“That makes sense. You look pretty good, considering.”
He pushed a lock of hair off his forehead and revealed a faded triangular scar. “My souvenir.”
“Looks good.”
“Your hair is different.”
I reached up and touched it. I was wearing a headband that served no practical purpose except to cover up the awkward length of my hair. I hadn’t decided whether I was going to tell Henry what had happened while he was in the hospital, recovering. If he specifically asked, I’d tell him, but he was clearly catching up with his own memories, and the thought that I had lived in his apartment for a time, and that I’d met Joan, might be too much for him.
“I’m growing it back out,” I said.
“It looks good short, too.”
He seemed tired, so I stood up, and told him to get settled, and that he should come down and join us at six, when my father would officially declare that cocktail hour had begun.
He did come down, only a little bit late, and he seemed much more like himself than he had that afternoon, maybe because he wasn’t being asked to think about the time and the memories he’d lost. My father was thrilled to see him, of course, and I told him to tell Henry his theory about novelists being either observers or imaginers, and the three of us spent an hour categorizing all the writers we could think of. My mother came in, and even joined the conversation, saying, “My friend, Martha Grausman, you know the one who got that one-person show for what are basically collages . . . I guess she’s got imagination because I actually think she might be color-blind.”
I went to bed early that night, before either Henry or my father, and lay in my childhood bedroom, listening to the sounds of the house, listening to the people who were still up and about, something I’d been doing for as long as I could remember. Listening to people I loved, for better or worse.
About fifteen minutes after I heard my father gallop recklessly up the back stairwell to his room, I listened as Henry walked slowly past my door, making his way down the second-floor hallway, then taking the old attic stairs to his guest room. And then the house was quiet.
After breakfast the following morning Henry and I took a long walk, skirting the meadow, then picking up the trail that connected with the conservation area where my favorite pond was located. Along the walk, he said, “Do you remember the first time we met?”
It was a game we had played before, reconstructing the way we had gotten to know each other. It was something I’d done maybe once or twice with Eric Washburn, the only serious boyfriend I’d ever had, and I recognized it as something lovers do. Construct a narrative. Tell it to each other. Ours, of course, was a warped version of that particular game. I said, “When you came to my house in Winslow to ask me about Ted Severson.”
“And I knew that you were lying to me,” Henry said.
“And I knew that you knew.”
“So I came back to ask you why you lied to me.”
“And then you started following me.”
“Yes, I started to follow you.”
“And then I tricked you into going to an empty cemetery, and I stuck a knife in you.”
Henry had stopped, breathing a little bit heavily. We were at the top of a ridge and because most of the leaves were now off the trees there was a view down the slope of a hill, across a wooded area, all the way to the edges of McElligot’s Pond, and he was looking at the view before turning to me.
“Do you remember what you said when you did it?”
“Of course, I do. I told you that I was sorry.”
We started walking again, continuing our story. “When did you decide to forgive me for that?” I said.
“You think I’ve forgiven you? How do you know I’m not just waiting to get my revenge?”
“You have a pretty good opportunity right now. You have a weapon on you?”
“Nah, it’s not the right time. Your parents know we went on this walk together. I’d have to walk back and kill them, as well.”
“No, really. When did you decide to forgive me?”
He was quiet for a moment. Although we’d played this game before we didn’t usually give one another too many details.
“I think it was the third time I came to visit you, when you were in the lockdown unit. After I’d lost my job. Do you remember? You told me that you’d done bad things, but that you did them for good reasons. And you told me that you were pretty sure that you were going to get caught, that there was a construction project next to your house, and that a well was going to be uncovered, and that was where you put all your secrets.”
“I did tell you all that, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“It felt good. Like I was taking it out of my hands, giving you all this information that you could have used against me. Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“I don’t know, honestly. Some of it was that I was no longer a police detective, that they’d fired me and I didn’t owe them anything, but maybe most of it was that I was a little bit in love with you. I guess I wanted to save you, because, even though you’d clearly done some bad things, you needed saving. I’m getting embarrassed so I’m going to change the subject. You heard that Joan Grieve is dead?”
“I did hear that. How did she die?”
“She had a massive brain hemorrhage. That’s what I heard.”
“Are you glad about it?”
“I am glad. I don’t think she was a good person, exactly . . .”
“Not someone worth saving,” I said.
“Right. Not someone worth saving.”
We were at the pond now, a pair of crows on the other side talking to one another in strangled caws, and Henry was leaning against a tree, still breathing a little hard from the walk.
“Do you remember what I asked you when it looked like you were going to be released without a trial?”
“I do,” I said. “You asked me if I was ever going to kill again.”
“And you said?”
“I said that I would make every effort to never hurt another living soul.”
“Uh-huh,” Henry said. “It just seems amazing to me that Joan, after suffering the tragedy of what happened to her husband, would suddenly die from a brain hemorrhage.”
“She was a rotten apple, Henry. To the core.”
“I know she was.”
“And maybe if she were still alive that would mean that your life was in danger.”
“I’ve thought of that, as well. I did know things about her.”
We walked back, quiet at first, but when we reached the meadow, Henry said, “Did you know that I came down here, when you were still in the hospital, back when they were digging up this meadow?”
“I thought you might have, but you never told me for sure.”
“I came here on a weekend, and I found the meadow. There were bulldozers and diggers but nobody was working so I walked all around, looking for that well.”
“You didn’t find it?”
“Actually, I did. It had caved in a little, but I dropped a rock down and it seemed as though it was about twenty feet deep. I stood there for about half an hour trying to decide what to do.” He was quiet and we kept walking. Eventually he said, “There was a pile of dirt near the well and I found a shovel and pushed some of that dirt over to cover it up. It was a very strange experience.”