Before She Knew Him Read online

  “You can just tell,” Richard said. “Look at the clothes she wears.”

  “When did you even see her?”

  “When I came by a few weeks ago. She was out front, sitting on the porch with her legs up on the railing. I could see right up her skirt, saw the inside of her thigh. She saw me looking and didn’t even flinch. She’d give it up in a second, let me tell you.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that,” Matthew said. “And I think you should probably leave. It’s my bedtime.”

  “You offended?”

  “No, not offended, Richard, but you sound just like Dad.”

  “He understood women.”

  “And you think you understand women? I’m the one who’s happily married. That’s more than you can say, and that’s more than Dad could ever say.”

  “Calm down, Matthew. I’m just talking. Don’t take it so seriously. Except for your neighbor. Take her seriously. She is going to be trouble.” He raised his voice on the last word, spacing out the vowel sounds. Matthew, beginning to get an upset stomach, made Richard leave.

  The next day, Matthew, still feeling a little queasy from time spent with his brother, had an unsettling moment with one of the students in his favorite class, the advanced senior seminar on the Cold War. The class met after lunch. Matthew finished his turkey and cheese sandwich and moved the desks around so that they formed a circle. There were only eight students in his seminar, and not only had they picked the subject to study at the beginning of the course, but Matthew had them present many of the topics. Today they were talking about the Yalta Conference, and Hilary Margolis, probably the brightest girl in this year’s senior class, was leading the discussion. Matthew was sitting directly across from her, and as Hilary talked, she nervously uncrossed and recrossed her legs under her desk, and Matthew, unintentionally, saw up her dark green skirt, catching glimpses of her inner thigh and a flash of plain white underwear. It was the type of thing that Matthew saw on a daily basis—the girls at the school sometimes seemed oblivious of their young bodies, the flimsiness of their clothes—but, for some reason, seeing it right after a visit from Richard made Matthew think about it differently. He heard Richard’s voice in his head—she’s up for it—and even briefly imagined how soft the skin of Hilary’s thigh must be. He felt the blood rising up through his chest into his neck and caught Justin Knudsen eyeing him with just a little bit of concern.

  At the end of the day, Matthew sat in his Fiat in the school’s parking lot. He blamed Richard for the way he’d looked at his student and for the thoughts that went through his head. He should never have had him over last night. Just because he was his brother didn’t mean they needed to spend time together. They had zero in common.

  Trying to calm down, he thought about what he might cook for dinner that night, and he decided he’d drive over to the fish market and buy a nice piece of center-cut cod, then he’d go to the grocery store and pick up Ritz crackers for the topping. It was his favorite way to cook fish, but Mira was not a fan, preferring salmon with a spicy Asian glaze.

  He started his car, just as Michelle Brine was hustling across the asphalt toward her own car. She heard the Fiat’s engine catch and turned her head, smiled at Matthew, and came over.

  He rolled down the window.

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “Yesterday, I actually gave a full class lecture on the basics of the Constitution. I thought they’d go to sleep, but I think it was okay. I had them do their mock Constitution today, and it went great. They seemed really into it.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “And I used your tip to get Ben Gimbel to shut up, and it actually worked.”

  “Which tip?”

  “He was talking, and instead of telling him to be quiet, I just stopped talking myself and stared at him. The rest of the class got on his case. It was something else.” A warm gust of wind blew some of Michelle’s long hair in through the car window. She gathered it up and refastened it at the back of her head.

  “What about Scott?”

  “Oh, God. It’s been nonstop. I accused him of hiding his phone from me, so he gave me his new code and said he only changed it because he saw some suspicious-looking kids”—she made quotation mark signs with her hands—“watching him punch in his code at the coffee shop. And then he handed me the phone and told me to check out anything I wanted to check out, but this was twenty-four hours after his gig, so he could have deleted anything he wanted to.”

  “Do you actually think he’s cheating on you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.” Matthew watched tears well up in her eyes.

  “If he is, he doesn’t deserve you.”

  “I know, I know. Look, I don’t want to . . . You should probably get going.”

  “It’s okay. Mira’s out of town again. Just me for the week.”

  “Oh.” Michelle’s face flushed slightly. Matthew sometimes wondered if Michelle was secretly in love with him.

  “I should get going anyway,” he said. “Dinner to cook, lessons to plan, TV to binge-watch.”

  Michelle laughed, started to ask him what television shows he was watching, then stopped herself and backed away. “Michelle, stop blabbing,” she said, still laughing. “Have a nice night, Matthew. Thanks again.”

  Driving home, the sun low in the sky, Matthew was, at least, relieved to be thinking about something other than his neighbor Hen and the way she’d looked when she’d seen the fencing trophy. Now he was thinking about Michelle’s boyfriend, Scott, and how it was pretty clear that he really was cheating on Michelle. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, he told himself. You don’t change the passcode on your phone without having a reason. Matthew had never actually met Scott, but he’d seen pictures of him on Michelle’s Facebook page. He was pale, with a sharp, bladelike nose and a full reddish beard. Unless Matthew remembered wrong, in one picture he’d seen Scott was wearing a T-shirt advertising his own band, the C-Beams. How hard would it be to confirm that Scott was a cheater? Then how hard would it be to liberate Michelle from the creep? The very thought excited Matthew. He could feel the adrenaline in his system, and he began to tap out the drumbeat from the radio on his steering wheel. He’d been living in the past for too long now, and it was time to create a new memory. Scott might be a worthwhile candidate.

  Back at home, he made himself dinner, stupidly leaving the fish under the broiler for a little too long so that the Ritz cracker topping blackened a little. It still tasted good, though, and instead of eating in front of the television, he ate in his study, watching videos posted on the C-Beams’ website. Their events page said that they were playing on Thursday night at the Owl’s Head Tavern, practically walking distance from his house, and Matthew told himself that if he could ascertain that Michelle wasn’t going to be there, he’d go by himself, get a look at Scott, see what he could see.

  Chapter 7

  It was late afternoon, the worst time of the day for Hen, her creative low point when her energy flagged and she didn’t know what to do with herself. It was too early to start thinking about dinner, and if she read, she’d fall asleep, and if she slept too long, she’d feel irritated and spacey for the rest of the evening. Today, however, she was pacing, trying to figure out what to do about her neighbor. One thing she could do would be to just call the Cambridge police and tell them what she had seen. It would sound crazy, but what if Matthew Dolamore had already been a suspect? What if her sighting of the fencing trophy would push them toward a deeper investigation, would allow them to get a search warrant? Who knew, maybe there was physical evidence at the scene of the crime—maybe even DNA—and that would convict him.

  She went so far as to look up the Cambridge Police Department telephone number, but couldn’t bring herself to call. There wasn’t enough.

  Her phone buzzed. Lloyd, texting her that he was on the commuter train, which meant that he’d be home in an hour. She went to the living room couch with her sketchbook, turned to a blank page, clo
sed her eyes for thirty seconds, then drew the fencing trophy exactly as she remembered it, even writing the words she was sure she’d seen. third place épée. junior olympics. Then she stared at her drawing. It looked correct to her: a fencer in mid-lunge on top of a circular pedestal. Hen went and got her laptop, bringing it back to the couch. She searched for “Junior Olympics fencing trophy.” The images from the search were disheartening; first of all, there weren’t many, and second, some of the trophies that were shown were trophy cups. But one picture did catch her eye, a teenage girl beaming at the camera and holding a trophy that looked very much like the one she’d seen on Matthew’s mantelpiece. The photograph came from a local news website, attached to a story from eight years earlier: “Lubbock High School Sophomore Wins First Place at the Junior Olympics of Fencing.” Hen enlarged the photograph, but it was too pixelated for her to see any writing on its base. But it did convince her that the trophy she’d seen at her neighbors’ had come from the same event.

  Lloyd arrived home, and Hen was startled. It felt like he’d only just texted her to let her know he was on the way.

  He grabbed himself a Lagunitas from the refrigerator, poured it into his favorite beer glass, and settled down on the chair opposite Hen. “How was your day?” he asked.

  “Fine. Did some work, took a walk.”

  “You go to the studio?”

  “I didn’t, but I’ll go tomorrow.” Hen was surprised to realize that she wasn’t going to tell Lloyd that she’d been to the neighbors’ house, that she’d toured the rooms again. It would only make him worry.

  “How about your day?” she asked.

  “Unremarkable,” he said, then went on to explain the back-and-forth with an annoying client. Lloyd worked in public relations. “For my sins,” he always said whenever anyone asked him what he did; Hen was never really sure what exactly he meant by that, especially since Lloyd loved his job. He’d recently been promoted to the head of social media marketing for his small firm, and he’d landed their biggest client, an up-and-coming microbrewery from just outside of Boston that was about to expand nationally.

  “Wanna eat out?” Lloyd said after finishing his beer.

  “We have leftovers, too.”

  “Remind me again?”

  “Chili and cornbread.”

  “Oh, right. It’s up to you. I’m happy either way.”

  It was a warm night and they ended up walking into what amounted to West Dartford’s center. There was a Congregational church, a convenience store, a café that was open for breakfast and lunch, and a tavern called the Owl’s Head that served food and had occasional live music. There were seats available at the bar of the Owl’s Head, and Hen and Lloyd each got a beer. He ordered a veggie burger and Hen got a bowl of clam chowder. The bartender, a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a handlebar mustache, remembered their names from the last time they’d been there. He even remembered the name of the microbrewery that Lloyd represented and said he’d checked out their website. The food came, and the baseball game began—the Red Sox were playing the Orioles, with whom they were currently tied in the standings, five games left in the season. Hen looked around the small bar, made to look older than it was, she thought, but cozy nonetheless, with brick walls, tap pulls made from polished wood, and even two taxidermied owls, one on either end of the bar. She wondered how many times she’d come here in the future, and the thought filled her with sudden gratitude. Her life was good. She’d come through foul weather and torrential rain to stand in the sun. Something about the feeling made her say to Lloyd, “I have a confession.”

  “Uh-oh,” he said, but kept his eye on the game.

  “Remember you said I was acting strange at our neighbors’ house, at Matthew and Mira’s?”

  “When were you acting strange?”

  “At the end when we were looking at Matthew’s study.”

  Lloyd turned and looked at Hen. “I remember. You looked faint.”

  “It’s because I saw something . . . Remember I asked about the fencing trophy on the mantelpiece?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Do you remember Dustin Miller?”

  Lloyd took a sip of his beer. “Of course.”

  “It wasn’t reported immediately, but the police did reveal that one of the things missing from Dustin Miller’s house on the night he was killed was a fencing trophy.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And do you remember where Dustin Miller went to high school?”

  “Did he go to Sussex Hall?”

  “He did.”

  “I don’t know, Hen. That’s a stretch.”

  “You don’t even know—”

  “You think that Matthew, our neighbor, killed Dustin Miller and he took the fencing trophy and put it on his mantelpiece in his study?”

  “It was a Junior Olympics fencing trophy—it said that right on it, and that was where Dustin Miller got the trophy from. And one more thing—let me finish. There was an accusation of sexual assault against Dustin Miller while he was at Sussex Hall. What if Matthew somehow knew or suspected Dustin was guilty? That would give him a motive for killing his ex-student.”

  “Not really,” Lloyd said, swiveling his stool so that he was now completely facing Hen. He lowered his voice. “Even if he thought he got away with sexual assault, that wouldn’t mean he would murder him. And take a trophy as what, a souvenir?”

  “All I’m saying is it’s a possibility.”

  “It would be a huge coincidence.”

  “Why would it be a huge coincidence? Someone killed Dustin Miller.”

  “No, it would be a huge coincidence that we lived on the same street as the victim, then moved to the same street as the murderer.”

  “Okay, yes, that is a coincidence.”

  They were both quiet for a moment. The Red Sox game had just been called for a rain delay, and groundskeepers were pulling a tarp onto the diamond. Hen instinctively looked toward the large front windows of the tavern to see if it was raining yet in West Dartford.

  “To be honest,” Lloyd said, “I’m more concerned right now with you than with whether our neighbor killed Dustin Miller.”

  “I’m fine. I promise.”

  “You weren’t fine last time you became obsessed with Dustin Miller.”

  “No, I wasn’t, but this is different. Also, when I was looking at the trophy, I could sense Matthew’s eyes on me. It was like he knew I knew.”

  “Great.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Hen said.

  “Okay.”

  “I went to their house today, and Mira was there. I asked her if I could look around again, try and get some decorating ideas.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It wasn’t entirely a lie. I did want to see their house again, even though I really wanted to see the trophy.”

  “And she let you in?”

  “She did. She was really happy to see me.”

  “And so you saw the trophy again, and it had Dustin Miller’s name on it.”

  “Not quite. It was gone, Lloyd. Matthew had moved it or gotten rid of it—either way, it’s because he saw I was looking at it. I’m not being paranoid or obsessive, and I don’t feel manic, but I know. Our neighbor killed Dustin Miller.”

  Lloyd was quiet for a moment, clearly thinking. Hen knew how his mind worked and knew that he was considering everything Hen had just said, and that he was also considering, as he always did, Hen’s state of mental health. It was how he processed their world together, their marriage. Hen loved him, and she truly believed that if it weren’t for Lloyd Harding, her life would be far worse. But because of all the times she’d relied on him for care, he now treated her with kid gloves. It had been that way ever since her last episode when they’d lived in Cambridge. He checked on her mood constantly, monitored her eating and drinking, made sure she was sleeping okay. She appreciated it—and loved him for it—but sometimes she missed the Lloyd she’d first known when they’d each answered an ad to move int
o a six-bedroom house in Winter Hill in Somerville. They were both recent college graduates, Hen starting a program—one she never finished—at Lesley University in art therapy, and Lloyd tending bar and working an unpaid internship in public television. They’d immediately bonded, mostly because the other four residents of the damp, drafty house were like a coven of vegan shut-ins. The house smelled of patchouli and body odor, and every item in the “animal-free” fridge was labeled with a note of ownership. Lloyd and Hen formed their own alternative unit, smoking cigarettes together on the unsafe balcony and buying food, including dairy-based milk, together.

  There had been an instant attraction, at least from Hen’s side. He was tall and skinny, with a bad haircut, but he had beautiful pale brown eyes and he always smelled nice, like coffee and cinnamon. But Hen was dating one of her fellow students, a very sincere comic book artist from the Midwest, and Lloyd was technically still with his college girlfriend, then in Moldova with the Peace Corps. When Hen and Lloyd first slept together, after a warm evening spent on the balcony with a gallon jug of Burgundy and a pack of American Spirits, it was almost combative, as though they were rushing to complete the act before the guilt stopped them. Afterward, they both swore it would never happen again. But two weeks later, a day before Lloyd’s girlfriend—who’d suddenly quit the Peace Corps—was set to arrive, Lloyd crawled into Hen’s bed, with beer on his breath and tears in his eyes, and stripped Hen from the boxers and T-shirt she slept in. That night was the first time she’d had an orgasm just from intercourse. Lloyd left the bedroom having never spoken a word.

  It was six months until they were officially together. By that point they’d both broken off from their respective partners—Hen did it easily, Lloyd not so much—and they’d abandoned the semi-commune in Winter Hill and both moved to separate cohousing situations that were only marginally better. In some ways, it was a stressful, terrible time for Hen. Lloyd, guilt-ridden over his college girlfriend, took out some of his self-loathing on Hen. They had many drunken fights and lots of frenetic sex, sometimes simultaneously. Hen wasn’t happy, but, even now, she could remember that time so clearly, in the way that she couldn’t always remember the years of contented happiness—marred only by her bouts of manic depression—that came later. And there had been a dangerous edge to Lloyd at that time. He’d been a good guy, but he was confrontational, sometimes belligerent, and always willing to call Hen out on her bullshit. Also, back then, when they’d had sex there was always a moment when Lloyd would take control. She could feel him objectifying her, and instead of it making her feel bad, it made her feel good, as though something was freed up between them. But ever since her first bout of depression that led to her dropping out of Lesley, that side of Lloyd had disappeared. He’d become a caretaker, overly aware of Hen’s condition. These days they didn’t argue, and when they had sex it was reverential, almost. She had mentioned that to her best friend, Charlotte, now married with four kids, and Charlotte had laughed and said that dull sex had nothing whatsoever to do with Hen’s mental health and everything to do with the institution of marriage.