watched two episodes of Better Call Saul before Lloyd said he was going to bed to read. Even though it was early, Hen decided to go to bed as well. She had the new Margaret Atwood, and while it had been months since she’d really gotten into a book, she was still trying.
The bedroom was cold. She’d cracked the window earlier in the day for Vinegar, who loved to sit in open windows, but the temperature had dropped and the room was frigid. She shut the window, just as Lloyd, oblivious to any temperature fluctuation, came into the room, holding a new paperback in his hand. Something science fiction–y. He had the dazed look he got when he was getting ready to get into bed. She imagined he was already falling asleep, which made sense, since once he got into bed, he’d be asleep about thirty seconds after he finished reading and turned off his lamp. Hen, on the other hand, would lie in bed for at least forty-five minutes, her mind turning the day over and over, slowly revving down enough so that she could edge her way into unconsciousness.
Tonight was no different. Before Hen had even gotten into bed, wearing flannel pajamas she had to dig out from one of the large bins under the bed, Lloyd was deeply asleep. Hen began to read her book, but her mind wouldn’t allow her to absorb the words. It had been three days since Hen had confessed to Lloyd her suspicions of their neighbor. Since then, she had done nothing more. Well, that was not entirely true; she had spent more time online, looking for any information she could glean about Matthew Dolamore. There wasn’t much, and there wasn’t much new on Dustin Miller’s homicide, either. But she hadn’t, as yet, gone to the police with her suspicions. And Lloyd hadn’t asked her if she had, clearly hoping the whole subject would be dropped.
Hen put the book away, not bothering to mark with a bookmark that she’d made it all the way to page two, and turned off her own lamp. She lay on her back, her eyes on the ceiling, wide-awake. She could hear the tap, tap, tap of Vinegar’s nails along the wooden floor of the bedroom, coming to check if the window was still open. It wasn’t, but he jumped on the windowsill anyway, and Hen turned her head to watch Vinegar’s tail twitching from under the curtain. An image came to her—a potential piece of artwork—of a human-sized cat tucked into a bed and a small, naked girl asleep on a windowsill. She imagined that outside the window, crouched on the bare branch of a tree, was a small, naked boy with large catlike eyes. As always happened when Hen imagined an etching, the entire image was instantly in her mind, exactly as it would look and exactly as it should feel. She got out of bed, went downstairs to the living room, and sketched the idea, just as she’d seen it in her mind. It felt good; she hadn’t had an idea for an original etching in months, at least since before they’d moved to West Dartford. She wasn’t sure her idea was any good—it was just a little obvious, the transposition of a pet and an owner—but something about the rendering of the sketch was working for her. It creeped her out to look at it, in a good way, and she felt the familiar buzz, the aliveness in her chest, that she got when she created a piece of art. She captioned it: “The boy was back again the very next night.” She’d always titled her artwork as though the images were illustrations for a nonexistent book, part of an ongoing story.
She put her sketchbook away, already looking forward to contemplating the drawing the next day with fresh eyes. The problem was that she was now fully awake. She considered getting back into bed, trying to read again, but knew it was useless. Her mind was buzzing.
She went back up to the bedroom, put on socks and slippers, and got a thick cardigan to put over her pajamas. Vinegar had moved to the bed, settling down by Lloyd’s feet. He eyed Hen with suspicion.
Back downstairs, Hen put the kettle on to make some herbal tea. Waiting for the water to boil, she stood in the living room looking out at the night. There were stars in the sky, something she’d rarely seen in