* * *
—
An hour later, I began the lengthy and time-honored process of expressing my thanks and attempting to leave. I followed Nana into the kitchen, clutching my empty glass and the untouched bowl of nuts she’d set out.
She whirled around. “I want to exchange numbers in case you ever need anything.” She handed me her phone, which felt naked and sharp without a case. “Email too. We should have done this a long time ago. I know you’re all set up here, but since your parents are so far away.” Her eyes flickered. “Just in case.”
* * *
—
In my car, I sat still for a moment, my breath traveling in droplets onto the windows and dashboard. Even my parents gave me a cursory hello when I saw them in person; Kristen’s grandparents barely seemed happy to see her. And vice versa—the dislike between them was palpable.
Also. The way that the mention of Chile didn’t bother Kristen—her almost aggressive casualness, the laid-back lean and unhurried, unworried timbre of her voice set me on edge. She’d brought it up at brunch with Aaron, and she hadn’t led the conversation away when Bill broached the subject. Meanwhile, I was so anxious about getting caught that even a mention of the trip made my fingers shake, my teeth chatter.
Chile. The image appeared as if projected onto the windshield: Paolo’s legs on the floor, sneakers turned up toward the ceiling. Blood in a big jammy oval a few feet away.
Sebastian’s head against the cheap metal leg of a bed frame in Cambodia. Blood speckling Kristen’s feet.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
I started my car, cranked the radio. When it was loud enough to drown out my thoughts, I drove away.
CHAPTER 16
I lifted the heavy globe, stuck my fingers inside. Like jabbing my nails into the holes of a human skull. I took a few steps and let the bowling ball slip from my grasp. It hit the alley with a satisfying crack, then curved toward the edge, narrowly missing all ten pins.
“Gutter ball!” Aaron called, and I turned to give him an exaggerated shrug. He was reclining in the booth, legs crossed, an old-fashioned held high, and I felt a warm rush at his relaxed air, how comfortable he was no matter the setting.
“Take two,” I replied as the machine spit my maroon ball back onto the rack. It clacked against Aaron’s like they were marbles for giants. I lobbed it a second time and though it arced to the left, it managed to send eight pins tumbling.
“That’s more like it!” Bowling had been Aaron’s idea; I hadn’t been since high school, and I had to admit there was something analog and satisfying about it, the clatters and whirs and Rube Goldberg–machine mechanics of it all. Hideous oxfords, strong drinks in flimsy cups, the familiar smell of floor wax and fried food and shoe disinfectant. I slid onto the plastic bench and Aaron squeezed my knee before standing.
I hadn’t seen Kristen since our strange day-date on Sunday, but I’d relaxed a bit since then. She was just jetlagged, I decided, and off her game. She was still my best friend, the one who knew me better than anyone else in the world. We’d fall into our old, familiar groove soon.
What’s more, slowly, incrementally, my fear of being connected to Paolo’s murder was withering. I’d checked the stats the night before: In the United States, 40 percent of murders go unsolved. Some arithmetic, then: That meant that detectives threw up their hands at almost seven thousand murders a year—seven thousand cadavers with no origin story, no clarity around the instant they went from human to body. And that meant there were thousands, maybe millions in the aggregate, of people walking the Earth this very moment who’d gotten away with murder. And surely most felt guilt, shame, regret like a cold sprinkler that spread out inside them. But they didn’t turn themselves in or hang themselves with a confession blazing nearby.
Perhaps they relished the new lease on life, vowed to try harder, do things better from that day forward. Forward. Because we’re three-dimensional creatures, stuck on a one-way timeline and unable to redo the past. The conclusion gave me some comfort, which was perhaps a bit sick: I wasn’t alone, and I had no choice, really, but to roll on forward, smooth and steady.
Watching Aaron swagger toward the lane and sweep the ball bang down the center, his red-and-blue shoe a millimeter from the oily wood, I marveled again at the two-facedness of it all. Does this make me a sociopath?
Aaron followed me home afterward, and whenever I saw him in the rearview mirror I felt a stirring in my hips. He was so uncomplicated and good, straightforward and kind. And he wanted me. After all the dating-app jerks who’d turn hot and cold like a miserable shower; after those wasted years with Ben, who dangled conditional love like a carrot outside my cage; after the months with Colin, whose ugly side seemed to blink on like a light; here was Aaron, happy to see me, eager to spend time with me.
In my apartment I gathered some glasses and a bottle of wine. I’d cleaned earlier in case he came over, but I’d left it just messy enough for it to look casual, like I hadn’t tidied up. I connected my phone to the Bluetooth speaker and cued up something sultry, a husky female singer tickling sad piano chords. Then church bells in the background, a dissonant fade-out.
I leaned against the sofa’s arm and arced my knees over Aaron’s lap. He stroked my calf.
“Can I ask you something?”
He took a sip of wine. “Of course.”
“Were you raised religious?”
A flick of laughter. “Yeah, Methodist, but my parents never seemed serious about it.”
I nodded, thinking. “And are you glad you had that?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You asking if I want to raise my kids with religion?”
“Oh God, no,” I spat out. “It really did sound like that, didn’t it? I was just—”
“It’s cool, Emily, relax.” He ran his fingers over my leg again, higher this time, along the jeans’ inseam.
I hurried to explain: “I was thinking about it after seeing Kristen’s grandparents the other day. They still go to the same church she went to as a kid. One time she told me her faith made it so much harder for her after her parents died, because her mom wasn’t a Christian. So Kristen thought she went to hell.”
“Jesus.” He shook his head. “How’d they die?”
“In a fire. She was twelve. So sad.”
“That is sad.” He thought for a second. “Was it, like, a freak accident? What started the fire?”
“I don’t know, what starts any house fire? Faulty wiring or something?”
“That’s awful.” He drained his glass. “Well, I dunno about the heaven-and-hell stuff. I never really cared about the Methodist moral code, but it was nice being part of a community.”
A moral code. My earliest associations with goodness and justice hadn’t come from a sacred text but from careful observation of what garnered approval…or at least didn’t draw my parents’ ire. Sex, too, lacked a pall of morality—starting with Ben, what to do, when, and with whom had all come down to what made sense to me, what felt right.
Screw Sebastian for trying to take that away from me; what I did with my body was my decision, all mine. I sat up and reached for Aaron’s jaw, then pulled him gently toward me.