by Joshua Corin
Fire always painted in monochrome.
Timothy inconspicuously joined the gathering crowd come to watch the fireworks. There weren’t many people, really. Most of the suburban neighborhood’s occupants were at work. But there were enough to blend in, at least until the M7 bus arrived and Timothy was whisked far away from the blaze. The bus left the curb as the first of the fire engines showed up. Timothy hoped none of the firefighters got injured. Good people, firefighters.
He unrolled his earbuds, plugged them into his iPhone and listened to an album of Brahms lullabies as the Sullivan County bus traveled into the next town over. Once there, he transferred to a Trailways bus, which deposited him a few dozen miles east to New Paltz. By then it was dusk, dusk on his birthday. From the New Paltz terminal, Timothy used some cash from Lynette’s wallet, which he had in his other pocket, to pay for a cab home.
Another of Cain42’s rules: always hunt far from where you sleep.
Timothy’s house was not far from historic Huguenot Street, a minivillage of Colonial America located in the heart of New Paltz. When he was much younger, sometime between the cats and the goldfish, Timothy’s parents took him to Huguenot Street to tour rustic Locust Lawn and the nearby spacious Ellis House, with its spooky Queen Anne interior. All the while, folks dressed up in colonial drapery mingled to and fro. Many of them were students at the local university looking to earn a few extra bucks. Even at that young age, Timothy found the whole affair to be delightfully weird. He longed to live in the Ellis House, and often wondered how difficult it would be to break in, and steal a nap on that small, square, starched bed.
Timothy apparently had a thing for other people’s beds.
His own bed lay in a two-story American foursquare on a street lined with two-story American foursquares. All were squat, with faces made of brick and stucco. Most had cookie-cutter porticos bookending their front doors, which were various shades of white. Timothy only recognized his by rote. He offered the cabdriver a modest tip and hopped out onto the well-trimmed front lawn. Old, knee-high bushes bracketed the two short steps that led from lawn to landing. Timothy had several pets buried in the soil behind those bushes. He thought of them with fondness every time he opened his front door.
“There he is!” he heard his mother say, and this kept him from bounding up the stairs to his bedroom. Instead, he made his way into the den. Mother sat in her chair, predictably engrossed in her needlepoint. Today’s project was embroidering the smiley face of Christ Jesus onto a mauve cushion. She donated all of her needlepoint to the local Salvation Army, where she volunteered every Saturday from ten to two.
He stood in the middle of the den. She didn’t look up from her needlepoint. “Your father and I weren’t sure if you were going to come home. And on your birthday, no less.”
Timothy noted that she didn’t ask him where he’d been or what he’d been doing. Both she and his father stopped asking him that a long time ago.
The Ace bandages swathing his left wrist were becoming caked with blood. “I got bit by a dog,” he said.
At this she raised her eyes from her work. “Oh, Timothy, come here.” There was no concern in her voice, only disappointment.
He approached. Carefully, Timothy’s mother unwrapped his bandages and examined the wound.
“Did you disinfect it?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She sniffed the iodine and nodded. “Good boy. Nevertheless, you’re going to need stitches.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She peered at his face, trying to read it. What could she see? What did she know? It didn’t really matter, because at that moment the garage door roared open. Father was home.
Quickly, she brought Timothy to the first-floor bathroom, rinsed his wrist under the faucet and reached down for her emergency supplies below the sink. She had an ample stock: antiseptics, gauze, a suture kit, etc. She got a discount through her veterinary practice. Timothy had a habit of getting cut up.
“Hello!” bellowed Father. “I’m home!”
“One minute!” she replied. Although much of the skin on her son’s thin forearm had darkened a nasty purple, the broken vein itself had already clotted nicely. The sutures could wait until after dinner. She rewrapped his wrist in gauze, sealed the bandages with a metal clip and brought Timothy back out to the den.
Father was holding a large box.
“Happy birthday!” he declared.
“Thank you, sir.”
While the box was placed on the dining room table, Mother sifted into the sideboard for candles, and then quickly went upstairs for the matches. She kept them hidden.
“Did you have a good day, sport?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, good.”
Their gazes never met. If Timothy’s father had noticed the bandages, he hadn’t reacted. Timothy didn’t expect him to.
As Mother returned with the matches, the rectangular cake was removed from its box. German chocolate cake with genuine coconut pecan frosting. His favorite. Mother haphazardly arranged the pinky-size birthday candles across the cake’s surface, lit one and used it to light the others.
“Make a wish, sport.”
Timothy closed his eyes. He thought about Lynette. He thought about what went wrong. He thought about her blue eyes. He thought about Cain42. He couldn’t wait to send him the pictures.
He thought about his next pet.
There were so many possibilities.
With a deep breath, Timothy blew out his candles in one gust, all fourteen of them. Happy birthday to him.
2
“And that’s my point, Esme,” said Rafe Stuart. “That’s what I’ve been getting at all this time. You’re knowingly and willfully killing our family.”
Before Esme could respond, Dr. Rosen—a teensy, wrinkly pink woman in a green corduroy dress—cleared her throat repeatedly and yanked on her left earlobe. Dr. Rosen did this often. She claimed it was a combination of congestion caused by seasonal allergies and, well, being seventy-eight years old. Nevertheless, as a marriage counselor, she had come highly recommended.
Esme patiently waited until Dr. Rosen’s fit passed, all the while wanting to give the bite-size old woman something, anything, to ease her discomfort. But Esme had quickly learned during their first session so many weeks ago, when Dr. Rosen had vehemently pushed away an offered blister pack of Sudafed, that any assistance offered in this office was strictly one-way. This office, part of a three-story walk-up in downtown Syosset, twenty minutes from their home in Oyster Bay. Their home, which Esme was apparently, knowingly and willfully killing by, what, serving as a consultant for the FBI?
“Bullshit,” Esme answered.
Dr. Rosen leaned forward in her black leather chair, which, given her diminutive size, nearly swallowed her whole. “I think that statement calls for elaboration, Esme.”
Esme looked to her husband, who sat at the other end of the long divan. His arms were crossed. His jaw was clenched. If she’d had to paint a portrait of Rafe in the months since all this had begun, it would have to include this: arms crossed, jaw clenched. She supposed it was a posture of defense, but that implied she was the assailant here, and she wasn’t, was she? There were no villains in this circumstance, right?
“What I mean to say,” she added, after a calming hesitation, “is that, well, to call what I’m doing intentionally hurtful? That I would want to bring conflict into our household?”
“You brought Galileo into our household.”
And there it was. The elephant in the room. He didn’t resent her for going back to work. He wasn’t that prehistoric. He resented her because of Henry Booth, a crazed sniper who called himself Galileo and eluded national authorities until Special Agent Tom Piper, who Rafe hated, brought Esme out of her early retirement to help track him down. But at what cost? Time on the case had meant time away from home, away from Rafe, away from their six-year-old daughter, Sophie. In the end, in a bit of caustic irony, Booth invaded
Esme’s home and took Rafe and Sophie captive. A bit of last-minute ingenuity ended Booth’s menace, but her husband and daughter had come so close to becoming casualties.
These were her sins.
And yet—
“Should we move to Iceland?” she asked.
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Iceland?”
“I mean, it’s really just one city and the temperature does tend to drop into the negatives six months out of the year, but they’ve got practically no crime rate, so we should move to Iceland. We’ll have to take Sophie out of school, of course, and away from her friends, but she’ll be safer. In fact, why doesn’t everyone move to Iceland?”
“Esme…”
“Or Yemen. The crime rate in Yemen is, if you can believe it, even lower than in Iceland! There’s the whole Sunni thing, but I think I’d look good in a burka, don’t you, Rafe?”
“There’s a difference between overreacting and performing common due diligence.”
“I am performing due diligence! Do you know how many lives the FBI has saved in the six months—six months!—since I rejoined as a consultant? Do you, Dr. Rosen? No, you don’t, because if we do our job correctly, it doesn’t make the headlines. Balancing all of this hasn’t been easy, but it’s been necessary. It’s been the right thing to do. And you talk to me about due diligence. I love my family, and for you to even suggest otherwise, Rafe, makes me want to fucking clock you upside the head.”
“Okay,” interjected Dr. Rosen. “And that’s our hour for this week.”
She scooted out of her chair and held out her arms. Every session ended with a hug to each of them, and then the requisite hug between husband and wife. Dr. Rosen was a big fan of rituals. Esme and Rafe eyeballed each other. Who would stand first? It was an unspoken game of chicken that they played. But after the past five minutes, Esme was not in the mood for games.
She stood, and left Rafe in her shadow as she embraced their tiny therapist, carefully patting her potato-chip bones. By the time Esme stepped aside, Rafe was on his feet, and it was his turn. His black beard, shaggier than usual, brushed against the top of Dr. Rosen’s white scalp.
And then it was their turn.
So they wrapped their arms around each other and squeezed. It was awkward and emotionless and lasted all of three seconds. Then they turned to Dr. Rosen. Did they have her permission to leave?
Dr. Rosen sighed, sounding very much like a deflating balloon. “My mother, may she rest in peace, always taught me to be frugal. ‘Never waste,’ she said. She was a good woman.”
Rafe and Esme exchanged a confused glance.
“She raised two daughters, myself and my sister, Betty. She raised us all by herself, and in a community where women just didn’t raise two daughters alone. Our mother’s solution to every problem was always the same—preemption. Keep the problem from happening in the first place. Frugal, you see, even when it came to making mistakes.”
“Um?” said Rafe.
But Dr. Rosen continued unabated. “Betty and I developed different ideas about problem solving. Neither of us had the foresight of our mother, so our methods were more reactive. I came to believe that the best solutions were reached through compromise. Betty, on the other hand, has more of a, shall we say, scorched-earth philosophy. So I became a marriage counselor and what did Betty choose to become?”
“A lawyer,” Esme whispered. “She handles divorces.”
Sometimes she did not enjoy her gift for riddles.
“That’s right.” Dr. Rosen smiled. “Very good. And so here we are.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “What are you getting at?”
“She thinks we went to the wrong Rosen sister,” replied Esme. “Don’t you?”
Dr. Rosen shrugged her itty-bitty shoulders.
“So, wait, you’re giving up on us?”
“You tell me, Rafe. Why should I invest my time and energy when you and your wife are unwilling to invest yours?”
“Because we’re paying you!”
“How can I with a clear conscience continue to accept your money when I know it’s just being thrown away?”
“Is that how you feel?” asked Esme, her voice still mouselike. “We have no hope?”
Again, Dr. Rosen shrugged.
‘This is bullshit,” Rafe grumbled.
“So prove me wrong,” replied the doctor. “I’ll give you two weeks. Today is Wednesday, November 10. Come back here on Wednesday, November 24, and show me that I am wrong and I will gladly offer an apology. And if I’m right, I’ll put you in touch with my sister and that will be that.”
“You’re giving us an ultimatum.”
“I’m doing you a favor. Two weeks, boys and girls. Good luck. And drive home safe. It’s supposed to drop below freezing tonight.”
They drove home, predictably, in silence. Dr. Rosen had been right: the weather had taken a turn for the chilly. Rafe kept an eye out for black ice. This helped to keep his mind distracted. Esme had no such luck. The dying trees they passed on the highway offered little respite from her dark, dark thoughts.
Eight years of marriage. Love, a family, a life.
A beautiful child.
Esme knew they were having trouble, but were they really that close to the edge? Could six months put an end to eight years? The math alone didn’t make sense, but very little of this did. Why couldn’t Rafe just be supportive? She stood by him through his dissertation defense, his job search, his battle for tenure. She had never asked him to scale down his responsibilities. She would never have asked him to give up on his passions.
There he sat, less than an arm’s length away. Had he looked at her once since they left the therapist’s office? What was he thinking? She could ask him, but she already knew his answer would be “Nothing,” and that would be that.
Despite it all, she still loved him.
His lenses on his glasses were dirty. He rarely cleaned them himself, not out of laziness but plain apathy. How could he see out of them? She wanted to reach for his glasses case, take out that cheap piece of microfiber cloth that came with it and wipe his lenses clean right now, while he was driving. Six months ago, she would have. He would have protested and then he would have pretended to be blind and he would have forced her to take the wheel and it would have been fun.
Only six months ago.
They drove home in silence and pulled into their affluent neighborhood. The digital clock on the Prius’s dash read 9:22 p.m. Sophie should be in bed by now. During the Galileo incident, Rafe’s ornery father, Lester, had come down from upstate to help out and, well, never left. On one hand, this meant they had a babysitter whenever she and Rafe wanted some alone time. On the other hand, this meant that every day she had to put up with the old man’s judgmental mutterings. He did not like her, had never liked her, and made no apologies for it.
As they neared the driveway of their two-story colonial, they could tell something was wrong. There was a car already in the driveway, not Lester’s old Cadillac, which was in the shop, but a fat, immaculate white Studebaker. It was blocking Rafe’s spot in the garage. There were lights on in the house, but the curtains were drawn.
“Are we expecting guests?” asked Esme.
Rafe shook his head and pulled alongside the Studebaker.
They had a gun in their bedroom, locked in the bottom drawer of Esme’s night table. But Esme shuffled that overreaction to the back of the line and got out of the car. They were safe here in Oyster Bay. Yes, their home had been violated once before, but that had been a special case. To panic only gave credence to her absurd suggestion about Iceland. She looked over at Rafe.
He remained in the car.
“It’s okay,” she told him.
“You don’t know that,” he replied.
This wasn’t cowardice. This was textbook post-traumatic stress disorder. Henry Booth had almost killed him. She wanted to reach back into the car and give her husband a real hug, a protective hug, a hug to keep away all the demons. But sh
e couldn’t.
Instead, she walked toward the front door.
Who would be visiting them at nine-thirty on a Wednesday night? There was a Florida license plate on the back of the Studebaker, so whoever it was had driven a long way. And nobody traveled one thousand miles for a surprise visit, not even one of Lester’s old buddies.
Esme reconsidered her overreaction.
She glanced back at the Prius. Rafe remained paralyzed. He probably wanted to move. He probably was willing his muscles to move. But they weren’t responding. Esme assumed he was thinking about Sophie, about his father, inside the house, possibly in danger, about her perhaps even, unarmed, her hand now on the doorknob. But still, his hands remained on the steering wheel and his legs didn’t budge an inch. No, she wasn’t upset with him. She pitied him. The cold air misted the breath in front of her lips, and through the dissipating mist, she turned the unlocked doorknob and opened the front door.
There was a stranger in the den. He had a glass of wine in his hand. His head looked like a penis. It was bald, ruddy, oblong, and protruded from a brown turtleneck sweater that looked scratchy and lint-infested. He was a large man, easily six-four, and had the gut of a beer keg.
“Grover Kirk,” said the stranger, by way of introduction. He reached out a sweaty-looking hand. “I’ve left you several messages.”
Grover Kirk?
“I’m writing that book about the Galileo murders. I’ve been trying to get an interview with you and your family.”
Ah, yes. Grover Kirk. Esme glanced again above his shoulders. Definitely a dickhead.
“Mr. Kirk, who invited you into my house?”
“Your father-in-law. Lovely fellow. Relayed to me some terrific anecdotes. He’s in the bathroom at the moment. I’m afraid he might have had a bit too much red wine. I brought up a bottle from my vineyard in central Florida. Would you like some?”
