Page 96 of 56 Days
Tom turns to collect a little jar of Vicks VapoRub off the top of the letterboxes.
“There’s no shame in it,” he says, holding up the jar. “I prefer to stick it out myself but I’m used to it. I’d rather you be able to concentrate. Consider it a study aid.”
“Hey, if it was good enough for Clarice...” Lee bends so she can step into the coverall. “What have we got in there, do you think?”
“Do you like riddles, Lee?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Riddles?”
“There’s one that goes like this,” Tom says. “A man takes to his bed in his chateau in the French Alps in the dead of winter, leaving the window open. The next morning he’s discovered dead of a stab wound to the heart, with a glass of bloody water on the bedside table next to him. How did he die?”
While he’s speaking, Lee zips the coveralls all the way up to her neck, takes the Vicks from Tom and smears a generous glob across her upper lip. Then she dabs a dot just inside each of her nostrils for good measure.
It immediately starts to sting, making her eyes water. But even on a shallow breath, the menthol feels as if it’s shooting its way straight into her brain.
She hopes it still feels that way when they get inside the apartment.
“I presume,” she says, “that if there was a shotgun under his bed or a serial killer waiting outside...?”
“Trust that you’ve been furnished with all the pertinent details.”
Lee pulls on the pair of gloves and puts on a bigger, more rigid face mask.
“An icicle,” she says. “Grabbed it through the window, stuck himself with it, stuck it in the glass afterwards. It melted, the end.”
Tom’s eyes crinkle above his mask; he’s smiling.
“Very well done!”
“Why the hell are you asking me about riddles, Tom?”
“Because,” he says, pointing down the corridor, “we’ve got a good one waiting for us in there.”
23 Days Ago
He doesn’t want to scare her, or upset her, although both are surely unavoidable.
What’s important now is that she lets him tell her the truth, that she stays long enough to hear it. He needs her to know that he’s not a physical threat, that the things he’ll speak about are so far in the past, so separate from the man he is now, that they may as well be on another planet. To increase the chances of her believing this, he gets up and moves toward the kitchen, standing near the breakfast bar, leaving a generous space between his body and where she is still sitting, on the couch.
“I am who you think I am, Ciara,” he says. “I promise you that. But a long, long time ago, when I was very young, when I was just a child, I was involved in something that... that I deeply,deeplyregret. That I should never have done. That I wish I hadn’t every single moment since.”
He risks a look at her face. She’s sitting perfectly still, blinking rapidly.
“The most important thing,” he continues, “is that you know I would never hurt you.” Her eyebrows rise slightly, in surprise he thinks. “Icouldn’t. That’s not who I am. It’s not who Iwaseither, but getting people to understand that...” He takes a deep breath. “The other thing I need you to know is that this was real, you and me. Itisreal.” His hands are shaking worse than ever; he sticks them in his pockets to try to hide this fact. “Look, I’m just going to come out with it, okay? There’s no easy way to say this...”
But he doesn’t know where to start.
With what happened, or what peoplesaydid? With his role in it, or the outcome?
“Have you...?” He has to stop here and lick his lips; his mouth is suddenly devoid of even a hint of moisture. “Have you ever heard of the Mill River case?”
Total silence, as if they’ve both been transported to the airless vacuum of space.
Then she says, very softly and slowly, drawing out the vowel sound, “No...?”
Good, he thinks.That’s good. Blank slate.
He can control the sequence in which he shares the pertinent information, build up to the big shock.
