“Strange because you’d made a strange decision,” I said.
“That’s right. I don’t suppose you want to tell me what I covered up that day.”
I thought for about thirty seconds and then said, “There were two bodies in there. One was a man who came and stayed at this house when I was fourteen years old. He was a predator. The other was the man who murdered Ted and Miranda Severson.”
“Thanks for telling me that much,” Henry said.
“They’re just skeletons now,” I said, “but they’re my skeletons.”
Henry laughed dryly. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I said.
“I don’t know, exactly.”
Henry left that night, a little before dinner. My parents were both bitterly disappointed, especially my father. But they said their goodbyes, and I walked Henry to his car in the early dusk.
“My father is desolate. You’ll come back, I hope.”
“I don’t know if I will.”
“I’d understand that, too.”
“Remember that game we played last night, authors who can see the world and authors who can only imagine it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s the same with love, I think. Some people fall in love because they are excellent observers and they can see what is in front of them. And some people fall in love because they only imagine what is in front of them. They construct something that isn’t there.”
“You’re probably right about that.”
“I’m not trying to be as cryptic as I sound,” Henry said. “Just thinking out loud. And maybe I’m trying to tell you why I won’t come back.”
“I get it. Do you want to know what I think about love?”
“Maybe,” he said, and smiled.
“I think that romantic love, not family love, is the most destructive force on earth. It’s the only thing that makes otherwise good people hurt one another.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“It does, actually. I’m not talking about what people will do for love. I’m talking about what people do to the ones they love. They break each other’s hearts.”
“There are probably some couples who don’t do that to one another.”
“Sure,” I said. “But very few. And even with the happiest couples, one of them will die first at the end. We all eventually wind up in a tragedy.”
We stood for a moment in silence, both of us starting to shiver a little, and Henry said, “So, it’s a good thing that you’re not in love with me.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I said.
Henry smirked at me. “I actually appreciate your honesty. I’ve thought about this a lot, about me loving you and you not loving me back. I think it’s fine. I actually think it’s greedy that humans expect the ones they love to love them back. They don’t expect it from books, or from movies, or from nature. Why do we expect it of people? Maybe my love is better because you don’t love me in return?
“And now I can tell from the expression on your face that it is time for me to leave.”
I laughed, while stepping into his arms for a hug. Then we looked at one another, his face tinged purple, and deeply shadowed, in the dusk. He touched his forehead to mine and brought a hand to the side of my neck. I kissed him lightly on the lips.
After his car had disappeared down the driveway I stood in the cold for a moment, thinking about what he’d just said. That the best kind of love was one-sided, so long as there were no expectations about it going both ways. I did worry that Henry might hope that there was some kind of future for us, despite the fact he said that he didn’t. But I’d already decided to trust him, for better or worse.
I turned back to my parents’ house, walking slowly toward it, my father in the downstairs living room window, watching for my return.
Acknowledgments
Angus Cargill, Mireya Chiriboga, Caspian Dennis, Isabelle Fang, Emily Fisher, Bianca Flores, Kaitlin Harri, David Highfill, Evan Hunter, Sophia Ihlefeld, Tessa James, Lyssa Keusch, Jennifer Gunter King （anything right about archival library work is due to her, and anything wrong is due to me）， John D. MacDonald, Libby Marshall, Sophie Portas, Barbara Pym, Josh Smith, Nat Sobel, Virginia Stanley, John Updike, Sandy Violette, Judith Weber, Phoebe Williams, Adia Wright, and Charlene Sawyer.
About the Author
PETER SWANSON is the New York Times bestselling author of eight previous novels, including Nine Lives, his most recent; The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award, and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; and Eight Perfect Murders, a New York Times bestseller and Kirkus Reviews book of the year. His books have been translated into thirty languages. A New England native, he lives outside of Boston,
where he is at work on his next novel.
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