Before She Knew Him(4)

“Oh, it was nothing. I just got a little faint. It was warm in there, wasn’t it?”

“Not really,” Lloyd said.

They were already at their door, and Hen wanted to walk a little bit longer in the night air, but she knew Lloyd was eager to get inside and check to see if the Red Sox game was still on.

Lying in bed later, Lloyd asleep next to her, Hen told herself that it had been a ridiculous thought to have, that the world was full of fencing trophies, and that they probably all looked the same. But it’s not ridiculous, is it? Matthew teaches at Sussex Hall, and that’s where Dustin Miller went to high school.





Chapter 2




After Mira fell asleep, Matthew got up and went down to his study. He stood in the same place that the woman from next door had stood, about four feet from the fireplace, and stared at the trophy, trying to read its inscription. He could barely make out the date and place, and he had perfect eyesight, and he already knew what the inscription read. Still, she might have been able to read it. He’d been stupid—stupid and arrogant—to have the trophy just sitting there in the center of the mantelpiece for anyone to see. Still, what were the goddamn chances of someone actually making that connection?

She had, though, hadn’t she?

Just looking at her, he could tell she had been ready to faint. He thought she was going to and wondered if her not-so-bright husband would be quick enough to catch her before she dropped.

Matthew felt the knot in his chest that he felt when he was anxious. He thought of it as a baby’s fist, tightening and untightening. He did some jumping jacks to make it go away, and after he was done, he told himself he’d need to get rid of the trophy altogether, just hide it away. That thought filled him with something he imagined was what grief felt like.



“It went well, I think,” Mira said again the next morning. “I really liked Hen.”

“It’d be interesting to see her art,” Matthew said.

“I know, right? Let’s go to Open Studios. Do you know when it is?”

Matthew got on his phone to check what weekend was Open Studios, while Mira started to pull items out of the refrigerator to make breakfast. It was one of their few routines, a large, hot breakfast on Sunday mornings.

After eating scrambled eggs and hash browns made from leftover mashed potatoes, Matthew told Mira he had lesson plans to work on and went into his study, shutting the door. He stood for a moment in the dark room, breathing in the air, picturing how Hen had looked in his room. She was small, and dark, and pretty. Brown hair and large brown eyes, and slightly elfin features. The thought that she knew what he had done to Dustin Miller—even if she just suspected—filled him with both a feeling of terror and a feeling of something close to giddiness. Had that been why he kept the fencing trophy in the first place? Had he wanted someone else to know what he’d done? He picked it up. He would need to get rid of it now, that much was obvious. But did he need to get rid of it at this exact moment? Would the police be arriving at his house today? It was possible. And what about the engraved cigarette lighter that he kept in his desk drawer? Would anyone connect that with Bob Shirley? A tremor of sorrow coursed through Matthew. Their new neighbor was going to be responsible for his getting rid of his most prized possessions. He breathed slowly through his nose, then thought of a way to get the souvenirs out of the house but not entirely gone from his life.

He went to the basement and found a cardboard box that seemed about the right size. He passed Mira on his way back to the study; she’d changed into yoga pants and an old T-shirt.

“You going for a walk?” he asked.

“No, just doing my yoga program on TV. What’s the box for?”

He told her that he wanted to return some of the history textbooks he’d accumulated over the past few years back to Sussex Hall.

“You’re going there today?” she asked.

“I thought I would. Give me an excuse to get out of the house.”

“It’s Sunday. You can bring them in tomorrow, can’t you?”

“I was actually going to try and get some of my lesson planning done there as well. Write some dates on the whiteboard.”

Mira shrugged.

“Come if you want. We can walk around the pond afterward.”

“Okay, maybe,” she said, and walked toward the living room. He watched her. He’d always loved her walk, the way she rose a little on her toes with each step. She’d told him that between the ages of five and thirteen the only thing she’d cared about was ballet, but that her dream had been crushed by her inability to grow much beyond five feet tall. She’d been a gymnast in high school, and she could still do a back handspring.

Back in the study, he wrapped the Junior Olympics fencing trophy in newspaper and put it in the bottom of the box. He added Bob Shirley’s lighter, the pair of Vuarnet sunglasses he’d taken from Jay Saravan’s BMW, and, finally, the battered schoolboy’s copy of Treasure Island that had belonged to Alan Manso.

He then hunted down several history texts lying around his study—books he no longer used in any of his classes—and piled them on top of the four souvenirs. Then he taped up the box and went to tell Mira he was going to school.

She’d just finished her yoga, and the living room was warm and smelled of her sweat, but not in a bad way.