She looked away, and he said, “Please, do come. The house is large, and the two of us, alone, insufferably male. It would be so much livelier with your company.”
“Then, I’ll be there.”
“Beautiful. Excellent.” He tilted his head skyward and breathed deeply. “You know, I’d almost forgotten how it feels. Fresh air. Open sky. I should appreciate it more, I suppose, today being the first time in eighty-nine years I’ve risked my own involuntary confinement.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s illegal to practice law without a license, my dear.” He flashed a wink and an old man’s wicked grin. “Mine has been expired for ages.”
13
He watched the courthouse from a distance and recognized so many faces: the police, the lawyer, even some of the reporters. It was like that when you’d lived in a town as long as he had, when you knew people. He kept his eyes on the woman, though, on the way she moved and kept her eyes down and touched the old man’s elbow.
Elizabeth.
Liz.
So many years, he thought. So many times he’d laid up in the dark knowing it would end with her.
Did he have the strength to do it?
He rolled the idea around his mind, taking it apart, putting it back together. Everyone else had been a stranger. He knew the names, yes, where they lived and why he chose them: a multitude of women who, in the end, were as blank to him as water in a ditch.
Things now were getting complicated.
Same town.
Familiar faces.
He settled lower in the seat, watching the line of her jaw, the angle of her shoulders. When she put the lawyer in the limousine, she looked his way but didn’t see him up the street, safe in the car. He watched her walk away and pictured the girl who would be next. The thought made him sick, but it always did.
When the nausea passed, he started the car, drove six blocks, and stopped at the curb. Beyond the glass, children ran and played under the gaze of the day-care staff. Most of the women were used up. They slumped on benches and smoked cigarettes under trees. The woman he’d chosen was not like that. She stood beside the slide, smiling as she held a little boy’s hand. He was six, maybe, small and happy even though his parents were at work, and none of the other children looked at him twice. He went down the slide, and the woman caught him when he hit the dirt, laughing as she spun him so hard his heels flicked up and showed the bottoms of his shoes.
If he had to say why he’d chosen her, he probably couldn’t. The look was wrong, except for the eyes, of course, and maybe the line of her jaw. But she lived in the same town as Adrian, and Adrian was part of this.
Still …
He watched for another minute. The way she moved, the eyelashes, black on her skin. She had a good laugh and was pretty and tilted her head a certain way. He wondered if she was smart, too, if she would see through his lies or understand the church as it rose in the distance.
In the end, it didn’t matter, so he pictured how it would be: the white linen and warm skin, the bow of her neck and the communion as she died. He felt sick again, thinking about it; but already his eyes were brimming.
This time, it would work.
This time, he would find her.
* * *
He waited until it was dark, and she was home alone. For an hour, he watched the lights in her house. Then he circled the block and watched for an hour more. There was no movement in the night. No walkers or porch-sitters or idle curious. By nine o’clock he was certain.
She was alone in the house.
He was alone on the street.
Starting the car, its lights off, he pulled forward, then backed into her driveway. The neighboring house was close on that side, but his car settled above an oily spot only ten steps from the porch. There were bushes, trees, pools of blackness.
On the porch, he saw her through the glass. On the sofa. Legs curled. He tapped on the glass and watched her eyebrows crease as she came hesitantly to the door. He lifted a hand so she saw it through the pane: a friendly wave from a friendly face. The door opened a few inches.
“May I help you?” A trace of doubt flickered, but she