Before She Knew Him Read online

  Somehow, thinking back to that almost magical night, Matthew finally started to relax. He spun onto his stomach and slid a hand down between his legs. It was how he liked to fall asleep; it was how he’d been falling asleep for as many years as he could remember, holding on to himself the way a climber might hold on to an outcropping of rock. Mira stirred next to him, mumbling words he couldn’t understand. He was glad she was leaving tomorrow. Maybe it was time to start a new project in earnest. It had been a while. At the very least he could maybe arrange to see his brother while Mira was away. That had been a while as well, and Matthew worried that Richard, who knew that Mira didn’t really like him, might think Matthew didn’t, either. He’d check in with him tomorrow, see if he was free. He’d make himself pork chops. Yes, he was kind of glad that Mira was leaving. He was always glad when she left, but he was always glad when she came back. And wasn’t that the definition of a happy marriage?

  Chapter 5

  She was under deadline—two new illustrations for a chapter book—but Hen spent Monday morning sitting on the west side of the house, sketching a little, but mostly looking out the window toward what she could see of the Dolamores’ place.

  The driveway was empty, and Hen assumed that Matthew had taken his car to Sussex Hall to teach. What Hen was waiting to see was if she could spot Mira leaving in her own car, a car she probably kept in the garage, not visible from Hen’s vantage point. Mira had probably already left, even though Hen had been keeping an eye on her neighbors since about eight in the morning. Still, if Hen could actually see Mira drive away, then she would know with certainty that the house was empty. She could check and see if they’d locked their back door, the one that led directly into the kitchen. And if they hadn’t? Well, entering the house, going to look at the trophy—how long would that take? Thirty seconds at most. Maybe the trophy would be from 1953, and then Hen could take a big breath and forget the whole thing. But what if the trophy was from the year that Dustin Miller was a ranked Junior Olympian? Either way, she needed to know for sure.

  Hen stood and did some stretching exercises. She was not a patient person—never had been, really—and the waiting was exhausting. What if she just went over there and knocked on the door? If there wasn’t any answer, and if she could see no sign of a second car, then she could test the doors. But what if Mira was home? What would she say to her? Well, she could always just tell her she was dropping by to thank her for having them over to dinner. It would be a weird thing to do, but it wouldn’t be suspicious, exactly, would it? It’s not like Mira would be telling Matthew later over dinner that “that nosy woman from next door came over to try and break into the house, but I was there and she had to make up some lame story about thanking us for dinner.” Besides, Hen could come up with a better story than that. What if she told her she was dropping over because she wanted to get another look at the way they’d decorated their house? That she was trying to get ideas for their place? It was a better plan all around. If Mira was home, she’d probably be flattered, and Hen would be given a second tour. She’d be demonstrably nosy about everything, so that by the time she got to the trophy it wouldn’t look suspicious when she went right up and read what was on it.

  Deciding this was a good plan—and now hoping that Mira actually was home—Hen changed into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, and went back downstairs. Walking toward the front door, she spotted Vinegar scooting along the baseboards, and her heart sped up. Lloyd’s cat—she always thought of Vinegar, who merely tolerated Hen but loved Lloyd, as her husband’s cat—stopped and looked at Hen.

  “You scared the shit out of me, Vinnie,” she said, and the cat meowed back plaintively.

  Feeling guilty, Hen went down to the basement to check Vinegar’s food bowl, which was empty, and his litter box, which was full. She amended the situation, and Vinegar even rubbed against Hen’s ankles while she dished out the dry food.

  Back upstairs, Hen had a moment when she couldn’t remember what she’d been doing when she’d been interrupted by the cat, but then remembered. She breathed deeply, wondering again if it was a smart decision, but then stepped through her front door and walked to her neighbors’ house.

  She rang the bell, deciding too late that she should have brought something as a thank-you gift for dinner—a bag of muffins or something—but then the door was swinging open, and there was Mira, smiling.

  “Hi, Hen,” she said.

  “Mira, hi. I hope you don’t mind my just dropping by, but I was going to email, then decided how ridiculous it is to email someone when they live right next door to you. So I just came over. Is this a good time?”

  “It is. Come in.” Mira held open the door. She was wearing yoga pants and a threadbare University of New Hampshire T-shirt.

  “I’m sorry to barge in,” Hen said. “Were you working out?”

  Mira smiled, her upper gums visible. “Ha, no! I’m packing. I’m going on a business trip this afternoon.”

  “Sorry. Please keep packing. I’ll come back some other time.”

  Hen was backing up, but Mira shut the front door. “Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty much done, and my taxi’s not coming until one. It’s not a problem at all. Can I get you something? Some coffee?”

  “Actually, Mira, I came by because I was hoping to get another look around your house. It’s just . . . I got back to our place on Saturday night and it looked so plain, and now I’m just nonstop thinking about decorating ideas and where to put furniture. And since we have essentially the same house . . .”

  “I get it. Happy to show you around again. Let me run up and change, and I’ll give you the grand tour without the bored husbands looking on.”

  “Thank you. Perfect.”

  “You sure you don’t want coffee? It’s already made, in the kitchen. You can help yourself.”

  Mira turned and bounded up the stairs. Hen felt guilty for barging in, especially since Mira—who had been dressed beautifully on Saturday night—was probably one of those women who hated being seen in regular clothes. But then Hen reminded herself that she was on a mission. She entered the kitchen. The coffee did smell good, and there was a clean mug next to the coffeepot, so she poured herself a cup. It was some sort of flavored brew, hazelnut or vanilla, the type of thing she would never buy for herself but enjoyed when she had it at someone else’s house. She leaned against the granite countertop and looked at the clean, stylish kitchen. It was like looking at something in a catalog, everything perfectly in tune with the current kitchen fads. It had some sort of cork flooring, subway tile backsplashes, simple white cabinets, and stainless steel appliances. The kitchen in Hen’s house had ornate rustic cabinets and a linoleum floor that had probably been white once upon a time, and it had come with a mustard-yellow refrigerator. Hen actually loved the vintage-y fridge but despised the rest of it. Still, if she changed it around she’d do something more exciting than what Mira had done with her kitchen.

  “Oh, good. You got coffee.” Mira was entering the kitchen. She hadn’t changed, exactly, but she’d put on a sweatshirt—also with a UNH logo—over her shirt. It wasn’t cold in the house, and Hen quickly decided that Mira was being modest, covering up just how much the well-worn T-shirt had revealed of her body.

  “I did. It’s delicious. Where are you flying to?”

  Mira hesitated for a brief moment, then said, “Charlotte, North Carolina.”

  “Oh,” Hen said, unable to come up with anything to say about that particular location.

  “You know, I almost forgot where I was going. It’s always the same. I stay at a Marriott that’s near the airport and right next to a Chili’s or an Outback.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “No, I love it. It’s just . . . it’s not glamorous. You tell people you travel a lot for work and they think you’re jetting around, living the life.”

  “I know you already told me, but you sell . . . educational software, right?”

  “To school systems mainly.
Charlotte is one of my biggest clients. I’m there a lot.”

  “Matthew doesn’t mind?”

  “That I’m away a lot? He says he does, but who knows? I’d hate it if it were the reverse. I don’t like being alone, and I just don’t think he minds it.”

  “So it all works out,” Hen proclaimed, putting down her mug of coffee.

  “Shall we do the tour again? Want to see upstairs?”

  “Sure,” Hen said. “If I’m not intruding.”

  They went so slowly through the house, Mira clearly thrilled to be able to talk about every design decision, that Hen began to worry they’d never make it back to Matthew’s office. Upstairs, they looked at the master bedroom, Mira saying, “I think it’s really important where you place the bed. Have you noticed the morning light that the bedrooms get?”

  Hen said she had, but only because it woke her up at an ungodly hour.

  They looked at the guest room, twin beds plus a quilt on the wall that looked Indian to Hen, and then they entered the third upstairs room, a room toward the front of the house with a sloped ceiling. The walls were painted a bright, cheery yellow. On top of a table were a sewing machine and a few stacks of fabric.

  “My craft room, but, honestly, I never really use it,” Mira said. “It was going to be a nursery, but . . .”

  “You tried to have children?” Hen asked.

  “We did. For about three years. It just never happened, and now we’re okay with it. It makes life easier, not having kids, don’t you think?”

  “I do. Definitely easier.”

  “Not that . . . Are you planning—”

  “No, it’s off the table.”

  “Can I ask why?” Mira said.

  Hen was surprised by the question, but not annoyed. “I have health problems—” she started.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’m . . . I suffer from depression and, honestly, I’m just not willing to go off my medication, which I would need to do if I got pregnant. I’m also not sure that I want to pass along my brain to the next generation.” She laughed to let Mira know it was okay to laugh as well.

  “I’m so surprised,” Mira said. “You seem like a really happy person.”

  “I’m doing really well now,” Hen said, thinking, I am a happy person, always have been. But that’s just my personality, which has nothing to do with this broken brain that periodically and very convincingly tells me that I’m a worthless person who doesn’t deserve to live.

  Then Mira said, “My grandfather, who I was very close to, was depressed, too.”

  “Yeah?” Hen said. One result of her decision to always be open about her mental illness was that people always seemed to have a story of their own, ranging from the trivial to the tragic.

  “He killed himself when I was fourteen.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sorry, Mira.”

  “It was a long time ago. I tell myself that he was sick and that the sickness killed him.”

  “That’s a good way to think about it,” Hen said, and found herself warming up to Mira. It was a habit of Hen’s, and not one she was proud of, that she was often interested only in people who’d suffered in some way.

  They moved downstairs, looking again at the kitchen, Hen making sure to ask lots of questions about everything so that when they got to Matthew’s office she wouldn’t look too interested in what Matthew kept on his mantelpiece. After leaving the kitchen, and pausing briefly in the dining area, Hen was hoping they’d turn right toward the office at the back of the house, but they went through the living room first, Mira explaining in detail how they’d knocked out the wall to the foyer to open up the space. When they finally got to the office, Mira said, “Nothing in here, of course, has anything to do with me. This is Matthew’s domain.”

  “I want to see how big the desk is, because we need to buy one ourselves.”

  They stepped into the room, Hen shocked all over again by how different it was from the rest of the rooms. Her eyes went immediately to the mantelpiece, noticing straightaway that the fencing trophy was no longer there. In its place was a flat wedge of rock with writing on it glued to a stand. Hen tried not to stare and let her vision sweep around the room, to see if the trophy had been moved.

  “Do you want me to get a measuring tape for the desk?” Mira asked.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Hen listened as Mira went up the stairs, probably to her craft area. She went closer to where the trophy had been. For a brief moment, she considered the possibility that she’d been confused the night of the dinner party, that she’d seen it somewhere else, but, no, she was sure it had been there, centered above the fireplace. It had been moved.

  He’d moved it because he’d seen her looking at it. He knew she knew.

  And Hen was sure now that Matthew had killed his former student. She was as sure of it as she’d have been if the fencing trophy had Dustin Miller’s name on it.

  “I found it,” Mira said, coming back into the room with the measuring tape. She pulled out a length of the yellow tape, and it snapped back. Both Hen and Mira jumped, then laughed. Together they measured the desk.

  Chapter 6

  Matthew made himself a pork chop for dinner the way he liked it: a little salt and pepper, then cooked in the cast-iron pan with butter. Boiled potatoes on the side, and steamed broccoli. He put a heaping spoonful of applesauce right on top of the pork chop.

  He ate the meal with a glass of milk while he watched the local news. Another private school, one in the western part of the state, had just admitted that seven former teachers had sexually abused students in the 1980s. Sussex Hall, as far as Matthew knew, had never employed any such teacher. There had been the scandal with William Roth, a first-year English teacher, who quit after he became romantically involved with one of the senior girls. This had been only a few years after girls were first admitted to Sussex Hall, and most of the older teachers blamed the incident on that fact, rather than William’s inability to control himself. It turned out okay in the end. William Roth left the school, and Maggie Allen, who never lodged a formal complaint, went on to graduate at the top of her class.

  After dinner, Matthew’s brother, Richard, came over. Matthew had told him that Mira was out of town, and Richard was taking advantage of her absence. There had been a time in the past when Richard and Mira could occasionally be in the same room together, but that time was long gone.

  “Have a drink with me,” Richard said, as Matthew poured him a large Scotch and soda, the same drink their father used to love.

  “No, thanks,” Matthew said.

  They sat in Matthew’s study. He knew it didn’t make sense, but having Richard over to his study felt less like a breach of Mira’s trust than having Richard in one of the rooms that Mira had designed.

  “I was thinking about you last week,” Richard said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  Richard leaned forward and pushed his hand through his hair. He had a widow’s peak, another similarity with Dad, although Richard’s hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a couple of days.

  “I was, uh, driving down Merrimack Avenue, and I was at that four-way stop for about five minutes because a whole gaggle of your students were jogging by. Jesus Christ, Mattie. What was that, the girls’ cross-country team?”

  “I don’t know. Were they in uniform?”

  “Green, right? Half of them were in those tight little shorts. How do you stand it? Jesus, the flesh on them. I thought I was going to have a heart attack right then and there.”

  “I don’t think of them that way. They’re my students, and they’re children.”

  “Exactly. You ever notice how even the fat on young girls looks hot? I mean, how do they do it?”

  Matthew was able to change the conversation for a little while, and they talked about their childhood, about Mom and Dad. It was the only reason Matthew even kept Richard in his life anymore, so that they could reminisce. They shared a history, a m
iserable history with miserable parents, and because of that they were bonded together. When Matthew had first started dating Mira, he had tried to explain the sophisticated cruelty with which his father had treated his mother, but could never explain it to her in a way she would get it. His father had very slowly shredded his mother’s self-worth and confidence, reducing her to something that was only vaguely human. Porter Dolamore had a gift; he was a master torturer, someone with so much patience that he could remove just a tiny strip of skin from his victim every day, keeping the victim alive and in pain. Natalia Dolamore did the only thing she could to survive. She became the woman that Porter always thought she was, bedding half the married men in town. It was how she got her revenge, but it took its toll as well. She was a different woman after Porter died at the age of fifty. Quiet and morose, hardly ever leaving the house. She died herself three years after her husband was gone.

  Richard had three more drinks after his first one, but Matthew made sure to mix the last one with far more soda than Scotch. He wanted Richard to leave. There was no way he could bear his presence for the entire night.

  Before Richard left, he surprised Matthew by saying, “I saw your new neighbor.”

  “I have two new neighbors, Lloyd and Henrietta. They’re married.”

  “I didn’t see Lloyd, but I did see Henrietta.”

  “She goes by Hen.”

  “She looks like she’d be up for it,” Richard said, his tongue actually darting out to touch his upper lip.

  “Why do you say that?” Matthew asked. He was actually interested in Richard’s response because he wanted to understand where it was coming from. Like their father, Richard saw every woman who came within his range of vision as a sexual object, just a piece of meat. The difference between Richard and their father was that their father had actually occasionally caught his prey. With Richard, Matthew believed it was just talk. If he actually ever got his hands on a woman, Matthew didn’t think Richard would even know what to do.