“You tell me,” I said.
“Are you a strong-coffee guy? I bet you are.”
“You’d win that bet.”
She opened the machine’s mouth and put in a pod called Jet Fuel. The machine seemed to eat the pod and piss out the coffee. Appetizing imagery, I know. “Do you take it black?” she asked.
“Not that much a strong-coffee guy,” I said, asking for a little milk and sweetener.
She handed me the cup. “You don’t look like a college professor.”
I get that a lot.
“My tweed jacket is at the cleaner.” Then: “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
I took a sip of the coffee. Why was I here exactly? I needed to figure out if Delia Sanderson’s Todd was Natalie’s Todd. If he was the same man, well, how was that possible? What did his death mean? And what secrets was this woman in front of me maybe keeping?
I had no idea, of course, but I was willing to take some chances now. That meant that I might have to push her. I didn’t relish that—prodding a woman who was so clearly grieving. Whatever else I thought might be going on here—and really I didn’t have a clue—Delia Sanderson was in obvious pain. You could see the pull in her face, the subtle slump in the shoulders, the shatter in the eyes.
“I don’t know how to ask this delicately . . . ,” I began.
I stopped, hoping she’d take the bait. She did. “But you want to know how he died?”
“If I’m prying . . .”
“It’s okay.”
“The papers say it happened during a break-in.”
Her face lost color. She spun back toward the coffeemaker. She fiddled with a pod, picked one up, dropped it, chose another.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We don’t need to go into this.”
“It wasn’t a break-in.”
I stayed quiet.
“I mean, they didn’t steal anything. Isn’t that unusual? If it was a break-in, wouldn’t you take something? But they just . . .”
She slammed down the mouth of the coffeemaker.
I said, “They?”
“What?”
“You said ‘they.’ There was more than one burglar?”
She still had her back to me. “I don’t know. The police won’t speculate. I just don’t see how one guy could have done . . .” Her head dropped. I thought that maybe I saw her knees buckle. I started to rise and move toward her, but really, who the hell was I? I stopped and quietly slid back onto the stool.
“We were supposed to be safe here,” Delia Sanderson said. “A gated community. It was supposed to keep the bad out.”
The development was huge, acres upon acres of cultivated remoteness. There was a gate of sorts, a little hut at the development’s entrance, a steel arm that had to be lifted to drive through, a rent-a-cop who nodded and pushed a button. None of that could keep the bad out, not if the bad was determined. The gate was possibly a deterrent for easygoing trouble. It maybe added an extra layer of hassle so that trouble chose to find an easier mark. But true protection? No. The gate was more for show.
“Why do you think there was more than one?” I asked.
“I guess . . . I guess I don’t see how one man could cause that much damage.”
“What do you mean?”
She shook her head. Using one finger, she wiped one eye, then the other. She turned around and faced me. “Let’s talk about something else.”
I wanted to push it, but I knew that wouldn’t play here. I was a college professor visiting from her late husband’s alma mater. Plus, well, I was still a human being. It was time to back up and try another route.
I stood as gently as I knew how and moved toward the refrigerator. There were dozens of family photographs done up in a magnetic collage. The photographs were wonderfully unspectacular, almost too expected: fishing trip, Disney visit, dance recitals, beach-Christmas photograph, school holiday concerts, graduations. The refrigerator missed none of life’s little yard markers. I leaned in and studied Todd’s face in as many of them as I could.
Was he the same man?
In every image on the refrigerator, he was clean-shaven. The man I had met had that fashionably annoying stubble. You could grow that in a few days, of course, but I found it odd. So again, I wondered: Was this the man I saw marry Natalie?
I could feel Delia’s eyes on my back.
“I met your husband once,” I said.
“Oh?”
I turned toward her. “Six years ago.”
She picked up her coffee—evidently she took it black—and sat at another stool. “Where?”
I kept my eyes on her as I said, “In Vermont.”
There was no big jolt or anything like that, but her face did scrunch up a bit. “Vermont?”
“Yes. In a town called Kraftboro.”
“You’re sure it was Todd?”
“It was in late August,” I explained. “I was staying at a retreat.”
Now she looked openly confused. “I don’t recall Todd ever going to Vermont.”
“Six years ago,” I said again. “In August.”
“Yes, I heard you say that the first time.” There was a hint of impatience in her tone now.
I pointed back toward the refrigerator. “He didn’t look exactly like this though.”
“I’m not following you.”
“His hair was longer,” I said, “and he had stubble.”
“Todd?”
“Yes.”
She considered that and a small smile found her lips. “I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“Why you came all this way.”
This I was anxious to hear.
“I couldn’t figure it out. Todd hadn’t been an active member of the alumni or anything like that. It wasn’t as though the college would have much more than a passing interest in him. Now all this talk about a man from Vermont . . .” She stopped and shrugged. “You mistook my husband for another man. For this Todd you met in Vermont.”
“No, I’m pretty certain it was—”
“Todd has never been to Vermont. I’m sure of that. And every August for the past eight years, he traveled to Africa to perform surgery on the needy. He also shaved every day. I mean, even on a lazy Sunday. Todd never went a day without shaving.”
I took another look at the photographs on the refrigerator. Could that be? Could it be that simple? I had the wrong man. I had considered that possibility before but now, finally, I was sort of believing it.
In a sense, that didn’t change much anymore. There was still the e-mail from Natalie. There was still Otto and Bob and all that happened. But now, maybe, I could put this connection to rest.
Delia was openly studying me now. “What’s going on? Why are you really here?”
I reached into my pocket and plucked out the photograph of Natalie. Strangely enough, I have only one. She didn’t like photographs, but I had snapped this one while she was asleep. I don’t know why. Or maybe I do. I handed it to Delia Sanderson and waited for a reaction.
“Strange,” she said.
“What?”
