someone the dog knew and loved. As if they were old friends, he bounded right up, jumping high, his big paws landed and she was slammed down into the sand.
Long, damp black hair, loosed from its ponytail, hung into his face. It was a pleasant face. Open and joyful. It was the kind of face that took pleasure in everything it could. And the brown eyes were curious and kind.
“It’s okay,” she said, surprise reverting her to English. “I’m not hurt.”
“You’re American! You’re from home!”
The pair chatted amiably. He told her he’d been backpacking across Europe and was passing through, visiting extended family and friends all over the Continent. He invited her to dine at his cousins’ house that evening. But she declined his invitation and kept walking.
The young man would tell her, much later, after they were married, that he’d kept his eyes glued to her ass the entire time she’d walked away. Her chestnut hair had reached all the way down her back then, and he’d been mesmerized, first by her green eyes, then by the way she’d looked leaving him, her long, dark wavy hair swinging just above what he’d call her “sweet-looking blue-jeaned booty.”
A few days later, she found him reading at a café. When she asked about the cast on his forearm, he explained that he’d broken his wrist spinning out on a motorcycle. He wasn’t sexually aggressive in the least with her, just warm and genuine. And when he politely asked if he could accompany her on her next long trip to Rome, she found herself agreeing.
Maybe it was the cast and the helpless way he asked. He seemed almost touchingly pathetic — at total a loss for what to do with himself next. And she couldn’t get over the fact that he’d been visiting Italy on and off for over a decade of summers and had never bothered to visit the Vatican museums. So she became his guide.
She’d already resolved not to sleep with him, to fend off any aggressive advances, but he wasn’t the kind of young man who came at a girl head on. He was more like a cup of espresso, warm and inviting, yet still very potent. He knew how to relax and excite at the same time. And when her guard was finally down, he played her with his light fingertips and laughing mouth and she melted like morning chocolate, right into his hands.
In the end, she would often become melancholy thinking about the way they’d met — the prophetic nature of it. How the sun had been so bright with promise it proved painful, making her smile and squint at the same time, ultimately limiting her vision.
How he’d wanted her most when she was walking away.
I opened my eyes.
On the futon, Bruce’s arms were still around me, his body warm, but I was cold. It was hours later, and the flames in Bruce’s hearth were dying. He was sleeping deeply beside me, and I knew it was now or never.
Easing away from him, I reached for his black fisherman’s sweater and slipped it over my head. The garment was huge on me, reaching almost to my knees, the sleeves extending far past my hands. I shoved the sleeves up and rose on bare feet, tiptoeing toward the staircase.
Okay, so sleeping with Bruce may not have been the smartest thing I’d ever done, but it was the most satisfying thing I’d done in years. Like the snow on my walk earlier in the evening, I knew I wanted to enjoy this moment while I could…because I had no idea if any of what had happened between us tonight would actually last.
I wanted it, too, of course, but I couldn’t control it any more than the early snow…and, in the end, I had to accept that it was all right.
Twenty years ago, when I’d first met Matteo, I’d needed things to last. Security was paramount, and I was desperate for permanence. Maybe it was because of my crazy, unpredictable, lawless father, or maybe it doesn’t matter who your father is. Maybe every young person feels insecure to some degree because nothing is decided yet, and the future is such a long, untraveled road.
I felt less frightened of the future now than those years when I was Joy’s age, more resigned to the notion that the one thing to be counted on was that nothing could. The only unchanging idea was that everything changes, everything is fluid, and nothing can be possessed.
Over time, the various occupants of this very house had flowed in and out, changing from rich to poor then rich again, and they would continue to change and flow through for decades to come.
Certainly nothing living and breathing could be possessed, either. Not friends, not spouses, not aging parents, not even children.
Sometimes I would look into my little girl’s green eyes and see that wary child, clinging so tightly to my hand in front of her elementary school. Then instantly she’d be grown again, transformed like a magician’s dove. And, laughing with relish, she’d fly away from me, a beautiful young thing with her brand new life.
Maybe it would be good for me to finally let go of the notion of permanence…or at least loosen my grip. Maybe in the end all I really needed to do was let go of holding on so tightly.
It certainly felt good earlier to let go of my inhibitions, to trust myself with someone new. I wondered what Matt would think if he could see his ex-wife now, with another man’s sweater over her naked form, sneaking up to his bedroom to snoop for evidence that he was not in fact a serial murderer.
I certainly didn’t believe it. Not for a minute. Not for a second.
No man who made love like that, so tenderly, so considerately…No man who opened himself so completely could be as cold blooded a killer as Quinn claimed. I just had to find the evidence to make that clear to my detective friend. Starting with that printer.
I crept up the old unfinished staircase, the wooden steps rough against my bare feet. An icy draft flowed down the long hallway from the front door, sweeping up the stairs and up through the bottom edge of Bruce’s heavy cableknit, chilling my thighs, and making me shiver as I hit the fifth step. On the sixth came a noisy creak.
I froze and listened intensely, but the house remained completely still. With a quiet exhale, I resumed my climb.
At the top of the stairs, the darkness was thick. I felt my way along the wall and stepped through the master bedroom’s doorway. The large room was in shadow, front windows giving enough light from the street to make my way around the great four-poster bed, which sat on one end of the room like a hulking giant. I reached for the small, bedside lamp and turned it on.
The antique roll-top sat by the window. I began to push back its cover. When it stuck midway, I cursed and pushed harder, but the damn thing was more intractable than my ex-husband.
Bending over and peering under, I could make out Bruce’s sleek little laptop computer. It sat open, the screen black. I could see the edge of what looked like a small printer, sitting at the back of the desk’s large surface.
For a few more minutes, I struggled with the cover. Finally, I smacked and shoved, and suddenly, with a loud rattle, the cover gave, rolling all the way up with a bang.
I closed my eyes, held my breath, and listened.
The desk had made a terrible racket, and I stood in dread, my mind racing to concoct some story. I was certain Bruce was already up, about to furiously bound up the stairs and demand I explain why I was snooping around his bedroom in the wee hours.
For a solid minute, I stood, hearing no sign of movement downstairs, so I swallowed, and resolutely turned back to the desk to quickly examine the printer at the back.
“Hewlett Packard DeskJet,” I whispered. “Model 840C.”
It was the same brand, the same model as the printer Quinn was trying to link to Inga Berg’s murder. I closed my eyes.
I wrestled for a moment with telling Bruce everything, suggesting he get rid of the printer. But I knew I couldn’t. Not yet.
A part of me, a very thin slice of my being, couldn’t help asking the question: Was there a chance Bruce Bowman could be a murderer? Was there a chance?
I knew I needed more to go on — one or more threads to follow, something more to pursue myself or give to
