“I think they’ll get him or her,” Ethan said. He had propped several pillows under his head, and was lying on his side, looking at Caroline doing the same thing from her house in Michigan.
“Really?”
“I don’t know. He’s stopped now, for a while, anyway.”
“That’s because we’re all being watched,” Caroline said. “But they can’t watch us forever. I think he’s just biding his time.”
“You’re probably right. He killed as many of us as he could kill before the police presence got out of hand, and now he’s just waiting. There’s no real rush, unless they figure out who he is.”
“I hope so,” Caroline said.
“I read somewhere that human beings can’t actually conceive of their own deaths, that if we could we’d all be paralyzed by fear.”
“I study poetry for a living and, trust me, poets must be the exception to that particular rule. Lots of conception of mortality.”
“What about your students?” Ethan said.
Caroline frowned, then laughed. “I think you’re onto something there. My students definitely have no conception they will one day die, which is probably why they seem so unmoved by poetry.”
Ethan didn’t immediately respond; his mind was trying to unearth a thought. These silences—comfortable silences, for the most part—had become part of their routine, especially when they talked on Skype. “They might catch him,” he said, at last. “They clearly have a lead.”
“Oh, we’re back to that. Do you mean our parents are the lead?”
“Uh-huh.”
A few days earlier both Ethan and Caroline had been contacted by different federal agents, and asked questions about their parents. Shortly after that, their parents had been questioned as well. Ethan had talked with his mom immediately after she’d been interviewed, and she told him that they had a long list of names, people they wondered if she knew.
“Caroline Geddes? Jay Coates? Jessica Winslow?” Ethan had asked.
“I don’t think so. The last names sound familiar. They asked me about a Wayne Coates, and I told them I knew a Wayne Chalfant, you remember him, don’t you, that nice retarded man who worked at the grocery store?”
“So you didn’t know any of the actual people they mentioned?”
“No, I didn’t, honey, but maybe I’m getting old and forgetful. I mean, that’s what your father tells me, anyway.”
“I don’t think you’re getting forgetful, Mom,” he lied. “And, really, the agents are just fishing. What about Mary Louise Gauthier? Or Meg Gauthier?”
She had paused, then said, “Yes, I think they did ask me about her. Why? Do you know all these people? I wish you’d tell me more, Ethan, I don’t like what’s happening to my baby boy.”
Gauthier was the maiden name of Caroline’s mother, and Ethan had confirmed that the agents had asked her about his mother as well. This was why it was obvious that there was a lead that the FBI were following. It might be a false lead—probably was a false lead—but they thought they’d found some connection that had to do with the parents of the people on the list.
“Mom,” Ethan had said during his last conversation with his mother. “This is a strange question, but could anyone want to get revenge on you? Did you ever have anything to do with hurting a child maybe? I mean, just accidentally.”
There was the slightest pause, maybe only noticeable to Ethan because he was so familiar with the rhythms of his mom’s speech, but then she said, “Of course not. I would never hurt anyone.”
“No, I know, Mom. But what if it were an accident or something?”
Again, a slight pause, and for a moment he thought she was going to tell him something significant, but, instead, she said, “I don’t know why you’re asking me these questions.”
Caroline was falling asleep—he could tell by the way she had just folded her pillow in half, and let her head fall onto it—and Ethan said, “I’ll let you go. Do you want to skype tomorrow?”
She yawned, but propped herself up on her elbow. “I read a poem the other day and thought of us.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“It’s a recently published Philip Larkin poem called ‘We Met at the End of the Party.’”
“How is it a recently published Philip Larkin poem?”
“Posthumously published, I should’ve said.”