“There was something happening between us, I know there was,” Francis said. “You’re right; this isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to me.”
“Max and his suspicions have nothing to do with me.”
“There it is. You admit he suspects me.”
“He’s a rare-books librarian, not Hercule Poirot,” she said. “What do you care if he suspects you?”
“I do if it’s changed the way you think of me.” Francis reached up for her.
“I’m thinking of my marriage,” Liesl said, pulling her hand away from him.
“Darling,” he said, looking at the space where her hand should have been. “I don’t believe you.”
“All right. It’s not my concern if you do.”
“Hannah is out of the house. You’re about to retire. People around you are dying, for Christ’s sake.”
“Stop it, Francis.” She pulled her arms around herself by reflex, a flash of anger that he had invoked Hannah in the heat of the argument. Hannah was out of bounds.
“You’re not thinking of life changes, of opportunities? Darling, I don’t believe you.”
“Francis,” she said, thawed now that he had moved away from talk of her daughter. “We’ve had so very much to drink.”
“Don’t I know it. But not enough to make you shake off your suspicions of me.”
Francis was miserable, and Liesl was cold. She looked at the door, at her shoe propping open the door, and wanted terribly to go home.
“We should go home, Francis.”
“No, darling. We should keep drinking.”
He took another gulp from the chardonnay and held it out to her. She didn’t take it.
“People our age shouldn’t drink like this,” Liesl said. “Bad for the heart.”
He was still holding the bottle, and finally she took it from him and placed it on the stair.
“Come on,” said Liesl, and she finally extended the hand that he’d been looking to grasp earlier and helped to pull him to his feet.
They went inside through the fire exit. At the end of the corridor, Max was leaving the restroom, straightening his tie.
“I should kill him,” Francis said.
“He’s as protective of the library as you are.”
“He’s a liar.”
“Enough of this now. Enough of the name-calling and accusations.”
“I only called him a liar,” Francis said with a slur. “But that liar called me a thief.”
***
Liesl walked home through the rain, her umbrella forgotten on the coatrack in her office. The rain was a mist now, and though it clung to her hair and to the threads of her coat, she let it cover her since it was doing the work of turning the cells in her neck from rubber back to flesh and bone. She took her shoes off on the doormat outside the front door so she wouldn’t wake anyone with her footsteps.
“It ran quite late,” John said. Didn’t ask, but said it as a fact.
“You’re awake?”
John stood in the cluttered hallway. There were canvases resting against the baseboards on either side of him, and he couldn’t lean against the wall without disturbing them. So he just stood in the center of the hall. Fully dressed in the middle of the night. Watching his rain-soaked, barefoot wife.
“I thought you’d want a chat,” he said.
“It’s been a day,” Liesl said. “Chat tomorrow?”
He didn’t move from the center of the hallway. Nor did he turn on any lights. The canvases guarded the hallway like little soldiers. John approached her, and she tensed. He pulled the wet coat off her shoulders, kissed the top of her head, and hung the damp garment off the closet door to dry. He turned and walked toward the kitchen. She followed him.
“I’ll make you some tea.”
“There’s really no need.”
“You’re soaked through, darling.”
He had called her darling through all their years of marriage, but on that night the word only conjured Francis. Francis who had used it last. Francis who had begged her to return the sentiment.
“A tea would be lovely, John.”
“Good,” he said.
“Did Hannah stay?” Liesl asked.
“No.”
“What a pity. I would have liked to have breakfast with her in the morning.”
Liesl made her way to the kitchen table and sat herself down, the night’s chardonnay sloshing around in her belly.
“She had schoolwork to attend to.”