she was somehow numb to it. What she really wanted to do was to go downstairs, tell Lloyd that he should just go to work, and they could talk some more later. She wanted to be alone and maybe go to her studio, and she wanted to continue her conversation with Matthew, find out more about his brother and what was going on there.
She lay back on the bed and listened to the house. She wondered if Lloyd was up yet, but couldn’t hear anything. Finally, she braced herself and went downstairs, expecting to see Lloyd still on the couch, probably still crying. Why did he get to cry so much? She was the one who got cheated on.
When she got to the first floor, the couch was empty, the single blanket lying on the floor.
“Lloyd,” she said aloud, and as soon as she said it, she realized he wasn’t in the house. She walked to the window that faced the driveway. The Golf was gone. There was no note in the kitchen, the place where he’d most likely leave one. Had he just gone to work, taking the car instead of the train? No, that made no sense. And if he had he would have let her know. He wouldn’t have left while she was still asleep upstairs. She pulled her phone out. No text messages, and no voice mail. She dialed his number, and as she started to listen to it ring, a familiar noise came from the living room, the opening notes of “Coronado,” the Deerhunter song Lloyd used as his ringtone.
She hit End on her phone and went and found Lloyd’s cell, underneath the blanket by the couch. And then she began to really worry. Had he gone to the police to tell them about Matthew? Or maybe he’d gone directly to Matthew himself. But that didn’t make sense, because why would he take the car to do that? He’s gone to pick up breakfast, Hen told herself. He’s driven to that amazing bakery in Dartford Center to get those apricot scones that I like and two large coffees, and he just forgot to bring his phone with him. She told herself this, but didn’t quite believe it. It was something else, something bad.
She went to the living room window and looked across to Matthew’s house. His car was gone as well, which made sense, since he’d be at school by now. There was nothing to see, but she stayed there anyway, looking out at her neighborhood, not knowing what to do next.
Richard
I didn’t know that blood could jump like that, almost like it wants to leave the human body, get as far away as possible. I’d read about it, of course, in books, and I’d seen it in movies, the way arterial blood will spray. But to see it in reality, to see the life of it, that was something . . . something I can’t even express in words.
Dad loved blood, too. I know that not just because he showed me that bra once when he returned from his business trip—the bra with the bloodstain on it, the bra I still have, hidden away with Dad’s things. No, I know it because after he broke Mom’s nose at the dinner table, and she just sat there, immobile, and let the blood run out of her face and spill out over everything—the broken plate, the porcelain tabletop, the dinner napkins, the linoleum floor—I caught Dad pulling one of the napkins from the laundry basket. It was brown and stiff from all the blood, and when he saw me looking at him, he winked and said, “Another souvenir.”
I wonder if Dad ever saw what blood can really do when you unleash it. I wonder that a lot, and for a time I sought out unsolved murders, looking at the places where he used to go most frequently on his business trips. I always found something—every town in America has murdered girls in it, their murderers unknown—but I could never know for sure that it was my father who had done it.
It’s possible that I now know what he never did, that blood has a life all its own.
Matthew now knows about what I did to his girlfriend Michelle. He knew it the moment I left him the keys, of course, but he had to go and see it for himself. I watched him from a distance, wondering what he’d do about it once he found out