like looking at a diamond from every possible perspective, looking for flaws or cracks, looking for guilt or second thoughts, and I found none. All I found was the renewed conviction that Miranda was a monster that I needed to slay.
She returned to Maine on Thursday, making me promise that I would come join her on the weekend. Before leaving she brought me to the library to show me a few more items she wanted to order from her pile of catalogs. Then she brought up an image on her cell phone, a painting she thought would be perfect for the dining room.
“It’s six feet by nine feet,” she said. “It will be perfect for the south wall.”
I looked at the tiny image. It appeared to be a man’s head, his ears on fire.
“It’s a Matt Christie self-portrait,” she said. “It’s guaranteed to be a good investment. Look him up if you don’t believe me.” Then she named a ridiculous figure in a sentence that also included the word bargain.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
She did a little jump without quite leaving her feet, then kissed me. “Thank you, thank you.” She pressed a hand against my crotch, running a finger along the zipper of my jeans. Despite my feelings for her, I felt myself getting hard. “When you come to Maine I’ll give you a proper thank-you, okay?” she said in a lowered voice.
I had a sudden urge to spin her around and bend her over the card table, the way I’d seen Brad Daggett fuck her, but I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t trust that I wouldn’t smash her face into the catalogs, or call her a cheating bitch. Instead, I told her that I probably wouldn’t get to Maine till Saturday night at the earliest. She didn’t seem too disappointed.
After she’d packed for the long weekend, I walked her to the garage where we kept our cars. After loading up the Mini Cooper, I said to her, “I hope Brad doesn’t give you any trouble up there. All that time you spend together.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s never hit on you, has he?”
She turned, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Brad? No, he’s a total professional. Why, you jealous?”
She delivered the line perfectly, a mixture of surprise, contemplation, and casualness. If I hadn’t seen them together through the binoculars, I would never believe that there was anything going on between my wife and my contractor. The first few years I knew Miranda, I thought of her as someone whose every emotion was on the surface, someone incapable of deception. How had I been so wrong?
She folded herself into the driver’s seat, and blew me a kiss through the window before whipping her car away through the tight channels of the garage. A sense of certitude washed over me. With those few simple words—denying her relationship with Brad—any doubt I had was erased.
Lily was late, and as I slowly sipped my Guinness, I became convinced she was not going to show up. I felt a strange combination of relief and disappointment. If I never saw Lily again my life would return to normal. Could I honestly say that I would still murder my wife without her help and her encouragement? Would I even be willing to try? If I did get away with it, what would stop Lily from coming forward, from telling the police that I’d drunkenly preconfessed my crime on a transatlantic flight? No, if Lily didn’t show up, then I would confront my wife, tell her I knew about the affair, and ask for a divorce. What would follow would be an eternity of legal wrangling and ritual humiliations, but I would survive. Miranda would take a lot of my money—even with the prenup—but I could always make more. And Brad would get what he deserved. My wife.
But some of the disappointment I felt as I sat alone at the Concord River Inn, now convinced that I would never see Lily again, was that I was secretly hoping that part of her reason for this meeting was a romantic one. I had not been able to shake the image of her pale, beautiful face, or the feel of her slender hand in mine. Maybe an affair with Lily would be the real revenge that I could unleash upon Miranda and Brad. An eye for an eye. And it had not escaped my notice that the place we had chosen for an afternoon drink was also a