the nearby woods lengthening across the weedy yard. I knew the timing was perfect. There were no other visitors at Monk’s House right then, and my parents were unlikely to emerge from their bedroom until morning.
I pulled on a pair of jeans, socks and sneakers. The no-see-ums would be out and I didn’t want them biting my ankles. I found a white tank top that I’d had for a few years. It was embroidered with a butterfly and was a little bit tight. I wanted to make sure that Chet would follow me to the meadow. I slid the little pocketknife that Grandpa Henderson had given me into my front pocket. I didn’t plan on using it but it felt good to have it pressed against my thigh. Chet was unpredictable and I didn’t want him to try and have sex with me before we got to the well. I also grabbed a small penlight from the top drawer of the bureau at the bottom of the stairs. The woods were always dark, especially at dusk.
I went out the front door and down the wooden steps to the asphalt driveway. I cut across the yard, worried suddenly that the light was fading too fast. Behind the studio the sky was streaked with flat pink clouds that looked like watery strokes of paint. Walking past my lounge chair I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke, and looked up to see Chet stepping out onto the landing. It was perfect. I wouldn’t have to knock on the door, or worry about being dragged into the apartment.
“Hey, little Lil,” he said, the words sounding slurry.
I stopped and looked up at him. “Chet, can you do me a favor?” I don’t think I’d ever used his name before, and the word sounded strange in my mouth, like a swearword I wasn’t supposed to say.
“A favor? Anything, anything for you, my Juliet, my rose by any other name.” He put his hands over his chest. I knew he was doing that Shakespeare play but he had it wrong. Juliet was on the balcony and Romeo was down below.
“Thanks. Can you come down here?”
“I’ll be with you anon, my Juliet,” he said and flicked his cigarette in a high arc. It landed on the driveway, showering sparks. He went back inside his apartment and I waited. I thought I would be nervous, but I wasn’t.
CHAPTER 5
TED
After retrieving our luggage at Logan, I walked with Lily past the idling taxis at Terminal E and toward Central Parking. She stopped me as soon as we were alone in the dark lot. The pilot had told us that the current temperature in Boston was fifty-four degrees, but a whistling, litter-dispersing wind made it feel much colder.
“Let’s meet in one week,” she said. “We’ll pick a place. If I change my mind, I won’t show up. And if you change your mind, then don’t show up either, and it will be like this conversation never happened.”
“Okay. Where should we meet?”
“Name a town where you don’t know anyone,” she said.
I thought for a moment. “Okay. How about Concord?”
“Concord, Mass., or Concord, New Hampshire?”
“Concord, Mass.”
We agreed to meet in the bar of the Concord River Inn the following Saturday at three o’clock in the afternoon. “I won’t be shocked if you’re not there,” she said. “Or upset.”
“Ditto,” I said, and we shook hands. It felt oddly formal to shake the hand of someone who had offered to help you murder your wife. Lily laughed a little, as though she felt the same way. Her hand was small in mine and felt as frail as expensive porcelain. I resisted the urge to pull her toward me.
Instead, I said, “Are you for real?”
She released my hand. “You’ll find out in a week.”
I arrived early that Saturday at the Concord River Inn. When Lily had asked me to pick a town where no one knew who I was, I had picked Concord, and while it was true that I knew no one there, it was also true that it was a place that had played a large part in my childhood. I grew up in Middleham, about ten miles west of Concord, and about thirty miles from Boston. Middleham is an old farming community, a sprawl of open fields and new-growth forest. In the 1970s, two extensive developments had gone in—dead-end streets named after the trees that were no longer there, and single-acre lots with cookie-cutter deckhouses, all popping up to accommodate employees from nearby