the thought, decided that she should do it, then realized that she would need to go home and pack first. She had to pack clothes, but more important, she needed her meds. The problem with going home, of course, was having to deal with Lloyd. She decided to call him first, tell him she was coming home to get some things but didn’t want to have a conversation. His phone went to voice mail; she didn’t leave a message. They had a landline in the house—it was part of the bundle that got them cable and Wi-Fi—and she tried that number, just on the off chance that Lloyd wasn’t near his cell phone. But there was no answer on the landline, either.
Maybe he’s gone for a walk, she thought, and wondered if she had time to drive home, get her things, and leave before he came back. While she was thinking this, the lights in her studio suddenly went out, and the room was plunged in darkness.
“Hey,” she said aloud.
A hollow, distant “Sorry” came back, and the lights turned back on. Yuma something or other, who was a watercolor painter on the other side of the basement level, came and popped her head into Hen’s studio.
“Sorry ’bout that,” she said. “You didn’t hear me call out? I thought I was the only one down here.”
“No, sorry, I didn’t hear you. No big deal. Am I the last one here?”
“As soon as I leave, you will be.”
Hen almost asked Yuma to wait up, that she was leaving, too, but instead said, “I’ll make sure to turn the lights out when I leave.”
She listened to Yuma’s footsteps as she made her way down the hall. The CD in her player was changing over and a Morphine album began to play. She looked at the copper plate that she’d begun to prepare earlier, briefly considered trying to do just a little bit of work, but knew she should go home and pack. It was going to be another scene with Lloyd, but the quicker it began, the quicker it would end. She could come back tomorrow and get work done.
Hen grabbed her jean jacket from the back of the chair, put her sketchbook in her bag, and was about to turn out the lights in her studio when she heard footsteps coming back down the hall. Was Yuma back? No, the footsteps were louder and heavier. She kept her hand on the switch, listening to where they were going. She almost shouted out “hello,” but something stopped her. The footsteps were coming toward her studio.
Chapter 36
At Logan Airport, Mira stepped out through the automatic doors into the cool air and turned left toward the line for taxis. She wondered briefly how much it was going to cost to take a cab all the way to West Dartford, then pushed the thought away. That was the least of her worries. When everything turned out to be fine, she and Matthew could laugh at the credit card bill, laugh at how Mira panicked during her trip to Wichita and returned early.
That will most likely never happen and you know it. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Mira had woken early that morning in the hotel room. She’d left the curtains open and was greeted by the enormous Midwest sky, its clouds edged in pink. She’d had terrible dreams, the most vivid being one in which her house had burned down. In the dream Matthew and she had toured the remains. Everything was gone except for charred bodies, hidden everywhere in the smoldering house. Most were men—Jay Saravan, a frequent visitor in Mira’s dreams, was there, of course—but some were children, small blackened bodies that Mira knew were her own, the babies Matthew and she had never been able to have.
Lying in bed, staring at the window, a phrase kept going through Mira’s mind: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. She knew what she was telling herself: it was all true; her husband killed people. There was just too much smoke. Even last night, when they’d had such a seemingly normal conversation on the phone, he’d come out and said that he missed her. It wasn’t the words so much, but the way in which he had said them, his voice childish and sad. Something inside of him was unraveling. She knew it. It was no longer doubt she felt but dread.
She’d packed, checked out early, texted Linda at the local office that she thought she had food poisoning