lined up with the corner of the table. On top of the magazines was the remote control, also squarely lined up. On the side table closest to me was a framed picture of a boy and a girl, taken on a boat. Both kids, who looked to be about twelve and ten, wore orange life vests.
I picked up the picture. “These your kids?”
“Jason and Bella. That’s taken on my old boat, though. I sold it the beginning of this summer, and bought myself my Albemarle. You fish?”
I told him no, but he continued to talk about his boat. I was barely listening, but it didn’t really matter. I was learning some things about Brad Daggett. Putting aside for now the matter that he was sleeping with my wife, I was discovering that I didn’t like Brad Daggett at all. He was a selfish drunk, who was probably only going to get more selfish and alcoholic as he got older. He didn’t care about his kids beyond placing a photograph of them in his home, and it wasn’t clear if he really cared for anyone besides himself. He was a negative in this world. I thought of Lily, and I thought about Brad coming to a sudden end, and I didn’t really mind. In fact, I wanted it to happen. Not just because it would punish Brad for what he was doing with my wife, but also because Brad disappearing off this earth would be a good thing. Whose life was he making better? Not his kids, or his ex-wife. Not Polly at the bar, who maybe thought she was his girlfriend. He was an asshole, and one less asshole around was good for everybody.
I interrupted Brad in his monologue about his boat, and told him I was going to the bathroom. It was as clean as the rest of the apartment. I dumped my beer down the sink, and took a look in Brad Daggett’s medicine cabinet. There wasn’t much to look at. Razors and deodorant and hair product. A large bottle of generic ibuprofen. A box of hair dye that hadn’t been opened. A prescription bottle for antibiotics that had expired over five years earlier. I opened it up and looked inside; the bottle was filled with blue, diamond-shaped pills that I recognized as Viagra. So Brad the stud wasn’t such a stud, after all. I actually laughed out loud. When I returned to the living room, Brad hadn’t shifted position from the couch, but his eyes were closed and his chest was lifting and falling steadily. I watched him for a while, trying to feel something besides disgust—trying to feel some pity, maybe, just as a way to test myself. I felt none.
Before leaving I quietly searched a few of the drawers in the kitchen alcove. One of them was a utility drawer, filled with tools, measuring tape, a spool of twine, a roll of duct tape. Toward the back of the drawer was a Smith & Wesson double-action revolver. I was surprised, only because he had made that earlier joke that he would have killed his wife if he’d owned a gun. For one rash moment, I considered stealing it, then realized he would most likely know who took it. I left it where it was, but I did take a newly minted key from a small box filled with similar keys. He would never miss it, and it was possible that it opened the door to this cottage, or maybe all of the Crescent cottages.
I took one last look around before leaving. Brad hadn’t moved from his position. I stepped out into the cold, brackish air, then quietly tried the key on Brad’s front door. It slid in and turned. I left the door unlocked, and pocketed the key. I pulled out my phone and was about to call Miranda to have her come and pick me up, when I decided I might walk. The cold felt good against my skin. I breathed deeply through my nostrils, the salt in the air making me feel more alive than I’d felt in a while. I began to walk. It was only a few miles, and I felt like I had all the energy in the world.
CHAPTER 10
LILY
For all of my sophomore year, and Eric’s senior year, I spent almost every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night at St. Dunstan’s Manor in Eric’s second-floor bedroom. At the time, I thought of this period as the happiest of my life.