Before She Knew Him Read online

  “God, no,” he said. “I just liked the trophy. I bought it from a yard sale.”

  “You okay, Hen?” Lloyd asked, looking with alarm at her face. “You look kind of pale.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m fine. Tired, I think.”

  The two couples congregated again in the front hall to say their good-byes. Hen could feel the blood moving back into her face. It was just a fencing trophy—there must be thousands of them, she told herself, as she praised the dinner again and thanked them for the tour, all while Lloyd had one hand on the doorknob, trying to escape. Mira swept in and kissed Hen on the cheek, while Matthew, behind her, smiled and said good-bye. She might have been imagining it, but Hen thought he seemed to be intently watching her.

  Back outside in the cold damp air, after the Dolamores’ door had clicked shut, Lloyd turned to Hen and said, “You okay? What was that about?”

  “Oh, it was nothing. I just got a little faint. It was warm in there, wasn’t it?”

  “Not really,” Lloyd said.

  They were already at their door, and Hen wanted to walk a little bit longer in the night air, but she knew Lloyd was eager to get inside and check to see if the Red Sox game was still on.

  Lying in bed later, Lloyd asleep next to her, Hen told herself that it had been a ridiculous thought to have, that the world was full of fencing trophies, and that they probably all looked the same. But it’s not ridiculous, is it? Matthew teaches at Sussex Hall, and that’s where Dustin Miller went to high school.

  Chapter 2

  After Mira fell asleep, Matthew got up and went down to his study. He stood in the same place that the woman from next door had stood, about four feet from the fireplace, and stared at the trophy, trying to read its inscription. He could barely make out the date and place, and he had perfect eyesight, and he already knew what the inscription read. Still, she might have been able to read it. He’d been stupid—stupid and arrogant—to have the trophy just sitting there in the center of the mantelpiece for anyone to see. Still, what were the goddamn chances of someone actually making that connection?

  She had, though, hadn’t she?

  Just looking at her, he could tell she had been ready to faint. He thought she was going to and wondered if her not-so-bright husband would be quick enough to catch her before she dropped.

  Matthew felt the knot in his chest that he felt when he was anxious. He thought of it as a baby’s fist, tightening and untightening. He did some jumping jacks to make it go away, and after he was done, he told himself he’d need to get rid of the trophy altogether, just hide it away. That thought filled him with something he imagined was what grief felt like.

  “It went well, I think,” Mira said again the next morning. “I really liked Hen.”

  “It’d be interesting to see her art,” Matthew said.

  “I know, right? Let’s go to Open Studios. Do you know when it is?”

  Matthew got on his phone to check what weekend was Open Studios, while Mira started to pull items out of the refrigerator to make breakfast. It was one of their few routines, a large, hot breakfast on Sunday mornings.

  After eating scrambled eggs and hash browns made from leftover mashed potatoes, Matthew told Mira he had lesson plans to work on and went into his study, shutting the door. He stood for a moment in the dark room, breathing in the air, picturing how Hen had looked in his room. She was small, and dark, and pretty. Brown hair and large brown eyes, and slightly elfin features. The thought that she knew what he had done to Dustin Miller—even if she just suspected—filled him with both a feeling of terror and a feeling of something close to giddiness. Had that been why he kept the fencing trophy in the first place? Had he wanted someone else to know what he’d done? He picked it up. He would need to get rid of it now, that much was obvious. But did he need to get rid of it at this exact moment? Would the police be arriving at his house today? It was possible. And what about the engraved cigarette lighter that he kept in his desk drawer? Would anyone connect that with Bob Shirley? A tremor of sorrow coursed through Matthew. Their new neighbor was going to be responsible for his getting rid of his most prized possessions. He breathed slowly through his nose, then thought of a way to get the souvenirs out of the house but not entirely gone from his life.

  He went to the basement and found a cardboard box that seemed about the right size. He passed Mira on his way back to the study; she’d changed into yoga pants and an old T-shirt.

  “You going for a walk?” he asked.

  “No, just doing my yoga program on TV. What’s the box for?”

  He told her that he wanted to return some of the history textbooks he’d accumulated over the past few years back to Sussex Hall.

  “You’re going there today?” she asked.

  “I thought I would. Give me an excuse to get out of the house.”

  “It’s Sunday. You can bring them in tomorrow, can’t you?”

  “I was actually going to try and get some of my lesson planning done there as well. Write some dates on the whiteboard.”

  Mira shrugged.

  “Come if you want. We can walk around the pond afterward.”

  “Okay, maybe,” she said, and walked toward the living room. He watched her. He’d always loved her walk, the way she rose a little on her toes with each step. She’d told him that between the ages of five and thirteen the only thing she’d cared about was ballet, but that her dream had been crushed by her inability to grow much beyond five feet tall. She’d been a gymnast in high school, and she could still do a back handspring.

  Back in the study, he wrapped the Junior Olympics fencing trophy in newspaper and put it in the bottom of the box. He added Bob Shirley’s lighter, the pair of Vuarnet sunglasses he’d taken from Jay Saravan’s BMW, and, finally, the battered schoolboy’s copy of Treasure Island that had belonged to Alan Manso.

  He then hunted down several history texts lying around his study—books he no longer used in any of his classes—and piled them on top of the four souvenirs. Then he taped up the box and went to tell Mira he was going to school.

  She’d just finished her yoga, and the living room was warm and smelled of her sweat, but not in a bad way.

  “I’m off,” Matthew said. “Should I wait for you?”

  “No, that’s okay. I have plenty to do here. How long are you going to be?”

  “Not long at all,” he said, grabbing the car keys and his sunglasses. He stood for a moment in the foyer trying to think if he’d gotten everything. Standing there, he realized that Hen or her husband, Lloyd, might be out in front of their house, or looking out the window. They’d said they were going somewhere, but what if they were back and saw him leaving with a box? Would it be obvious he was getting rid of the trophy? Fortunately, his driveway was on the opposite side of the house from theirs. He’d be visible to them for all of about ten seconds as he left the front door and turned toward his car. He could risk it.

  It was warm outside, more like a midsummer day than late in September. Across the street Jim Mills was mowing his lawn again, even though it had been only a few days since he’d last done it, and the smell of cut grass and gasoline filled the air, making Matthew slightly ill. It had been one of his jobs as a kid, mowing the back lawn of his parents’ house. His nose would run, and his hands would itch from the vibration of the push mower, and on wet days, the cut grass would clump underneath the mower and stick to his shins. He got into his Fiat and turned on the air conditioner. He put the box next to him on the passenger seat. Because of the smell of the lawn mower he’d barely even thought about Hen or Lloyd spotting him with the box. Probably a good thing that he didn’t cast a guilty look toward their house.

  It was a twenty-minute drive to Sussex Hall, a private high school with about seven hundred students, half of whom boarded and half who came from the surrounding wealthy towns of this part of Massachusetts. Built on a hill, all the buildings of Sussex Hall, except for the newish gym, were constructed from brick at the turn of the previous centu
ry. Matthew did not always love being a teacher, but he did love the Sussex campus, with its Gothic dormitories and its nondenominational stone chapel. He parked in a faculty spot even though it was Sunday and he could park anywhere. He entered Warburg Hall through the back door, using his own set of keys, and went straight down the narrow stairwell to the basement. As one of his extra duties, Matthew had taken on stewardship of the history textbooks, most of which were shelved in one of the closeted storage spaces in the finished basement. But he also had a key to the older section of the basement, filled with the extra lawn chairs used for graduation ceremonies and, behind those, the discarded furnishings—blackboards, mostly, and old school chairs. There was also a stack of boxes in the far corner that contained the original cutlery from the dining hall. It was there that he slid his box of mementos, sure that they would never be disturbed or found, even if someone were looking for them. And even if someone did find the box, he’d made sure to wipe any fingerprints off all the items, and he’d checked that his name was not in any of the old textbooks.

  Back upstairs, after washing his hands in the faculty bathroom, Matthew went to his classroom to work on his lesson plans for the week. Most of his classes were ones he’d taught dozens of times, but this semester he’d agreed to do a senior seminar on the Cold War, and he needed to brush up. This week they were focusing on postwar reorganization. He’d been at his desk nearly an hour when he heard the loud metallic screech of the back door opening, then a timid “Anyone here?”

  He stepped out of the room into the dim hallway and shouted, “Hello.”

  Michelle Brine came up the stairs, said, “Thank God. I hate being here alone on weekends. It gives me the creeps.”

  He wasn’t surprised to see Michelle here. It was her second year teaching, and he was amazed she’d survived the first. Timid, mousy, and imbued with the honest belief that her students cared about history, she had faltered, frequently crying, through her first year. Matthew had taken her under his wing, offering up his lesson plans, his strategies for discipline, and then, toward the end of the spring semester, his thoughts on her personal life as well, coaching her through her relationship with her asshole of a boyfriend.

  “I’m so glad I’m not the only one panicking and coming in here on a Sunday. I’m so behind already.” She had followed Matthew back to his classroom. She wore jeans, something she never did while teaching, but he recognized her black blouse, buttoned to the top button, as something she sometimes wore with a skirt while teaching.

  “It’s nice in here on weekends, don’t you think?”

  “I hate it when I’m the only one. How long are you staying?”

  “I was getting ready to leave, actually.”

  “Oh no,” she said, unzipping her backpack. “Can you look at something real quick? It’s something I’m planning with my sophomores.”

  After he’d gone over one of her lesson plans that had the students creating their own mock Constitution—“Maybe teach them the actual Constitution first,” he’d suggested—she’d instantly launched into a new story about her boyfriend, Scott, how he’d played a gig with his band two nights ago and didn’t get home until three in the morning. She went to look at his phone while he was sleeping in, and he’d changed his passcode.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Matthew said.

  “I know. I know. He’s cheating on me, isn’t he?”

  “Tell me exactly what he said when you called him out on it.”

  Matthew, who’d already texted Mira to tell her he was running a little late, leaned back behind his desk and did one of the things he was very good at doing. He listened to a woman.

  Chapter 3

  On Sunday Hen considered calling the police tip line or trying to get in touch with the lead detective in charge of the homicide of Dustin Miller—it was two and a half years ago now—but she knew if she was going to notify the police, she’d have to tell Lloyd, and she didn’t want to do that quite yet.

  Instead, after coffee and breakfast, when Lloyd went out for a run, she sat down with her laptop and typed “Dustin Miller death” into the search engine. As soon as the string of articles appeared on her screen, Hen felt a surge of nausea and excitement. Three years earlier, Hen had agreed to a med switch recommended by a new psychopharmacologist she’d gotten when Lloyd had switched jobs and their health insurance had changed. It had sent her into a manic period during which, along with the upside of getting a ton of work done, she became obsessed with the homicide of Dustin Miller, who had lived in Hen and Lloyd’s old neighborhood. She’d actually been on a walk in the Huron Village section of Cambridge when she’d seen the EMTs wheeling a gurney topped with a body bag out of the Victorian down the street from her house. She’d stopped and stared, watched as more police cars and unmarked vehicles arrived and then two tall men in gray suits.

  It was on the news that night, the suspected homicide of a recent Boston College graduate who’d been found dead in his home. At first, Lloyd, shocked as she was by the proximity of the crime, had been as interested as Hen. But as time wore on, as more details emerged, and as it became clear that the police, despite “promising leads,” had not identified a single suspect, Hen found herself more and more obsessed, poring over every detail the police released and walking by the rose-colored Victorian several times a day. There had been no signs of a forced entry, and Hen assumed that whoever had killed Dustin had probably known him. He’d been found tied to a chair, asphyxiated by a plastic bag secured over his head with duct tape. There had been a few items missing from the house, including his wallet, a laptop, plus a trophy he’d received from the Junior Olympics of fencing. He hadn’t fenced at Boston College—he’d played tennis—but he’d been a fencer at Sussex Hall, the private school outside of Boston he’d attended from sixth grade through twelfth.

  Dustin had left behind a Facebook page, and Hen spent hours looking at it, not just his previous posts and pictures, but what friends had written since his death. Most of those comments were attached to his last post, a picture he’d taken of his street—Hen’s street—the pear trees in blossom, a pink streaky sky above the roofs of the houses. In the corner of the photograph, a woman wearing a short skirt was walking away from Dustin. The caption read, “God, I love my new street.” Hen went back and forth trying to figure out if he was simply referring to the blossoming trees, the pretty houses, and the spring in the air or the leggy girl caught in the picture.

  “You’re a guy, Lloyd. What do you think he meant by this picture? Was he talking about the girl?”

  Lloyd had looked at the Facebook page for five seconds, before saying, “What does it matter?”

  “He took that picture probably just hours before he was killed.”

  “You think the picture had something to do with why he was killed?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. It’s just . . . you don’t find it creepy?”

  “I do. I find it very creepy, and that’s why I don’t want to spend all this time thinking about it and talking about it. I don’t think you should, either.”

  Ever since she’d been old enough to pick out her own library books, Hen had always had a morbid streak, a preoccupation with death. She had never considered it any kind of liability—she’d won several art awards in high school with her dark, disturbing illustrations—but in her freshman year at Camden College, she’d had her first manic episode, cycling rapidly through bouts of wild self-confidence and crushing insecurity. She couldn’t sleep, staying up late obsessively rewatching her season one DVDs of Twin Peaks. She’d fall asleep at dawn and started missing her morning classes. She had constant bad thoughts, her mind a fever of death-related imagery. She imagined elaborate acts of suicide and chewed her nails till they bled. Around this time, Sarah Harvey, another freshman on the hall, came down with the flu, becoming so ill she had to return home for the semester. A rumor went through Winthrop Hall that Sarah’s roommate, Daphne Myers, had purposely left the windows open in their shared room in or
der to try to make Sarah sicker. Hen became fixated on Daphne—she hadn’t liked her from the moment they’d met on day one of freshman orientation—and convinced herself that Daphne hadn’t been just trying to make Sarah sicker; she’d been trying to kill her roommate. It made perfect sense. Tall, blond, dead-eyed Daphne, a psychology major, was a psychopath.

  Hen decided that her purpose—the reason she’d been placed at Camden at that particular time—was to discover the truth about Daphne. She began to watch her all the time, and the more she watched her, the more she came to believe that Daphne was an evil human being. In November, Daphne, who’d gotten friendlier and friendlier toward Hen—Very suspicious, Hen thought—told Hen that she was switching from psychology to fine arts and asked her what professors she recommended. She even showed Hen one of her art pieces, a pen-and-ink drawing that, to Hen, seemed like a brazen copy of Hen’s exact style. It was a deliberate provocation, and Hen went first to her academic adviser and then to the local police, saying that she felt her life was in danger from Daphne Myers, who had already tried to murder Sarah Harvey. At both meetings, Hen had broken into hysterical tears. Her parents were notified, and Hen’s mother arranged to visit, but before she arrived, Hen, at three in the morning, her skin electric with anxiety, her mind a buzz saw of terrible thoughts, went outside of Winthrop Hall in only an oversized T-shirt and threw a paving stone through Daphne’s window. When Daphne peered out through the busted window, Hen charged her, slicing open a wrist on a piece of jagged glass. Hen was treated at the emergency room, then admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she stayed for ten days, emerging with a diagnosis of bipolar 1 and a protective order banning her from coming within five hundred yards of Daphne Myers. She was charged with criminal assault.

  Hen’s father, a lawyer, tried to talk the family of Daphne Myers into dropping the charge, but they refused. In the end a plea agreement was struck, Hen agreeing to continued psychiatric treatment and community service. She also agreed, very willingly, to leave Camden and to never make contact with Daphne again. Her father asked the judge to seal the testimonies, and the judge agreed, but not before several local news outlets had picked up on the story. Daphne, to her credit, never spoke to reporters, and neither did Hen, of course, and the story eventually died, despite one feature article titled “Cat Fight Between College Freshmen at Camden College Turns Deadly.”