The house was quiet, the curtains drawn. Francie stared at it for a while, then at the snowman with the ski pole over one shoulder. She noticed that he wore a name tag, frozen into his chest, with writing on it too distant to see. After a minute or two, she had to get out of the car, walk up the path, read it: Mr. Snowman, VP Xmas Productions. Anne humor. Francie dug the tag free with her fingernails, put it in her pocket, went back to the car. She had pulled it out three times for another look when Ned drove up at last. He wheeled into the driveway, braked in front of the garage, hurried toward his front door. Had he not noticed her?
Francie jumped out of the car. “Ned.”
His head snapped around. He saw her, began to speak, stopped himself, glanced back at the house, then came toward her, cutting directly through the knee-deep snow in the yard, ice balls clinging to the tassels on his loafers.
Then he was on the sidewalk, and she got a good look at his face. Had to see him. But what had become of her beautiful man? This blue-lipped gray face, red around the eyes, had all his features but was not him, and the eyes themselves, fugitive, blinking, burrowing things, were not him either. Francie wanted to wrap him in her arms, somehow make him better, settled for holding out her hand.
After a moment or two, he took it and then held on tight. “Oh, Francie, it hurts so much.”
Francie, determined not to cry, to hold it all in, almost did.
“I’ll never ever be the same,” he said. His voice had changed, too, lost its richness and musicality, now did no more than deliver the words. “And what about Em? Tell me that? What about Em? I’m going to have to go in there now and tell her… tell her.”
“She knows.”
“She knows?”
“Your mother told her.”
He dug a knuckle into his forehead above the right eye, hard. “Are you sure?”
“I was here.”
“You were?”
“Don’t you remember? We talked on the phone.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them. “What is happening to me?”
She stroked his hand. He withdrew it, looked back at his house. “But you can’t come here, Francie. People will suspect.”
“Suspect what?”
“About us, of course.”
“What difference does it make now?” Francie said. Over his shoulder she saw a curtain part, Ned’s mother peer out. Their eyes met. The curtain closed.
“How can you say that? It makes all the difference. I don’t want Em to ever know, ever to think that everything wasn’t… wasn’t just the way it seemed.”
That made no sense to Francie, not anymore, but the intensity of her reaction surprised her. “Is that what your life’s going to be from now on?” she said. “Preserving some past that never was?”
Ned’s arm twitched. For a moment Francie almost imagined he was going to hit her. An unworthy thought, beneath them both, contemptible-until she happened to glance down and catch his hand uncurling from a fist. But a fist could mean tension, not violence, and she knew there was no violence in Ned, had never seen the slightest sign, so he couldn’t possibly have been involved in Anne’s death, no matter what this man Savard suspected. Francie could barely allow her mind to articulate the thought. Could she have known him that little? No. Savard was far off course. She didn’t believe it, not for a second.
Ned took a deep breath. “You’re tough, Francie. That’s one of the things that… attracted me to you. But your timing’s not always on.”
“What do you mean?”
He came a little closer, lowered his voice. “What do I mean? What’s the matter with you? How can you say what you just said about my marriage? My wife is dead. Where are your feelings?”
“Where are my feelings?” Francie, who had never struck a human being in her life, did it now. Her scarlet handprint took shape on his washed-out face. She walked away.
He followed. “Wait, Francie. I take that back. I’m not myself. Please.”
He touched her shoulder; she halted. Even at a moment like this, his touch sent that familiar, irresistible feeling down her back. The man for her; it was inescapable. She swung around and asked him, “Where were you last night?”
He seemed to jerk back, almost as if she’d hit him again. “What kind of question is that?”
“Savard’s question.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“He came to the house.”
“What did he want?”
“To know what I thought of your marriage.”
“My God. What did you tell him?”
The mark she’d made on him was already fading, but it sickened her to see it. “Don’t worry about me, Ned.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I won’t let you down.”
Ned’s eyes met hers at last. “Oh, I know that, Francie. I wish I could hold you now, so much.”
“So do I.” She wanted to kiss that redness on his cheek, dared not. Was there somewhere they could go? Was that an evil thought? What was she made of?
“But it doesn’t really answer my question,” Ned said. “What exactly did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t know enough to comment on your marriage.”
“And nothing about us?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Perfect as always. I’m sure that’ll take care of it.”
“It won’t, Ned, because Savard thinks she was the one having an affair.”
“That Anne was?”
Francie nodded.
“And I followed her out there?”
“Or paid someone to do it.”
He laughed, a strange, barking laugh, almost like Roger’s but lower in tone. “That’s idiotic.”
“Then why not tell him where you were last night?”
“Please, Francie, not the third degree.”
“You think this is the third degree? Why can’t you tell him? You said on the phone that it was work related. Is there a patient confidentiality issue, or something like that?”
“Something like that. Please don’t ask me more.”
“I won’t,” Francie said. “But he will.”
“He’s just a small-town cop, nothing to be concerned about.”
“You think so?”
“Yes.”
“He’s trying to find out how she-how Anne knew about the cottage.”
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe not how. But we can both guess why she went out there.”
“She didn’t know anything. There has to be some other explanation.”
“Like what?”
He had no answer.
“It must have come from you, Ned.”
“Impossible. You know how careful I’ve been.”
Had he? Careful maybe about the cottage, but not careful the one night at her house, the night of the milk run and the invented flat tire, the night he discovered she didn’t like irises. Francie, remembering the pressure gauge, turned to Ned’s car in the driveway.
