sighs, faintly. “Fight in a bar. Nothing fancy.” A shrug. “Except I had a prior. Same thing. Two strikes.”
“I thought it was three.”
“Depends who you are.”
“Mm,” I say, as though this is wisdom not to be questioned.
“And my PD was a drunk.”
“Mm,” I repeat, working it out. Public defender.
“So I did fourteen months.”
“Where was this?”
“The fight or the prison?”
“Both.”
“Both in Massachusetts.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to know, like, details?”
I do. “Oh, no.”
“It was just stupid stuff. Drunk stuff.”
“I see.”
“But that’s where I learned to—you know. Watch out for my . . . space.”
“I see.”
We stand there, eyes downcast, like two teenagers at a dance.
I shift my weight. “When were you—when did you do time?” Where appropriate, use the patient’s vocabulary.
“Got out in April. Stayed in Boston over the summer, then came down here.”
“I see.”
“You keep saying that,” he says, but it’s friendly.
I smile. “Well.” Clearing my throat. “I invaded your space, and I shouldn’t have. Of course you can stay.” Do I mean that? I think I do.
He sips his wine. “I just wanted you to know. Also,” he adds, nodding his glass toward me, “this stuff is pretty good.”
“I haven’t forgotten about the ceiling, you know.”
We’re on the sofa, three glasses deep—well, three for him, four for me, so seven glasses deep, if we’re counting, which we’re not—and it takes me a second to catch up.
“Which ceiling?”
He points. “The roof.”
“Right.” I look up, as though I can gaze through the bones of the house to the roof. “Oh, right. What made you think of that?”
“You just said that once you can go outside you’re going to get up there. Check it out.”
Did I? “That’s not happening for a while,” I tell him crisply. Crispishly. “I can’t even walk across the garden.”
A slight grin, a tilt of the head. “Someday, then.” He places his glass on the coffee table, stands. “Where’s the bathroom?”
I twist in my seat. “Over there.”
“Thanks.” He pads away to the red room.
I keel back into the sofa. The cushion whispers in my ears as I rock my head side to side. I saw my neighbor get stabbed. That woman you never met. That woman nobody has ever met. Please believe me.
I can hear urine drilling into the bowl. Ed used to do that, pee so forcibly that it was audible even with the door closed, like he was boring a hole through the porcelain.
The flush of the toilet. The hiss of the tap.
There’s someone in her house. Someone pretending to be her.
The bathroom door opens, closes.
The son and the husband are lying. They’re all lying. I sink deeper into the cushion.
I stare at the ceiling, at the lights like dimples. Shut my eyes.
Help me find her.
A creak. A hinge, someplace. David might have gone back downstairs. I tip to one side.
Help me find her.
But when I open my eyes a moment later, he’s returned, flopping onto the sofa. I straighten up, smile. He smiles back, looks past me. “Cute kid.”
I swivel. It’s Olivia, beaming within a silver frame. “You’ve got her picture downstairs,” I remember. “On the wall.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “Don’t know. Didn’t have anything to replace it with.” He drains his glass. “Where is she, anyway?”
“With her dad.” Swallowing wine.
A pause. “You miss her?”
“Yes.”
“You miss him?”
“I do, in fact.”
“Talk to them a lot?”
“All the time. Just yesterday, actually.”
“When do you see them next?”
“Probably not for a while. But soon, I hope.”
I don’t want to talk about this, about them. I want to talk about the woman across the park. “Should we check out that ceiling?”
The steps coil up into blackness. I lead; David follows.
As we pass the study, something ripples beside my leg. Punch, stealing downstairs. “Was that the cat?” David asks.
“That was the cat,” I answer.
We ascend past the bedrooms, both dark, and onto the uppermost landing. I slap my hand to the wall, find the switch. In the sudden light, I see David’s eyes on mine.
“It doesn’t look any worse,” I say, pointing to the stain overhead, spread across the trapdoor like a bruise.
“No,” he agrees. “But it’ll get there. I’ll take care of it this week.”
Silence.
“Are you very busy? Finding a lot of work?”
Nothing.
I wonder if I might tell him about Jane. I wonder what he’d say.
But before I can decide, he’s kissed me.
55
We’re on the floor of the landing, the carpet rough against my skin; then he hoists me up, carries me to the nearest bed.
His mouth is on my mouth; stubble sandpapers my cheeks and chin. One hand rakes my hair hard, while