Nine Lives, page 6
“I think I know what you mean,” Matthew said. “Being young was scary, but it was also interesting.”
She laughed again, and because they were standing so close, Matthew could smell the wine on her breath. “I think that’s what I miss,” she said. “Life being interesting.”
“Our kids are interesting.”
“Your kids are a little younger than mine. Yes, they’re interesting, but pretty soon they won’t be interested in you. Again, I’m being a baby.” She leaned in closer and squeezed Matthew’s hand. “Please don’t tell Nancy about this conversation. She wouldn’t understand.”
“I won’t,” he said. One of the kids, a scrawny girl wearing a swim vest, was tugging on Michelle’s skirt.
“I’m cold,” she said, and Michelle lifted her up and held her tight.
“Who are you again?” she asked the small child who had burrowed under her chin, shivering. Matthew rubbed the girl’s back. The girl said her name, but her face was pressed against Michelle’s sweater and neither of them heard it.
Matthew had thought about that moment a hundred times since then and the memory still had the power to make his chest hurt. It was ironic that he was now engaged in a conversation by candlelight with Michelle, and his wife would not be remotely jealous. Why was that? Was it because Michelle was a little overweight, a little older than them both? Maybe his wife had never noticed how beautiful Michelle’s pale brown eyes were.
Five minutes after they’d gotten home, and after Nancy had paid Michaela and sent her on her way (Matthew deliberately never looking at her), he got a call from Pete Robinson.
“Michelle can’t find her phone. You guys didn’t pick it up off the table by any chance?”
It turned out that Michelle’s phone, the same model as Nancy’s, was in Nancy’s purse, alongside her own. Pete said that he’d drive over to get it.
“I’m so embarrassed,” Nancy said, and slurred the word. She was a little drunk, Matthew realized, a rare event.
“It’s no big deal. It’s not like you were trying to steal it. Were you trying to steal it?”
She smiled and asked if Matthew would wait outside for Pete. “I just want to go upstairs and get straight into bed.”
Matthew put on his warmest sweater and went outside with the phone to wait. The Robinsons’ Volvo pulled up, and he was surprised to see Michelle get out of the driver’s side. He came down the flagstone path and met her with the phone.
“I thought you’d be Pete,” he said.
“Disappointed?”
“No.” He handed her the phone.
“Pete wanted to watch his highlights, and he probably shouldn’t be driving anyway. I’m not sure I should be driving, but I guess I’m officially addicted to my phone.”
“We all are.”
They stood for a moment, the night silent around them, and Michelle suddenly said, “Matthew, how are you these days?”
Because the question surprised him, Matthew, without thinking, said, “I’ve been better. I worry about the kids, and Nancy, she’s … I guess I worry about her, as well.”
“It’s not my place to say it, but I think she’s hard on you.”
Just hearing those words caused something to tighten in Matthew’s chest. “She’s upset at me all the time and I don’t know why. And I don’t know how to stop it.”
“I’m not a marriage counselor,” Michelle said, “but if I was, I’d say that it’s not your fault. It’s not up to you to stop it.”
“I know that intellectually, but I don’t always feel it.”
“Understandable.”
“How about you and Pete?” Matthew said.
She hesitated, then said, “He’s been a good father, but he hasn’t looked at me in years. All he’s interested in is sports.”
“Have you talked with him about it?”
“I have. He promises to do better, but nothing changes, and now I feel selfish for even wanting more. Do you talk with Nancy?”
“I don’t think she sees herself the way that I see her, the way that other people see her. I don’t know … I don’t know what to do. But, no, I don’t really talk with her.”
The lamp above the front door, fitted with a motion sensor, went out, and Matthew and Michelle stood in the dark. He knew that if he took just a half step forward they would be kissing, and that he’d never be able to take that back. But he also realized that Nancy already thought he was cheating with any number of women, so maybe he should just go ahead and do it.
He took a step forward just as Michelle did, and they began to kiss.
7
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 9:25 P.M.
Ethan had ignored the text from Ashley, saying she was back from visiting her parents and did he want to grab a drink. Instead, he’d sent a text to Hannah, begging her to come over to his place. He hadn’t heard back.
While he waited for the burrito to heat up in the microwave, he cracked open a Shiner Bock. As far as he knew, Ashley and Hannah, despite living together, weren’t particularly good friends. That didn’t mean that Ashley was going to be okay with the fact that he used to sleep with her and now he was exclusively sleeping with her housemate. But maybe she wouldn’t mind too much. He thought of calling his oldest friend Marcus and asking him if he thought it was possible to pull off the roommate switch, but he could already hear Marcus’s mocking laughter.
While waiting to hear from Hannah (God, he loved her aloofness), he did some deeper Google searches of the names that had been on the list he’d handed over to the FBI earlier in the day. One of the names had been Caroline Geddes, and he wondered if it was the same Caroline Geddes who was an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Michigan. There was a picture of her, dark hair pulled back off a wide forehead, and with a half-smile on her face that looked—what was the word?—secretive, maybe. Ethan felt a click of recognition looking at her. Not that he’d met her before necessarily, but that he somehow knew her already.
Her faculty page included an email, and he sent her a quick message:
Caroline, Did you get a strange list with your name on it? If you didn’t, please ignore this awkward email. If you did, my name was on the list as well and I don’t know why. Email me. Ethan Dart
He closed his laptop, not expecting to get an email back anytime soon, and went and crouched in front of his record collection, looking for something to listen to. What was he in the mood for? He picked Joni Mitchell, playing side two of The Hissing of Summer Lawns, and when he rechecked his emails he was surprised he already had a response from Caroline.
Yes, that was me. An FBI agent nonchalantly took it away and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. What about you?
He wrote back:
Same. Something must be up. Should we be worried? I feel more curious.
Caroline:
I’m curious, too. Also a little worried. Did you know any of the other names on the list?
Ethan:
I didn’t, no, and I looked them all up. Nothing rang a bell, but when I saw your faculty page … you seemed familiar to me. Don’t know why.
Caroline:
Familiar meaning we might know each other? Your name doesn’t ring a bell for me.
Ethan:
Really? I’m a famous musician.
Caroline:
Are you actually?
Ethan:
No, but I want to be, I guess. I’m aspiring. And now I’m embarrassed that I even made the stupid joke in the first place. Let’s talk about something else? Where did you grow up?
They emailed back and forth for an hour, comparing biographies, trying to figure out if there was some connection between them. Except for their age—they were both in their middle thirties—they discovered that they had almost nothing in common. All they’d come up with was the fact that they both had had grandparents from the Boston area in Massachusetts.
Ethan wrote:
Maybe what connects us is that nothing connects us. It feels almost strange that we can’t find anything.
She wrote:
You write songs. I like songs. I don’t suppose that counts.
Ethan:
Well, you probably wouldn’t like my songs. But you critique poetry, and I like poetry.
Caroline:
Liking poetry is far rarer than liking songs. What poets do you like?
Ethan thought for a moment, trying to construct a fast list that would impress her, then asked himself why he was trying to do that. Instead, he decided to just be honest.
Off the top of my head: John Berryman, Frank O’Hara, Weldon Kees, Robert Lowell. Also, a bunch of people you probably wouldn’t consider poets: Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, James McMurtry, Willy Vlautin.
After sending that last email Ethan didn’t hear back right away, and he wondered if his poetry selections had turned her off somehow. He went and flipped through his records, pulling out Songs of Love and Hate, and dropped the needle on its first track.
8
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 9:48 P.M.
Caroline was in her bed, wide awake, emailing back and forth with a stranger. Her orange cat Estrella slept, as was her custom, on the edge of the lower right corner of the mattress, curled into a tight ball. Fable, her other cat, could be anywhere.
Ethan Dart, who’d emailed her out of the blue because of that strange letter, had just given her his list of favorite poets, and she was googling Weldon Kees, looking for a poem of his that she remembered liking. After a few minutes she found it and reread it to herself. An odd poem called “For My Daughter.” It was the last line that had stuck with her: “I have no daughter. I desire none.”
She was about to write back to Ethan when she got a second email from him.
I lost you when I called Dylan a poet, didn’t I?
She smiled, and wrote:
No. You didn’t lose me, but he’s not a poet. He’s a songwriter. No, I was looking up a poem by Weldon Kees I like called “For My Daughter.” You don’t hear very much about him these days.
Ethan wrote:
Phew, you’re still there. I was missing you already. I love Kees, and sometimes I think I’m just romanticizing him because he went missing and no one ever saw him again. Do you know his poem “Crime Club”?
Caroline:
I don’t, but I’ll look it up.
Ethan:
Okay. I’ll wait patiently while you read it. I’ll try not to panic that you’re leaving me.
Caroline and Ethan Dart emailed until just before dawn. She knew that it was that late not because of the soft gray glow that was filling her curtains but because Fable had come to wake her up, asking to be let out for his predawn reconnaissance.
It’s nearly morning, she wrote and he wrote immediately back:
My least favorite time of day. Can we continue this conversation tomorrow night? Or maybe we shouldn’t push our luck.
She wrote:
Sure, I could continue, but not until I get at least a little sleep.
She folded up her laptop, then brought it to her office to charge. The window curtains were now almost ablaze with morning light. Still, she crawled back under her covers, and thought about the very strange events of the last two days. First, the letter, and then the phone call from the FBI wanting to take possession of it, and now this long email exchange with a country singer from Austin, Texas, who loved Weldon Kees. She’d looked at the picture he had up on his website, and thought he looked a little like paintings she’d seen of Edmund Spenser. Same narrow, pointed nose, same dark brown eyes.
She pulled the covers over her head, creating a pocket of darkness, and lay for a time with her eyes still open.
9
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 7:16 A.M.
Jessica Winslow lay awake in her bed, wondering if she’d even managed three solid hours of sleep. Aaron had escorted her home the night before, and she’d let him walk her into her house, even let him poke around for a while. She didn’t offer him a drink, however, and he let her lead him to her front door.
“Come straight to work in the morning,” he said. “Don’t stop off anywhere public.”
“Sure,” she’d said, as she was bending down to pick up the single catalogue that had come through her mail slot.
“You taking this seriously?”
She looked up. Aaron seemed genuinely concerned, but she could also smell toothpaste on his breath, which meant that he’d brushed before leaving the office to escort her home. Which meant he was hoping to be asked to stay.
“I am,” she said. “And I’ll come straight to work in the morning if you promise to have a coffee and an elephant ear from Mia’s waiting for me.”
“That’s the one on Clinton Ave?”
“That’s the one.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
She’d spent the night compiling facts on the remaining names they had yet to identify, but didn’t send any more emails, or make any more calls. Then she’d gotten into bed with the newest Lisa Gardner book, and read until she thought she might be able to fall asleep. She hadn’t, not right away, her mind trying to connect the names on the list, trying to figure out what they might have in common. When she finally slept, she must have dreamed, because she remembered waking up at some point convinced that the dream she’d just had explained everything. She’d reached for the notebook she kept on her bedside table, but as soon as she’d opened it up to a blank sheet, her mind went blank as well. No vestige of the dream remained.
Even though Aaron was going to bring her coffee to the office, she made herself a cup at home. It was going to be one of those mornings. Dressed in her most comfortable suit, she stepped out into the misty day, scanning the blank windows of the surrounding townhouses. Like most residents of her development, she parked out front unless there was going to be a snowstorm and they’d need to plow. There was a parking lot available to all residents, but it was located on the far side of the swimming pool.
She tried listening to NPR on the way to work but her mind kept wandering, so she turned the radio off, and recited the names on the list to herself. Frank Hopkins. Jack Radebaugh. Arthur Kruse. Alison Horne. Jay Coates. Ethan Dart. Caroline Geddes. Matthew Beaumont. And that was eight. There was one more, right? For a total of nine. Then she remembered that she was the ninth name on the list. Why nine? she wondered. Lists should be ten, shouldn’t they? She pulled into her parking spot at the field office. That was the first question she would ask Aaron: Why nine?
10
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 8:00 A.M.
Matthew had reached the part of his run that took him through the town’s conservation land, a pine forest that skirted the largest wetland in Dartford. He slowed down, trying to absorb the shushing sound of the gentle breeze going through the tops of the trees, trying to be in the moment.
He stopped and just stood there, listening, but mostly all he could hear was his own breath entering and leaving his lungs. He couldn’t quite believe what had happened at the end of the previous night, standing in the dark with Michelle Robinson, making out like teenagers as curfew approached. He’d barely slept, going over and over in his mind what had happened, the solidity of her back against his hand, the softness of her mouth. How long had it lasted? Five minutes, maybe. Afterward, she had laughed, and said, “Well, that was interesting.”
“We probably shouldn’t be—”
“No, we definitely shouldn’t be.” Her hand was around his waist pressing their bodies together.
“And I should get back into the house, before Nancy …”
“Yes, you should. Definitely.” She let go of him, and leaned back against her car. “Maybe we should just chalk this up as a very nice interlude in our lives.”
“That sounds about right. It was very nice.”
They kissed once more, briefly but on the lips, and said goodnight.
Her words had been comforting, otherwise Matthew might be panicking right now that Michelle was telling Pete she was in love with someone else and wanted a divorce. No, that wasn’t going to happen. It had just been a semi-drunken kiss between two married friends. Nothing more, and over time they’d forget all about it. What else could happen? Even the thought of starting an affair, of kissing in parked cars, and renting motel rooms, and lying to their spouses, made Matthew feel sweaty and nauseous. It would be a terrible idea, and people would get hurt.
He wondered what Michelle was thinking about right now. Should he send her a text message, ask her if there was a place they could meet and talk? But if he did that, then there’d be a text history on his phone. There’d be proof, even if he could somehow erase it. Also, it would be inviting more of what had happened the night before. No, the best thing to do was to pretend it had never happened.
One thing, though. Matthew might feel anxious, but he also felt happy. If nothing else, the memory of that kiss would carry him through a winter’s worth of family troubles. The memory would always be there, ready for him to access. That would have to be enough. If Michelle and he had an affair, they would get found out. That’s what always happened. And then he and Nancy would get divorced, and he’d probably never see the children again. She’d have custody, and she would hate him for what he had done, passing along all that hate to their children. Not only that, she’d probably pass along all of her neurotic tendencies too, his children becoming miniature versions of their mother. Or maybe not. Maybe they’d turn out okay. He had, after all. His own mother had been a mess all through his childhood. And now she hadn’t left her house in over fifteen years, since he’d gone off to college. She lived on vegetable soup, and a steady diet of Hallmark movies, any movie really so long as it had a happy ending. Jesus, why was he thinking of his mother? He thought of Michelle again, and what it had been like to hold her in his arms.
