn’t certain what he’s said. She shifts her body slightly. And in that second Karen knows that she does not love him. He’s lovely and exotic and a little enigmatic. He’s patient, kind; he’s gentle, and he’s waited all this time for her. For this. But she does not love him. Maybe before he went away. Maybe on a beautiful spring day with a bright blue sky. Or maybe sometime in the future, when Joe’s death is not so fresh, when anger, pain, and guilt aren’t all mixed up together and fear isn’t so much a part of her life. But not now.
She sits up. “Your apartment is wonderful,” she says. “I wish I could stay here forever.” And it’s true. She loves the place, the cat; it’s just Tomas she doesn’t love.
“You could.” He snubs out his cigarette. “You can.”
She laughs. “Antoine has probably eaten half the living room by now.”
He looks at her in the dull light from the dirty window and the tiny flame of the votive candle. He doesn’t speak. He reaches out to touch her hair. Just a touch, and then he gets up. “I’m going to jump in the shower,” he says. “Join me?”
“In a minute.” She lies back down until she hears the water coming on, and then she gets up, too, slips into the tiny bathroom and washes at the sink. She doesn’t join Tomas in the shower. Instead she pulls on her jeans and sweater, slides into her heavy coat, tugs on her boots.
Across the room, Tomas’s cell phone jingles; it bounces on the wooden table near the bed. She starts to knock on the bathroom door, to tell him that he has a call, but she doesn’t. “WORK,” it says. She scribbles down a note for him. Had to go. Thank you for an incredible day. The hospital called while you were in the shower. Xoxo K. And then, as an afterthought, just because it’s there, she programs his work number in her phone. Just in case. She props the note against the pillow on the sagging bed and slips out through the rainbow door.
XXVIII
DORRIE
Dorrie knows she’ll end up going to the Starbucks. It’s both unsettling and frightening that whoever texted her from Joe’s phone knew where they had their last rendezvous, their last cups of coffee and hot chocolate, their last chance to look into each other’s eyes. A chance they’d squandered. What she wouldn’t give to get it back, but she doesn’t want to go there now. She shouldn’t go. It isn’t safe. She will, though. She can’t not go.
Waltham, the man had said. She’s googled the name and found that Geppetto’s is a bar. They serve food, but it’s primarily a bar. Waltham. Did Karen call her from there? Did she have Joe’s throwaway phone? Did someone else find it and give it to the dead man’s wife along with the rest of his personal belongings? The police? The EMTs? Did Karen call the only person whose two numbers Joe had logged into his phone? Is she intent on drawing Dorrie out? On seeing who was with her husband on the night he died? Was Karen sufficiently fueled on hate and fury to start running people down in the streets?
No. That’s crazy. From the few things Joe said about his wife, she didn’t sound at all the type to suddenly go mad over—anything, really. Passion was never Karen’s strong suit, Joe said once. He’d gone on to say that this was probably a good thing, that Karen was definitely the grounded one in the family. She keeps us all on track.
Of course, there could be more than one thing going on here. Karen could have her husband’s phone and someone else could be careening around on the streets.
She’ll go to the Starbucks where she last saw Joe. She’ll go and watch without being seen. Even if the trap is being set for her. She’ll skip right over it, leave its sharp metallic jaws to clamp down on the one who placed it there.
But first . . . For a few seconds, Dorrie stares at the renovations still waiting for design. She’s made a huge dent. Still, with Jeananne gone, the work is overwhelming. She gauges the few remaining jobs and looks for design ideas in the files. One of the kitchen renovations has her stumped. An odd shape. Cramped. The owners want to add a pantry, remove two walls, but even with the walls out, the space is still extremely small. She scrolls through kitchen renovations from the year before. A job from last October gives her some ideas and she scrolls through the attached documents. As she’s closing out, the inspector’s name catches her eye. Everett L. Lansing. Lansing. The name of the caller Edward was arguing with on the phone the other day. She scrolls up. Everett Lansing has signed off on several jobs. On a hunch, Dorrie organizes the jobs by location and finds that Everett Lansing has signed off on nearly all the downtown Boston renovations. Or was Edward talking with another Lansing? Hardly an unusual name.
Huh.
And even if the Lansing here and the Lansing on the phone with Edward are the same, so what, really? People can have arguments, misunderstandings. It’s hardly remarkable. Still. Why wouldn’t Edward want him calling the office? Dorrie gets up and closes her door. She retrieves Joe’s e-mail from her Upcoming Auditions file and jots down Paulo’s number, keeping one eye on her office door. She’ll call him later. From the house or from her car—from anywhere but here.
Samuel is home early, his car already in the driveway next to Mia’s when Dorrie gets home. Mia’s parents are out of town, so she’s spending the night. Upstairs, she and Lily are catching up on homework they’ve left until the last possible minute, or, more likely, are trying on all Lily’s clothes. They share outfits since they take exactly the same size. Dorrie glances at her watch.
She can hear Samuel in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door, sorting through the contents. Her nerves jangle. Her insides vibrate like an electrical wire. After a minute or two, she walks out to the kitchen and crosses the glossy new wood floor, sliding a little in her stocking feet. She tugs a box out of the
freezer.
“What’s that?” Samuel comes up behind her at the stove.
“Veggie burgers.”
“Is that it? That’s dinner?”
“Well,” Dorrie says. “Kind of. Mia’s here and she’s a vegetarian. There’s other stuff though. There’s some Brussels sprouts and peas and—”
Samuel raises one eyebrow. “I’ll just make myself an omelet,” he says, and he reaches into the fridge for the egg carton. “Where’s the whisk?”
“In the dishwasher. But really—you should watch your cholesterol,” Dorrie says. “It wouldn’t kill you to eat what we’re eating. It’s unhealthy, all those eggs.” She stares at the five eggs he’s broken into a large blue bowl. He reaches for the cheese. “And cheese,” she adds.
“I’m kind of a dead man walking anyway,” Samuel says. “I smoke. I drink. Drank. Eggs and cheese are the least of my worries. In fact, they’re sort of the superheroes of my health regimen.”
“Don’t say that, Samuel.” Dorrie turns away from the microwave, where black bean burgers rotate on a bright orange plate. She looks Samuel in the eye. “Don’t joke about dying.”
Samuel shrugs. “Who’d care anyway?”
“Lily would. I would. Lots of people would.” She doesn’t say Viv would, but she thinks it. All this stuff about Samuel being scary is probably Viv’s way of keeping the conversation on him, feeding her obsession. Samuel’s “dangerous” to Viv because her feelings for him threaten her self-image, to say nothing of her friendship with Dorrie. She hasn’t actually said this to Viv, but neither has she spoken to her since the late-night phone call.
“Would you care?” The microwave beeps. Samuel’s eyes are bright in the recessed kitchen lighting.
“Yes.”
He looks relieved. Just for a second.
“I’m going out,” she says, dumping organic peas into a pot of boiling water. “There’s this audition.”
“That’s—broad.” Samuel flips the omelet expertly without losing the tomatoes and green peppers he’s added, as a nod to health, apparently. Dorrie shrugs.
“It’s in town,” she says. “For a play that starts next month. I’m meeting Viv.”
Samuel doesn’t answer. He reaches over his eggs for the paprika.
“You know she’s back in Boston.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “Good. Great. You two can—”
“You’ve always liked her, too, though, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.” He keeps his back turned. “Yeah. She’s okay. I mean, she’s your friend.”
“Right. My friend.” She stops herself. “Girls!” She yells in the general direction of Lily’s room. “Dinner! So have you seen her?”
“Viv? Uh-uh. You should invite her over for—”
“I have,” Dorrie says. She stares at his back, but Samuel doesn’t turn around. “I saw her down at the Copley. The Copley Square Hotel? You know it, right?”
He still doesn’t turn around.
“You remember the Copley Square Hotel, don’t you, Samuel? Right in the heart of—”
“What kind of a question is—of course I know the—what are you trying to—?”
Okay, Dorrie thinks. Okay. So we both know that we both know. She hesitates, but only for a second. “Nothing,” she says, as the girls appear in the kitchen doorway. “Could you set the table, honey,” she says. “Love the outfits, by the way. You both look totally—I love the drama. The flair.”
“Of course, this from an actress.” Across the room, Samuel eases the omelet onto a large yellow plate. “Talk about divas!”
“Wait. So you don’t— What do you think, Dad?”
Samuel squints across the kitchen. Tilts his head. Pensive. Scrutinizing. “I have to agree with your mom on this one,” he says. “You girls are definitely rocking those outfits.”
“You should try a black bean burger.” At the table, Lily glances at Samuel’s omelet. “They’re awesome when you add avocado and salsa.” She cuts off a large chunk of her burger, passes him her plate. “Just try it,” she says, and all eyes are on Samuel, whose daughter hung the moon, as he digs into the black bean burger with all the gusto he can manage. “Wow,” he says. “This is really—”
Dorrie feels a pang of guilt. Bad enough she’s cuckolded him with Joe—now she’s lying to him. Again. But she has to go. She has to find out who’s threatening her. She clears the table, loads the dishwasher, and glances at her watch. She has time. She has nearly an hour. The girls are upstairs again, wending their way through Lily’s eclectic stash of clothes, and Samuel’s in the backyard smoking— the tip of his cigarette glows orange in the black air. She grabs her cell and calls the number she jotted down at work. “Hello,” she says when a woman answers. An older woman. Dorrie puts on a voice that drips authority. “May I speak to Paulo please?”
“They’ve gone,” the woman says.
“They?”
“Paulo and Elizabeth,” the woman says. “His wife!”
“I’m with Home Runs Renovations.” Dorrie’s voice is quick, sharp, the voice of an executive totally consumed by her job. “I just need to ask him a quick question about some work he did for us last—”
“He isn’t with your company anymore. Surprised you wouldn’t know something like that. He hasn’t worked at Home Runs Renovations for quite some time.” The woman bangs the phone back on the hook.
“Jeez.” Dorrie pulls the phone away. Too late; her ear rings from the clatter of the woman’s disconnect. Why did Paulo Androtti leave the company? Judging by his mother’s attitude—it had to be his mother—it wasn’t a simple parting of ways. Dorrie tugs at her ear. Or maybe his mother is just really mean.
“When will you be back?” Lily calls from the living room, but she doesn’t look up. It’s a rhetorical sort of question.
“I’m not sure,” Dorrie says. “It depends on how long it all lasts.” Not exactly a lie—she draws the line at lying to her daughter, and happily the English language leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Nuance.
Lily nods, her eyes glued to the TV. “Good luck,” she says, and Mia raises her crossed fingers, smiles. From somewhere upstairs Samuel yells, “Break a leg!” An unfortunate choice, Dorrie thinks, and she pushes through the door onto the icy front porch.
She takes the train in and browses through shops until a quarter of eight, and then she strolls up the street to Starbucks. She’s taken care to grab a different coat from the one she generally wears to work, doesn’t remember buying it, this old woolen black thing from the back of the closet. She’s not exactly sure it’s even hers. She’s wearing a large hat that must have been Samuel’s at some point, since it’s way too big, nearly covers her face down to her nose, and an old pair of boots.
She crosses the street. It’s a frigid evening, the sort of night that people choose to be inside, not wandering along sidewalks, not if they have a choice. After a minute or two, Dorrie takes a breath and walks up to look directly through the Starbucks window. She can see nearly the entire inside of the coffee shop, and she studies the customers. No one looks suspicious in the least—a handful of couples, two groups of women chattering over pastries. A few people sit alone with their laptops, but they don’t even glance toward the door, so they seem innocent enough. At least oblivious enough. Inept enough, if one of them is her stalker. She glances at her watch. A wasted trip.
Dorrie! Her mother’s voice is in her ear, in her head. Run, Dorrie! Quick! Run! She turns slightly, away from the Starbucks window and steps backward, toward the street, scanning it.
“Dorrie!” This time the voice is loud. Different. A woman’s voice, but not her mother’s, and Dorrie whirls around as a figure darts off to lose itself in a clump of people—someone in a black coat—a jacket, maybe—and a knit hat covering the top part of his face. Her face?
“Dorrie?” a woman’s voice calls again from a collection of cars parked along the curb, and, for a moment, Dorrie doesn’t see a thing. For a moment, she thinks she’s
lost her mind.
XXIX
MAGGIE
When Lucas texts her, Maggie hesitates. What had seemed like a good idea at the junkyard earlier that day feels suddenly like an encroachment—a little overwhelming, suffocating. It’s all happening too fast, she tells herself. He should have waited a few days before he got in touch. A week or so. She would have been more ready for a date if he had. Anyway, she’s already agreed to meet Hank. Some news about work, he’d said in a voice-mail message earlier. Meet me at seven. That diner on Boylston where we used to grab dinner.
For a few minutes, she ignores Lucas’s text. She takes her hair out of a braid and lets it fall to her shoulders, winds it around her fingers, making it curl slightly at the ends. It’s been a long time. She glances back at the text and knows it wouldn’t matter if Lucas waited for a day or a month. She still wouldn’t feel ready. It’s the way she is now. Shy. She’s begun to analyze her actions, every step, as if she isn’t certain of the ground beneath her feet. She often feels like she’s fifteen again, self-conscious and cautious around strangers, co-workers, even the handful of people she calls friends. When she does go out now, it’s almost always for a reason, a trip to the market or a family gathering she feels pressured to attend.
In high school Maggie was the one who took the biggest risks. She was tough, a tomboy. All those brothers, her mother used to say. It comes with the territory. But she is different now. She isn’t the same person she was, the daredevil. Magpie, her friends called her back then—her old friends. But now she finds it hard to even talk with them. They’ve pretty much stopped calling her. They’ve given up.
She thinks about that first time she went drinking after Iraq—how the friends she’d known forever seemed like strangers, how she’d panicked, felt as if she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t slow the pounding of her heart.
“You okay?” one of her friends, Marian, she thinks it was, had asked, leaning in for a better look.
“I have a headache,” Maggie told her. “I get them a lot now.”
The Other Widow Page 18