and could someone man the booth for her that day, then taxied to the airport to catch the next flight to Boston. The best one she could find didn’t get her in until midafternoon—she had to connect in Charlotte—but there was one seat left and she took it.
In the cab on her way to her house she fought the urge to call Matthew and tell him she was on her way home. The whole point of returning early was to catch him off guard and to confront him. To tell him she was beginning to have doubts and give him a chance to confess. Or give him a chance to convince her that she—like their neighbor—had become unreasonably paranoid. Convince her that there was no fire.
The cab got caught up in stalled traffic right before the Concord rotary, and the driver, a jowly, red-faced man, muttered under his breath about the traffic as though he were the one who needed to get home.
Mira cracked the window in the back, not because it was too warm but because the air in the cab felt thin, as though she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. The cab jerked its way through the rotary, the driver still grumbling, and then they were on the relatively empty road toward West Dartford. She checked her watch; on any normal day Matthew would be home from school by now. What would he be doing? If she were there he’d be working on that day’s crossword on his iPad while she started dinner, or else he’d be in his office grading papers.
The cab pulled onto Sycamore, the low sun casting long shadows across the street. She directed the driver to her house, noticing right away that Matthew’s car wasn’t in the driveway. She felt a combination of increased fear but also relief. After putting the giant fare on her credit card, she rolled her luggage to the front door, trying to remember where she’d put the house key. She didn’t need it, though; the front door swung open, and she stepped across the threshold, calling out Matthew’s name even though his car was gone. He didn’t answer back.
The door being unlocked, along with the slightly off-putting smell in the house, raised Mira’s already elevated heartbeat. She shut the door behind her, shouted out another “Hello?,” then walked through the living room toward the kitchen, where the bad smell seemed to be coming from. The kitchen looked relatively normal except for a line of empty ginger ale cans across the granite countertop, as though those were the only sustenance that Matthew allowed himself when she was gone. She looked into the stainless steel sink. It was dry and empty, so she pulled open the cabinet that held the garbage can and was immediately hit with the strong smell of rotten food. On the top of the garbage was a rib eye steak still wrapped in its container, beaded with drops of reddish water. Had Matthew taken it out of the freezer, forgotten to eat it, then thrown it away? If so, it was so unlike him. He was a man who hated wasting food.
Next, she went to Matthew’s office, almost considered knocking, but turned the doorknob and swiftly entered. She flicked the switch on the wall, turning the ceiling light on. At first the room looked normal, but as she looked around she realized that all of Matthew’s little knickknacks had been moved. Where the vintage typewriter had been, on the side table, there was now his art deco greyhound sculpture. The typewriter had been moved to the desk. It wasn’t unusual for Matthew to move things around in his office, but she knew that he tended to do it when he was anxious about something. And then Mira looked at the corduroy sofa, noticing first that the red velvet pillow was indented as though someone had been sleeping on it and that there was a wool blanket bunched up on the floor. She hadn’t thought about Richard for years, but Mira thought about him now, wondered if he’d been the one who’d spent the night on the couch. She left the office and climbed the stairs to the second floor, wanting to check their bedroom to see if their bed had been slept in. It looked like it had even though it had been made, and the tight corners and the lined-up pillows told Mira that it was Matthew who’d made it.