“No. I’m sure.”
“What’s going on Nina? You’re scaring me.”
“When you and I were at breakfast, someone came into my house,” Nina says.
“Who?”
“It was Jake.”
My knees practically collapse. I’m floored. Not being able to identify me is one thing, but mistaking me for Jake is something I hadn’t expected.
“Jake?” Lily asks. She’s unable to keep the shock out of her voice. But it’s okay because her shock is warranted. It would be shocking if Jake came home when they were at breakfast, after being missing for all these days.
“Yes,” Nina says. “Jake.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother. She saw him.”
“What did he say?” she asks. “What was he doing there? Is he still there now? Is he home?”
“No,” Nina says. “He didn’t say anything to my mother. He came, and then left again.”
Lily says, “Oh God. I’m so sorry, Nina. What do you think he wanted?”
Nina is exasperated. “Who the hell knows. He was in his office, my mother said, looking for something. He didn’t come for me.”
“Oh, Nina,” Lily says. It’s warm, sensitive. Silence follows and I imagine Lily putting her arms around Nina, embracing her. Thirty seconds or so pass, and then Lily says, “Look on the positive side: You know he’s fine, right? He’s not hurt. He’s not missing, like you thought. Maybe he just needs some time to come to his senses. Every relationship needs the occasional break. What’s that they say? Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
Nina is quiet at first. I’d give anything to still be in the kitchen with them. I want to see her face as she considers Lily’s words.
“Maybe you’re right,” she says after a while.
I like how Lily does that, how she turns the conversation into something encouraging. She found a bright spot. Even if it is a bald-faced lie.
The road at night is dark. Lily and I waited until after ten o’clock to leave, knowing the streets would be quieter. In my car, I drive Lily to the place where Jake’s car is parked. When we get to it, I pull to the side of the road, directly behind him. I shift the car into Park, and then my hands fall away from the steering wheel. Lily angles her body toward mine, and I put my hand on her knee.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
Outside, the rain is through. It never did amount to much. It was over and done within just a few hours. The wind has settled too. The night is perfectly still.
“Nothing,” I say.
Lily knows me too well. “You’re thinking about something, Christian. I can tell.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re quiet,” she says. “Quieter than usual.”
Lily is right. I am thinking about something. I’m thinking about what happened today, how I very narrowly dodged a bullet. “I thought for sure she knew,” I say. “When Nina came over today, I thought I was totally fucked.”
“But she didn’t know, Christian. It’s fine,” Lily says, setting her hand on mine, holding it.
“I know. I know that now. I just got scared,” I say, not wanting to admit that to Lily. I like to be the strong one, for Lily to think I’m indestructible. I want her to feel safe with me, to feel like I can take care of her, of us no matter what happens.
“It’s okay to be scared. I was scared too. But Nina suspects nothing.”
“I had these thoughts when Nina was at the house today,” I confess.
“What kind of thoughts?” she asks. I don’t say right away, so that Lily has to ask, “Christian?” as she leans in toward me.
I say, “You’re going to think less of me if I say it.”
She shakes her head. “I could never think anything bad about you.”
I take a breath. I say, “I thought that if Nina knew what I’d done, if she had come to say that she knew it was me in their house this morning, then I wouldn’t be able to let her leave. I’d have no choice but to keep her quiet.”
“What do you mean when you say keep her quiet?” she asks.
I swallow, hard. I don’t say, but I don’t need to say it. I look at Lily and she knows from my expression what I mean. She reads it on my face. “You mean killing her,” she says.
I nod, dimly. “I thought that if she was dead, then she couldn’t tell anyone what I’d done.”
“What we’d done, Christian,” Lily says, reminding me that, “we’re in this together. Just like Bonnie and Clyde.”
Bonnie and Clyde. I half laugh, which was her intent I think. To lighten the mood. To make me laugh. The only problem is that it’s not lost on me that Bonnie and Clyde were killed by the police. They were shot something like fifty times each. It was a terrible and violent way to go.
I like the idea of Lily and me being in this together.
I just don’t want to wind up like Bonnie and Clyde in the end.
The thing is that even after Nina left this afternoon, the thoughts about killing her didn’t leave. They were intrusive, disturbing and unwanted. I kept thinking how Nina is the only person standing in the way of Lily and me getting off scot-free. No one is really looking for Jake but her.
“Those are just thoughts, Christian,” Lily says. “You wouldn’t have acted on them. Thinking about killing someone and actually doing it are two different things.”
Are they?
“How can you be sure?”
I, myself, wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure. The line between right and wrong is getting more blurry with each day.
Lily says, “Just because you thought about doing something doesn’t mean you would. You’re a good man, Christian.”
Am I?
We go quiet. There’s something austere about this moment. This, even more than breaking into the Hayes’s house for the key, is the point of no return. What we are doing is maybe even worse than breaking and entering. We’re tampering with evidence now. For that, you can get something like twenty years in prison. For breaking and entering, it’s more like two, assuming you didn’t hurt anyone.
Lily says, “I’ll follow you. Just don’t drive too fast. I don’t want to lose you,” and it sounds ominous, like a sign of things to come. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose her either. Ever. I’ve spent a long time thinking about this in the last few days and I’ve made up my mind. If we do somehow get caught, I’ll say that I did it, that I’m the one who killed Jake. I’ll make up a motive. I’ll say that I’m the one who broke into their house. I’m the one who moved the car. Lily did none of it. She knew about none of it. I did it all by myself.
But what Lily said just now wasn’t meant as a prophecy. It was a request. I have a lead foot, a tendency to drive too fast. That’s all that she meant by it. I need to drive slowly, so that I don’t lose her, so that neither of us gets pulled over by the police.
All along this short stretch of street, there are no streetlights, no passing cars. Newcomb is a two-lane road with little to no through traffic. Its only real purpose is to get to the forest preserve and for overflow parking. It’s a dead-end street, with no one coming or going. On either side of us are nothing but trees. We’re totally secluded.