“In where?” Kate asked.
“Inside the house. Reminds me of Sam’s mom.”
“It’s good to remember people we loved,” Kate said.
“It was strange, very,” Julie said. “Don’t want to go in. I will stay with Clementine.”
“God, Julie,” Isabel said. “Don’t be so annoying! This is about Mrs. Lathrop. We’re thinking about her on her birthday.”
“I will stay with Clementine,” Julie said, scrambling into the car.
“Julie, get out here right now,” Scotty said.
Kate leaned past her, face to face with Julie. The girl who never looked her in the eye suddenly did.
“Are you afraid of something?” Kate asked.
“I don’t like pretend talk. To Sam’s mom.” Her eyes darted to Lulu, then to her mother.
“Did something happen?” Kate asked, alarmed by Julie’s panic. “That makes you feel this way?”
Julie put her hands over her ears. “Stop it, stop. Mommy, no one listening like before, no one listening. Just talk to air, talk-talk.” Again, she looked at Lulu—whether in fear or a sort of pleading for understanding, Kate was unsure.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Scotty said, hugging Julie, “everything is fine.”
“Hey, where’s Sam?” Isabel asked.
Everyone stood still and looked around. Sam wasn’t there.
55
Pete wanted to feel amused to call this home. It had belonged to the great Mathilda, but he was here now. He sat in the recliner he’d brought from Church Street, making himself at home. He ate a big handful of Georgia peanuts, his favorite kind, from a tin Beth had given him for his last birthday. And today was her birthday. It made him feel terrible. Melancholy didn’t cover it. He couldn’t even enjoy the satisfaction of being in Mathilda’s house.
Kate had forbidden him to stay here, and even Nicola wasn’t very welcoming. That was their problem. He closed his eyes, going over the details for the many-hundredth time, sure that if he could put the pieces together, he would be able to figure out what had happened. He grieved Beth, and screw anyone who thought otherwise. But the events of the year prior, all the fights with Beth and Nicola, could cause him trouble, make him look bad, if they were brought into the open. And he knew the detective still thought he did it.
His back had healed from the scratches, the bite. He hadn’t meant to scare Nicola so badly that day. It had been a week before Beth had died, and Pete had been totally sick of women—of being torn in half. It was a beautiful day in July. Tyler was fussy, didn’t want to take a nap, so they loaded him into the car, went for a ride.
They wound up in the state forest near a waterfall. Tyler had finally fallen asleep in his car seat. Pete and Nicola sat in the front, windows open, listening to birds and the sound of rushing water.
She started in—When are you leaving her? When can we be together?—and he snapped.
“What the hell do you even want with me?” he asked. “All you ever do is complain about what I’m not giving you.”
“Why don’t you realize that it’s what I want to give you that’s killing me?” she said. “Not being able to do everything I want to do for you, for Tyler . . .”
He shook his head. “I can’t even remember the last time you kissed me.”
She smiled. She leaned across the console and kissed him the way she used to, the way that used to make him go crazy. Then he felt her hand between his legs. Next thing, they were out of the car. He took off his shirt, laid it on the ground for a blanket, and they made love right there in the open, not caring if anyone came along.
“Is that better?” she asked, smiling up at him.
“Yeah,” he said, rolling off her and smoothing her hair back from her face. She was so beautiful, young and bright eyed. If only they could go back to the way they’d been when they first started. “Can I ask you to be more patient?”
“I’m trying.”
“Doesn’t seem it,” he said. He hadn’t meant it to sound harsh, but she reacted as if he’d slapped her. Her face turned bright red, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Here they come. Here come the sobs, right on schedule.”
She pushed him away, hard, and tried to get up. He grabbed her wrist, yanked her down. Anger boiled inside him. She provoked him every chance she got.
“You know what I’m giving up for you?” he asked. “I have a wife, a daughter. Beth fucking told my mother about us—now I’m going to have to face that. For what? This? Someone who cries every time I open my mouth?”
She was weeping now. Sitting on his shirt, hands over her eyes. He had had enough. She wanted to walk away just now? He’d see how she liked it. He stood up, hurried toward the car. He’d leave her right where she was, let her walk down the road. He’d be waiting there, but just then he wanted to really show her what could happen if she kept this up.
“See you at home,” he said over his shoulder.
“Pete!” she cried.
Pete glanced in the back seat. Tyler was still sleeping.
“I’ll take good care of him,” Pete said, dangling the car keys. “Just think about the way you act, how you’re pushing me away. You’re the one destroying us.”
“Don’t leave,” she cried.
He opened the car door fast, wanting to speed away.
“Don’t you take my son!” she screamed, and he felt her on his back—clawing, biting him as if she were an animal. He yelled, trying to shake her off, but she held on tighter. It was as if every emotion in the universe filled him, turned her into a monster, tore around them like a tornado.
When she finally stopped, and Pete had wheeled to grab her in a tight hug to keep her arms from flailing, it turned into an embrace, and he was the one sobbing, telling her he didn’t know what to do, that he never would have left her alone in the woods. Meanwhile, his back was on fire. It felt as if she had bitten a chunk out of his shoulder.
And Nicola was whispering into his ear, “Forgive me; I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to hurt you.” They had driven back to the house, where she had dressed the nasty wounds, dabbing at them with hydrogen peroxide, covering them with gauze.
Reason it out, he told himself now, sitting in Mathilda’s house. If you can give the police more of the truth, you’re off the hook. Tell Reid about the fight with Nicola. But it would make her look terrible. Pete didn’t want Reid going after her. What if he thought she was violent? He could become suspicious of Nicola, think that she could have been the one to kill Beth, shift the investigation to her.
As a child, his passion had been chess. He had grown up in the part of Providence you wouldn’t want to be seen in, and most Saturdays and Sundays he would take the bus to the East Side, where he would wait for a spot outside the Chess Shop on Thayer Street and with total confidence take on all comers.
He played Brown and RISD students and professors, retired physicists, math prodigies, and a Russian grand master who had coached Boris Spassky, but his greatest teacher was Max Brandt, a homeless man who slept in Prospect Terrace Park and who regularly beat everyone. It just went to show that the educated, the so-called elite, could easily be bested by someone overlooked by society.