down the hall, leaving behind the scent of Jean Naté. That after-bath smell reminded Kate that she should probably take a shower at some point in the day, then she suddenly remembered that her class was starting that afternoon. She ran to her phone to check the time. It was just eleven. How long had she been sleeping?
She showered quickly, then dressed in her best pair of jeans and her favorite sweater. The only good thing about wasting the entire morning napping was that she now had less time to worry about her first class, and less time to worry about the subway trip. She ate a hunk of untoasted bread with honey and butter, and had a second cup of coffee, even though she knew it was a mistake. Her skin was already rippling with anxiety, and she had begun tapping the pads of her thumb and index finger together in anticipation of the afternoon.
She went to the bedroom and pulled her empty backpack from her larger bag. In her class confirmation e-mail, the instructor had said that there was no need to bring anything, that there were computers on site. Still, Kate wondered if she should bring her laptop. She decided against it, but grabbed her sketchbook from under the bed and put it in her backpack along with her pack of charcoal pencils. If she had time to kill, she could sketch, an activity that always calmed her down.
She had to walk several blocks down Charles Street to get to the station she was looking for on the Red Line. The sky was half filled with fast-moving clouds, and when the sun shone through the day felt warm, like early summer. But when a cloud covered the sun, and the wind picked up, the temperature seemed to drop about twenty degrees.
Charles Street Station was a massive structure made of glass, across a hectic intersection from Kate. She waited for walk signals, even though pedestrians in Boston darted across busy streets when there was any kind of pause in the traffic. Inside the station she bought a CharlieCard and put twenty dollars on it. It was easier than she thought it would be, and as she took the escalator to the outside platform, she was filled with a sudden surge of well-being. Here she was, in Boston, about to attend a class on InDesign. Life was good. And now that she was outside of the apartment, it suddenly seemed ridiculous how much she’d been obsessing about Audrey Marshall’s death and Corbin’s part in it. If he had been a genuine suspect, the police would have been back to search the apartment again.
A train approached, rumbling to a protracted stop on the tracks. Kate stepped into the car and took an end seat closest to the sliding doors. About half the seats were taken, mostly by lone commuters wearing earbuds and staring at their phones. Two women in baggy, light-blue nurse’s uniforms had gotten onto the car with Kate. As the train pulled away from the station, one of them said something to the other and they both broke into a laughing fit. The train went over a bridge and Kate got a good view of the river and the Back Bay. There were sailing boats on the river, circling an inlet. Then, in a flash, the train entered a tunnel, the lights flickering. Kate shivered.
The train stopped at Kendall Station. Three more stops and she’d be at Porter, her destination. Very few of the passengers departed at Kendall, however, and many got on. A man who smelled like fast food settled down next to Kate, his large thigh pressed against hers. She pulled her leg in and squeezed up against the barrier. A woman with graying hair but a relatively young face took hold of one of the grimy-looking bars in front of Kate. How old was she? Kate wondered if she should give up her seat and offer it to this woman, or would that be an insult. She decided to stay put. The doors shut with a hiss and the train rattled forward. She took a deep breath, but the air seemed thin, and she immediately began to tell herself what she always told herself in these situations. Let the panic come. It cannot hurt you or change you. She felt a little better. To do something with her hands, she unzipped the backpack on her lap and pulled out her sketchbook. She wanted to look