There was a small hotel a few blocks from Harbor Lights. It had a neat mid-Atlantic design, all wood and white paint, with bright red shutters. The door had panes of inlaid glass and the sign which hung beside it showed a teenage boy in Colonial dress, red vest and tri-corner hat, a snare drum hanging at his side.
At 11:15 A.M. the following day, Marty checked into room 304 of that hotel. Twenty minutes later, he shot himself.
Marty was buried a few days later, and only a month after that, LeAnn returned to Richmond with her two blond children. I never saw any of them again.
“Yolanda Dawes,” Wally said again, shaking his head, as he sat on the bench beside me. “Doesn’t look like the black widow, does she?”
I glanced toward her again, my eyes lingering on the wistful, beguiling grace her body had assumed as she made her way along the water’s edge.
Wally smiled. “That’s the trouble with black widows, buddy,” he said, “they never do.” He grunted as he stood up, adding nothing else as the two of us walked back to work.
For the rest of the afternoon, I concentrated on the little library in Massachusetts, then left for home at around five-thirty.
When I arrived, Peter was shooting hoops into the basket I’d nailed to the garage door years before. He hardly noticed as I walked by, merely nodded briefly, fired a quick “Hi, Dad,” and continued with the game. I could hear the ball thudding like an irregular pulse as I went on past the garage and up the stairway that led to the side entrance of the house, the one that opened onto the kitchen.
Marie was in her office down the hall, working at her computer and listening to Brahms’ violin concerto, the only one he ever wrote, a work that Marie liked more than any other, obsessively buying each new rendition as soon as it was released.
“How’d it go today?” I asked.
She barely looked up from her keyboard. “Okay,” she said idly. “You?”
“Fine,” I told her, paused a moment, then added, “Nothing new.”
In that brief pause, I’d thought of Rebecca, considered mentioning her visit to Marie, then decided not to. It had all been done in an instant, a choice made in favor of concealment, even though there’d been nothing to conceal. I realize now that it was a choice made out of a subtle yearning to have a secret in my life, something hidden, tucked away, a compartment where I could keep one treasure for myself alone. The fact that this “treasure” was a woman meant less to me at the time than that it was clandestine and mysterious, a secluded back street I wanted to walk down.
“Go change, then,” Marie said, her eyes still fixed on the monitor. “We need to start dinner.”
I headed upstairs to the bedroom, pulled off my suit and tie, and returned downstairs. Marie and Peter were already in the kitchen.
“Okay, let’s get started,” she said, handing me a wooden salad bowl.
Making dinner together was a ritual Marie had long ago established, a “family time” that was busy and productive, a moment when we had to “face” each other, as she said, without the distraction of a game or television. Over the years it had become routine, something I neither looked forward to nor dreaded, a fact of life like any other, open, aboveboard, beyond the allure of the unrevealed.
FOUR
THE LIGHT IN the bedroom was dark gray when I woke up the next morning. Marie had already gotten out of bed. I could see a little sliver of light under the door of the adjoining bathroom. I closed my eyes, heard the toilet flush, then, a few seconds later, the soft scrape of the bathroom door as she opened it.
“It’s time, Steve,” she said firmly.
I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t want to open them. I wanted to sink back into my sleep, but a heaviness in my chest nudged me awake. It was as if someone were sitting on me, looking down.
“Steve, it’s time.”
Her voice was more insistent, and I knew that she’d keep at it until she saw me climb out of bed. I opened my eyes and glanced toward her. She stood at the bedroom window, a figure in silhouette, the curtains flung open behind her.
“Get up, Steve.”
I pushed the covers aside and got to my feet.
Marie looked satisfied and headed for the door. On the way she said, “It’s raining. Can you drive Peter to school this morning? I have to see a client in Bridgeport.”
I waved my hand. “Yeah, okay, I’ll drop him off on my way to work.”
Marie turned and left the room as I staggered toward the bathroom, then disappeared inside. I could hear her as she moved spiritedly along the corridor, then trotted down the short flight of stairs that led to the first floor.
My own pace was slower. The heaviness I’d felt in my chest had managed to creep into my arms and legs, drawing me downward like metal weights.
Peter was already at the table when I finally came downstairs a few minutes later. He’d poured himself a bowl of cereal and was staring at it without interest.
“Mom’s already gone,” he told me.
“She had to go to Bridgeport.”
