looking at the mantelpiece where Dustin Miller’s fencing trophy had taken center stage. Matthew had replaced it with a mounted replica of the Rosetta stone he’d bought at the British Museum.
He said, “I just got sick of it, I guess. Thought I’d switch it out.”
Mira stepped forward and touched the Rosetta stone. “Hen from next door was pretty interested in that trophy, did you notice?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“Maybe she was a fencer.”
Later, in bed, they both read their books, Mira starting The Daughter of Time while Matthew was finishing A Distant Mirror, probably the third time he’d read it. He loved all history, but nothing stirred him so much as the Middle Ages, something about the ubiquity of death, the cheapness of life, the rawness and aliveness of that time.
“You think we’ll see them again?” Mira suddenly said.
Matthew knew she was talking about the neighbors, about Lloyd and Hen, but he said, “Who?”
“Hen and Lloyd, from next door.”
“I’m sure we’ll see them again. Plenty. They live right next door.”
“You know what I mean. Socially.”
Matthew and Mira had very few arguments—neither of them was remotely confrontational—but Mira did frequently bring up the fact that she wished they had more friends. She’d never brought it up when they’d been actively trying to have children, but she did now—quite often—after they’d decided that a child was not going to happen.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t the most sparkling evening, was it?” He felt bad as soon as he said the words.
“What? You didn’t think it was?”
“It was fun. It was fine. It just wasn’t . . . there wasn’t necessarily a spark.”
Mira rubbed a finger against her temple. “I thought I had a spark with Hen. A little bit, anyway. She was really interesting, didn’t you think?”
“I did. You should get together with her. We don’t need to do things as a couple, always.”
“Yes, I know. It would be nice if it worked out, though.”
“Ask her to lunch sometime,” Matthew said.
“I will,” Mira said, then added, “You were not a fan of Lloyd, huh?”
“Eh,” Matthew said. “He was okay. Struck me as a poor match for Hen. He lucked out there.”
“You always say that.”
“I’m usually right.”
They went back to reading. As usual, Mira put her book on her bedside table first, turned her lamp off, and curled into Matthew. “I don’t know where I’d be without you,” she said, as she did every night, at least whenever they were in bed together. It was her way of saying good night. Also, it was a kind of a prayer, Matthew thought. He’d almost mentioned that to her once, but realized that it made him sound like he was calling himself a god.
Matthew kept reading until Mira had fallen asleep. It took her only about ten minutes. She would curl away from him, and her breathing would slow, and, more often than not, she would mutter unintelligible words to herself. Matthew shut his own book, turned off his lamp, and lay on his back. The room was a hazy gray, never completely black like the bedroom he’d slept in for the first seventeen years of his life. He was wide-awake; he always was when he started the process of falling to sleep. It was his favorite time of the day, and he considered his options, considered what story he would recount to himself as he fell asleep. Lately, it had been one of two. In the first, he’d travel back in time—one year ago, almost exactly—to when he’d driven down to New Jersey and murdered Bob Shirley in the apartment he kept secret from his wife. Bob, a town selectman who’d been friends with his father, had been old and weak, and Matthew had knelt on his chest while clamping down on his mouth and nose. The other story he’d been telling to himself of late had been what he’d do with his fellow teacher Michelle’s boyfriend if he ever figured out how to be alone with him. That was really the bedtime story he’d been telling himself the most. But tonight, because of the fencing trophy—and what it had felt like handling it again after all these years—he decided to tell himself an oldie but a goodie. The story of Dustin Miller.
Matthew had thought about killing Dustin ever since Courtney Cheigh accused him of rape while the two had been on a trip to St. Louis for a fencing tournament. Some teachers at the time had actually sided with Dustin, while most held back, saying they