Malbec, and tune the radio to a classical station. Outside a cold rain falls—that brief showing of sun a false promise—but inside the solid walls of our two-centuries-old Colonial it’s bright and warm. Safe.
We go to bed early. Make love. Slow and tender at first, as if we were both respecting the proximity of death, but then fiercely, as if that reminder of death is urging us on. Forcing us to reassert life. We are still alive. We are still here.
I’d been amazed after leaving Luther at the lake—after leaving him dead—that I had been able to go on to have a life, even enjoy everyday things again: crisp fall days, the smell of the ocean, my students’ fresh faces. I told myself it was because I had to go on for Rudy’s sake, but when I met Harmon I had to admit that I wanted a life for myself too, and that a bit of the joy I found in living was that I had survived Luther. He hadn’t dragged me down into that lake with him.
I tell myself now that I will survive this too.
I fall asleep for a while but then startle awake with a sense of panicky dread. Where’s Rudy? is my first thought. I get up and go into his room even though I’ve remembered that he’s in the dorm. I just need the comfort of his things around me. I sit on his bed, releasing a smell of unwashed sheets and boy musk—and feel something hard beneath my hip. It’s his laptop. See?—I’d like to point out to Kevin Bantree—he’s got nothing to hide, nothing he’s worried about me finding.
I open it up. I’m not spying, I tell myself, I’m just trying to find out more about Lila. A screensaver of the X-Men appears with a password request. I punch in the security code he uses for everything—LOGAN110—his favorite X-Men hero plus his birth date. The screen opens to the last website he visited. I’m braced for the possibility of porn, but it’s only a site for X-Men fans, and I’m touched that it’s something so innocent.
I open his email but find very little that’s not spam or school-related. Kids don’t use email anymore, my students have informed me. They use Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr, most of which won’t show up on Rudy’s laptop. But there is a messaging app that mimics the one on his phone. I hesitate before opening it. This, more than anything I’ve done so far, feels like a violation, but then I remind myself that the police are no doubt already reading Lila’s texts with Rudy and that’s all I’m here to see.
When I open the messaging app I get a screen showing everyone Rudy’s texted with recently. I see the text I sent him last night. On my way! I know the exclamation point was courtesy of the messaging app, but still it looks callous now. Lila was being murdered while I drove to campus in my comfy, seat-heating Subaru.
There are three other texters on the screen: a group text from Jill telling students when to show up for theater rehearsal, Lila, and an Unknown Sender. What a spare life my son leads, I think with a pang. Surely he should have more friends than this! Is it because he’s had to keep so much to himself over the years? I’ve never been sure how much he remembers of what happened that day at the lake. When I worked up the nerve to ask him once he said he remembers being sick in the hospital and dreaming that he was underwater.
Sometimes, he said, I hear a staticky noise in my left ear and I think that’s what it is—the sound of being underwater.
He says he doesn’t have any memories from before the hospital.
I click on the last message from the thread with Lila. It’s from Rudy last night—or rather early yesterday morning—at 5:30 A.M.
Where are you? You’re freaking me out!
I wonder if the police have Lila’s phone and have read that. If so, it only shows that he was worried about her.
I scroll upward through a dozen more of the same—all the texts on Rudy’s side of the screen.
What’s wrong?
What did I say?
I know there’s something you’re not telling me!
Can we talk?
Where are you?
All sent after they fought in the woods. None answered. I scroll farther up until I find the last text Lila sent to him. It’s from three weeks ago.
What you did was unforgivable. Period. What’s left