then there was a loud whump, and the cushion was fully ablaze. He grabbed the suitcase and exited out the front door, walking at a normal pace back to his car, catching movement in one of the windows of the closest house, probably Mrs. MacDonald watching his every move. Maybe he’d be lucky and the fire would spread to her house as well.
He’d been driving for ten minutes when he realized how hard he was gripping the steering wheel. He told himself to relax. Things were in motion and he just needed to let them play out.
He cruised down Sycamore Street, curious to see if Henrietta Mazur’s car was parked in front of her house. It wasn’t, so he kept going, his window cracked, expecting to hear the distant sound of sirens, but maybe he was too far from the other side of Dartford. Maybe the house hadn’t burned, the flames just sputtering out before they ever got going, but he didn’t think that was the case. He did a loop that took him up near Scituate River and did hear the distant sound of some kind of siren. It could be anything, of course, but it could also be his childhood home burning to the ground. He rolled the window all the way down. There was smoke in the air, but it had the fruity, pleasant aroma of chimney smoke, a common smell on a brisk fall afternoon.
He drove a short distance to Black Brick Studios. He knew where Henrietta usually parked, near the entrance to the basement. He left his car a block away on a side street, then walked down the hill to the lot. The gray Golf was there, along with one other car, a light blue Prius. The back parking lot was bordered on one side by a high embankment and on the other by a sloping embankment that led down to the river. A huge willow tree, beginning to turn yellow, rustled in the cold breeze. Richard stood about halfway between the willow tree and the locked back door of the studios, trying to look casual. One of two things would most likely happen next. Either Henrietta would come out from those doors and he’d be waiting for her, or whoever owned the Prius would emerge and, if that was the case—he was hoping it would be—he’d make sure he was walking toward the door with purpose, and hopefully whoever it was would let him in.
He stood for about thirty minutes, the clouds building up in the sky, till he saw the doorknob of the metal door turn. He began to walk swiftly toward the door, his phone in his hand, and watched as a woman with short gray hair emerged.
“Oh, hey,” Richard said, approaching. “Can you hold that?”
He saw the doubt in the woman’s eyes, but she held the door because he’d asked her to do it. “Visiting Hen,” he said, and held up his phone. “Does your phone work down there?”
“No, not really,” the woman said.
Richard slid past her, saying thanks, and the door closed behind him. He stood for a moment in the dim hallway and breathed deeply through his nostrils; he could smell paint and turpentine and the lingering scent of patchouli from the woman who’d just let him in. He wondered how long she’d be haunted by what she had just done. Probably for the rest of her life, he thought.
He began to walk toward Henrietta’s studio, not attempting to walk quietly. It didn’t matter if she knew he was down here. They were alone, and there was nothing she could do about it. He turned a corner, saw the light coming from underneath the door of her studio, then heard her door open. She poked her pretty head out and saw him. He kept coming.
“Hi, Matthew,” she said, a little bit of uncertainty in her voice.
“I’m not Matthew,” Richard said.
Chapter 38
Hen almost ran, but something stopped her. You run, you die, a voice was telling her, so instead she stepped out into the hallway and faced the man who just told her he wasn’t Matthew.
But it was Matthew, even though there was something different about him, in his eyes maybe, even in the way he was walking, the set of his head.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Richard,” he said. “We haven’t officially met yet.”
“No, we haven’t.” Hen’s entire body had turned icy cold, yet her brain was clicking along calmly, trying to assess the situation. “Where’s Matthew?”
“Matthew? Who