couple years ago, when I had run into Faith Hobart at an outdoor market in the South End.
“I go by Miranda now,” Faith had said to me, then.
“Oh.”
“It’s my actual name. Faith’s my middle name. Miranda Faith.”
“I don’t think I knew that. So you’ve lost your faith.”
She laughed. “I guess you could say that. This is my fiancé, Ted.”
A handsome, somewhat stiff man turned from looking at a vintage letterpress tray and shook my hand. He had the dry, firm grasp of the professional hand shaker, but after a cursory few words about how nice it was to meet me, he turned back to the stall. I told Faith/Miranda that I was meeting someone, and needed to go. Before leaving, she said, in a low voice, “That was terrible about Eric. I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch with you afterward but you were in London, and . . .”
“Never mind, Faith, it’s okay.”
I walked away. I had thought many times about what might happen if I ran into Faith again. (I suppose I should call her Miranda now.) How would she react to me? Had she been surprised when she found out Eric died in London while visiting me? Had she been two-timed as well? But after meeting her at the market, seeing her with her new ink black hair and her five-hundred-dollar boots and with an oblivious fiancé, and seeing the casual way she expressed concern for me, I knew. I knew that she had actively deceived me as well. When she was with Eric in New York, she knew he was still seeing me on the weekends in Shepaug. Was it payback for my dating Eric in the first place? Was she just one of those women who got off on taking men away from other women? For a brief moment, there in the South End of Boston, I re-experienced that stab of pain in my chest I had felt when I knew for sure that Eric had betrayed me with Miranda, and that my life would never be the same again.
I told myself not to worry about it, and I didn’t particularly, but when I saw Ted Severson at the airport (Miranda and he were married now; I’d read the announcement in the Globe) I decided to talk with him. “Hello, there,” I said, giving him a chance to recognize me, even though I doubted that he would. He looked up, no idea who I was. He was visibly drunk, his eyes red-rimmed and his lower lip slack. He was drinking martinis. I ordered one as well, even though I hated martinis.
We shared a flight back to Boston, and he told me all about his sad life, about how Miranda was cheating on him, about his feelings of rage and resignation. He told me these things because he thought he would never see me again. At another time, another place, he would never have told me what he did. He even told me how much hate he felt for his wife, and jokingly said that he wanted to kill her. I told myself not to get involved, but I knew the moment we began to talk that it was too late. Miranda had come into my orbit again, and for a reason. Maybe it was selfishness, or maybe it was justice, or maybe it was something else altogether, but over the next few weeks I convinced Ted Severson to murder Miranda, as well as Brad Daggett, her lover. It wasn’t hard. And just when the plan was set to happen, I gathered the Sunday Globe from my stoop one morning, and over coffee at my kitchen table I saw a picture of Ted, a small pixelated square on the top of a column in the Metro section.
I read the accompanying story, my mug of coffee halfway to my lips.
SOUTH END RESIDENT SHOT IN OWN HOME
Boston—Police are investigating the homicide of a Boston resident that occurred in the Worcester Square section of the South End early Friday evening.
Police responded to a call for shots fired at 6:22 P.M. According to Boston Police Detective Henry Kimball, the victim, 38-year-old Ted Severson, was found on the second-floor landing of his residence and pronounced dead at the scene.
“We are also investigating a burglary that occurred on Friday night on the same block as the homicide,” Kimball said. “We don’t know yet if the two crimes are related, but we are asking anyone who might have information to step forward.”