Safe Haven

table, feigning disappointment.

“I warned you they’d go fast.” Bill beamed. “But Emily’s got another platter in the refrigerator, so it won’t be long until round two. Grab me a beer, would you, while I go get it?”

“Sure,” Kevin said.

When the next batch of burgers was done, Kevin loaded a plate of food and complimented Bill and told him it looked fantastic. Flies were swarming and the burgers were dry and when Bill turned away, Kevin tossed the food into the metal garbage can on the side of the house. He told Bill that the burger tasted fantastic.

He stayed at the barbecue for a couple of hours. He talked with Coffey and Ramirez. They were detectives like him, except they ate the burgers and didn’t care that the flies were swarming. Kevin didn’t want to be the first one to leave, or even the second one, because the captain wanted to pretend he was one of the guys and he didn’t want to offend the captain. He didn’t like Coffey or Ramirez. Sometimes, when Kevin was around, Coffey and Ramirez stopped talking, and Kevin knew they had been talking about him behind his back. Gossips.

But Kevin was a good detective and he knew it. Bill knew it, and so did Coffey and Ramirez. He worked homicide and knew how to talk to witnesses and suspects. He knew when to ask questions and when to listen; he knew when people were lying to him and he put murderers behind bars because the Bible says Thou shalt not kill and he believed in God and he was doing God’s work by putting the guilty in jail.

Back at home, Kevin walked through the living room. He resisted the urge to call for Erin. If Erin had been here, the mantel would have been dusted and the magazines would have fanned out on the end table and there wouldn’t have been an empty bottle of vodka on the couch. If Erin had been here, the drapes would have been opened, allowing the sunlight to stretch across the floorboards. If Erin had been here, the dishes would have been washed and put away and dinner would have been waiting on the table and she would have smiled at him and asked him how his day had gone. Later they would make love because he loved her and she loved him.

Upstairs in the bedroom, he stood at the closet door. He could still catch a whiff of the perfume she’d worn, the one he’d bought her for Christmas. He’d seen her lift a tab on an ad in one of her magazines and smile when she smelled the perfume sample. When she went to bed, he tore the page out of the magazine and tucked it into his wallet so he’d know exactly which perfume to buy. He remembered the tender way she’d dabbed a little behind each ear and on her wrists when he’d taken her out on New Year’s Eve, and how pretty she’d looked in the black cocktail dress she was wearing. In the restaurant, Kevin had noticed the way other men, even those with dates, had glanced in her direction as she passed by them on the way to the table. Afterward, when they’d returned home, they made love as the New Year rolled in.

The dress was still there, hanging in the same place, bringing back those memories. A week ago, he remembered removing it from the hanger and holding it as he’d sat on the edge of the bed and cried.

Outside, he could hear the steady sound of crickets but it did nothing to soothe him. Though it was supposed to have been a relaxing day, he was tired. He hadn’t wanted to go to the barbecue, hadn’t wanted to answer questions about Erin, hadn’t wanted to lie. Not because lying bothered him, but because it was hard to keep up the pretense that Erin hadn’t left him. He’d invented a story and had been sticking to it for months: that Erin called every night, that she’d been home the last few days but had gone back to New Hampshire, that the friend was undergoing chemotherapy and needed Erin’s help. He knew he couldn’t keep that up forever, that soon the helping- a-friend excuse would begin to sound hollow and people would begin to wonder why they never saw Erin in church or at the store or even around the neighborhood or how long she would continue to help her friend. They’d talk about him behind his back and say things like, Erin must have left him, and I guess their marriage wasn’t as perfect as I thought it was. The thought made his stomach clench, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten.

There wasn’t much in the refrigerator. Erin always had turkey and ham and Dijon mustard and fresh rye bread from the bakery, but his only choice now was whether to reheat the Mongolian beef he’d picked up from the Chinese restaurant a couple of days earlier. On the bottom shelf, he saw food stains and he felt like crying again, because it made him think about Erin’s screams and the way her head had sounded when it had hit the edge of the table after he’d thrown her across the kitchen. He’d been slapping and kicking her because there were food stains in the refrigerator and he wondered now why he’d become so angry about such a little thing.

Kevin went to the bed and lay down. Next thing he knew, it was midnight, and the neighborhood outside his window was still. Across the street, he saw a light on in the Feldmans’ house. He didn’t like the Feldmans. Unlike the other neighbors, Larry Feldman never waved at him if both of them happened to be in their yards, and if his wife, Gladys, happened to see him, she’d turn away and head back into the house. They were in their sixties, the kind of people who rushed outside to scold a kid who happened to walk across their grass to retrieve a Frisbee or baseball. And even though they were Jewish, they decorated their house with Christmas lights in addition to the menorah they put in the window at the holidays. They confounded him and he didn’t think they were good neighbors.

He went back to bed but couldn’t fall asleep. In the morning, with sunlight streaming in, he knew that nothing had changed for anyone else. Only his life was different. His brother, Michael, and his wife, Nadine, would be getting the kids ready for school before heading out to their jobs at Boston College, and his mom and dad were probably reading the Globe as they had their morning coffee. Crimes had been committed, and witnesses would be in the precinct. Coffey and Ramirez would be gossiping about him.

He showered and had vodka and toast for breakfast. At the precinct, he was called out to investigate a murder. A woman in her twenties, most likely a prostitute, had been found stabbed to death, her body tossed in a Dumpster. He spent the morning talking to bystanders while the evidence was collected. When he finished with the interviews, he went to the precinct to start the report while the information was fresh in his mind. He was a good detective.

The precinct was busy. End of a holiday weekend. The world gone crazy. Detectives were speaking into phones and writing at their desks and talking to witnesses and listening as victims told detectives about their victimization. Noisy. Active. People coming and going. Phones ringing. Kevin walked toward his desk, one of four in the middle of the room. Through the open door, Bill waved but stayed in his office. Ramirez and Coffey were at their desks, sitting across from him.

“You okay?” Coffey asked. Coffey was in his forties, overweight and balding. “You look like hell.”

“I didn’t sleep well,” Kevin said.

“I don’t sleep well without Janet, either. When’s Erin coming back?”

Kevin kept his expression neutral.

“Next weekend. I’ve got a few days coming and we’ve decided to go to the Cape. We haven’t been there in years.”

“Yeah? My mom lives there. Where at the Cape?”

“Provincetown.”

“So does she. You’ll love it there. I go there all the time. Where are you staying?”

Kevin wondered why Coffey kept asking questions. “I’m not sure,” he finally said. “Erin’s making the arrangements.”

Kevin walked toward the coffeepot and poured himself a cup, even though he didn’t want any. He’d have to find the name of a bed-and-breakfast and a couple of restaurants, so if Coffey asked about it, he’d know what to say.

His days followed the same routine. He worked and talked to witnesses and finally went home. His work was stressful and he wanted to relax when he finished, but everything was different at home and the work stayed with him. He’d once believed that he would get used to the sight of murder victims, but their gray, lifeless faces were etched in his memory, and sometimes the victims visited him in his sleep.

He didn’t like going home. When he finished his shift, there was no beautiful wife to greet him at the door. Erin had been gone since January. Now, his house was messy and dirty and he had to do his own laundry. He hadn’t known how to work the washing machine, and the first time he ran it he added too much soap and the clothes came out looking dingy. There were no home-cooked meals or candles on the table. Instead, he grabbed food on the way home and ate on the couch. Sometimes, he put on the television. Erin liked to watch HGTV, the home and garden channel on cable, so he often watched that and when he did, the emptiness he felt inside was almost unbearable.

After work he no longer bothered to store his gun in the gun box he kept in his closet; in the box, he had a second Glock for his personal use. Erin had been afraid of guns, even before he’d placed the Glock to her head and