She handed the picture back to me. 'Are you going to stay down here all night?'
I shook my head. 'No,' I told her. 'Just a little longer.'
She turned and headed back up the stairs, head bent forward slightly, her hair dangling in dark waves on the side of her face. At the top of the stairs, she stopped and stood on the landing. For a moment, I thought she might come back down to me, take a deep breath and—
I stared at her, stunned by the word that had suddenly popped into my mind. What had Meredith done that required confession? And yet, there it was, the idea thrown up from some murky depth inside me, suspicion now flowing into empty space, filling it with a sharp, acrid smoke, so that I felt trapped in a furiously overheated room, flames licking at me from all directions, with no way to douse the ever-rising fire.
EIGHTEEN
Monday morning I got up early, walked to the kitchen and made coffee. For a long time I sat alone at the small oval table that overlooked the front yard. I recalled the previous night's search through my father's papers, the incriminating documents I'd found among them, and felt again a searing need to get to the bottom of what, if anything, had actually happened to my mother. At the same time I knew nowhere to go with what I'd found. I recalled how Meredith had come down to the basement, the strange accusation my mind had seized upon, the licking flames that had suddenly sprung up all around me, which I now laid at the feet of the undeniable strain I'd been under since Amy Giordano's disappearance. It was this tension that had created the false fires I felt still burning in me, I decided, fires which, when the mystery of her circumstances was finally resolved, would surely weaken and gutter out.
Keith came down the stairs at just past seven. He didn't bother to come into the kitchen. He'd never been hungry in the morning, and neither Meredith nor I any longer insisted that he eat something before going to school. And so on this particular morning, like most others, he simply swept down the stairs and out the door to where his bike lay on its side in the dewy grass, mounted it, and peddled away.
He'd already disappeared up the hill when Meredith came into the kitchen. Normally by this time she would be fully dressed for work, so it surprised me that she was still in her housecoat, the belt drawn tight, her feet bare, hair in disarray. She hadn't put on the usual light coat of makeup either, and I noticed dark circles under her eyes. She looked tense and un-rested, worn down by what we'd been going through.
'I'm not going in to work today,' she said. She poured a cup of coffee, but instead of joining me at the table, walked to the window and stared out into the yard.
Her back was to me, and I admired her shape, the way she'd so carefully maintained it. She had broad shoulders, and long sleek legs, and despite her drawn appearance, I knew why men still turned when she came into the room.
'Keith's already gone,' I told her.
'Yeah, I saw him out the window.' She took a sip of coffee and kept her eyes fixed on the front yard. 'I'll just call it a personal day,' she said. 'They don't ask questions when you take a personal day.'
I walked over to her, wrapped my arms loosely around her shoulders. 'Maybe I'll take off, too. Go to a movie or something. Spend the whole day. Just the two of us.'
She shook her head and pulled out of my arms. 'No, I have to work. It's not that kind of personal day.'
'What work?' I asked.
'I need to write a lecture. On Browning.'
'I thought you'd written all your lectures. Wasn't that what all those late nights at the library were about?'
She returned to the coffee machine. 'All but Browning,' she said. 'I have the notes here.'
'Any chance of finishing it by afternoon? We could go for a long walk together.'
'No, I won't be finished by then,' she answered. She came over to me and pressed an open palm against the side of my face. 'But I'll cook a nice dinner. French. With candles. Wine.' She smiled thinly. 'We might even persuade Keith to join us.'
I drew her hand away and held it lightly. 'What about Rodenberry?'
Her eyes tensed.
'Are we going to talk to Keith about him?'
My question seemed to put her at ease. 'I think we should,' she said.
'All right.'
I left her, walked upstairs, and finished dressing. She was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping from her cup, when I came back down.
She smiled when she saw me. 'Have a nice day,' she said.
***
Detective Peak was waiting for me when I arrived at the shop. This time he was dressed casually, in a light flannel jacket and open-collar shirt. As I came toward him, he edged away from the side of the building and nodded.
'I wonder if we could have a cup of coffee,' he asked.
'I've already had my morning coffee,' I answered coolly.
'Just one cup,' Peak said, but not in the distant professional tone he'd used with Meredith. Instead, there was now something unexpectedly fraternal in his manner, as if we were old war buddies and so could talk to each other in full trust and confidence.
'You'll be able to open on rime,' he added.
'All right,' I said with a shrug.
We walked to the diner at the end of the block. It was owned by the Richardsons, a couple who'd moved to Wesley from New York only a few years before. They'd shunned the sleek art deco look of city diners and tried for a homey design instead, wooden tables, lace curtains, porcelain salt and pepper shakers in the form of a nineteenth- century sea captain and his wife. Before that morning, I'd hardly noticed the decor, but now it struck me as false and unnatural, like a bad face-lift.
'Two coffees,' Peak said to Matt Richardson as we took a table near the front window.
Peak smiled. 'May I call you Eric?'
'No.'
The smiled vanished. 'I have a family, too,' he said. He waited for me to respond. When I didn't, he folded his arms on the table and leaned into them. 'It's my day off,' he added.
I immediately suspected that this was Peak's new approach and that it was meant to soften me up, a way of telling me that he'd taken a special interest in the case, was trying to be of help. A week before, I might have believed him, but now I thought it just an act, something he'd learned at police interrogation school.
The coffees came. I took a quick sip, but Peak left his untouched.
'This doesn't have to go any further,' he said. His voice was low, measured. It conveyed a sense of guarded discretion. 'Absolutely no further.'
He drew in a deep preparatory breath, like a man about to take a long dive into uncertain waters. 'We found things on Keith's computer.'
My hands trembled very slightly, like shaking leaves. I quickly dropped them into my lap and put on a stiff unflappable face.
'What did you find?' I asked.
Peak's face was a melancholy mask. 'Pictures.'
'Pictures of what?' I asked stonily.
'Children.'
The earth stopped turning.
'They aren't illegal, these pictures,' Peak added quickly. 'They're not exactly child pornography.'
'What are they?'
He looked at me pointedly. 'You're sure you don't know anything about these pictures?'
'No, nothing.'
'You never use Keith's computer?'
