The Kind Worth Killing (12 page)

“Jason and Bella. That's taken on my old boat, though. I sold it the
beginning of this summer, and bought myself my Albemarle. You fish?”

I told him no, but he continued to talk about his boat. I was barely listening, but it didn't really matter. I was learning some things about Brad Daggett. Putting aside for now the matter that he was sleeping with my wife, I was discovering that I didn't like Brad Daggett at all. He was a selfish drunk, who was probably only going to get more selfish and alcoholic as he got older. He didn't care about his kids beyond placing a photograph of them in his home, and it wasn't clear if he really cared for anyone besides himself. He was a negative in this world. I thought of Lily, and I thought about Brad coming to a sudden end, and I didn't really mind. In fact, I wanted it to happen. Not just because it would punish Brad for what he was doing with my wife, but also because Brad disappearing off this earth would be a good thing. Whose life was he making better? Not his kids, or his ex-wife. Not Polly at the bar, who maybe thought she was his girlfriend. He was an asshole, and one less asshole around was good for everybody.

I interrupted Brad in his monologue about his boat, and told him I was going to the bathroom. It was as clean as the rest of the apartment. I dumped my beer down the sink, and took a look in Brad Daggett's medicine cabinet. There wasn't much to look at. Razors and deodorant and hair product. A large bottle of generic ibuprofen. A box of hair dye that hadn't been opened. A prescription bottle for antibiotics that had expired over five years earlier. I opened it up and looked inside; the bottle was filled with blue, diamond-shaped pills that I recognized as Viagra. So Brad the stud wasn't such a stud, after all. I actually laughed out loud. When I returned to the living room, Brad hadn't shifted position from the couch, but his eyes were closed and his chest was lifting and falling steadily. I watched him for a while, trying to feel something besides disgust—trying to feel some pity, maybe, just as a way to test myself. I felt none.

Before leaving I quietly searched a few of the drawers in the kitchen alcove. One of them was a utility drawer, filled with tools, measuring tape, a spool of twine, a roll of duct tape. Toward the back
of the drawer was a Smith & Wesson double-action revolver. I was surprised, only because he had made that earlier joke that he would have killed his wife if he'd owned a gun. For one rash moment, I considered stealing it, then realized he would most likely know who took it. I left it where it was, but I did take a newly minted key from a small box filled with similar keys. He would never miss it, and it was possible that it opened the door to this cottage, or maybe all of the Crescent cottages.

I took one last look around before leaving. Brad hadn't moved from his position. I stepped out into the cold, brackish air, then quietly tried the key on Brad's front door. It slid in and turned. I left the door unlocked, and pocketed the key. I pulled out my phone and was about to call Miranda to have her come and pick me up, when I decided I might walk. The cold felt good against my skin. I breathed deeply through my nostrils, the salt in the air making me feel more alive than I'd felt in a while. I began to walk. It was only a few miles, and I felt like I had all the energy in the world.

For all of my sophomore year, and Eric's senior year, I spent almost every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night at St. Dunstan's Manor in Eric's second-floor bedroom. At the time, I thought of this period as the happiest of my life. In retrospect, and not just because of what happened later, I realized that it was also a time of uncertainty and anxiety. I was in love with Eric Washburn, and he said he was in love with me. I believed him, but I also knew that we were young, and that Eric was graduating soon, with plans to move to New York City and get a job in the financial sector. And my plan was to spend the following school year in London at the Faunce Institute of Art, studying conservation. Even though Eric and I would talk about our future, I told myself I knew that everything was going to change when he graduated.

I led two separate but compatible lives that year. From Sunday to Thursday I did all my reading and schoolwork. My roommates, the Three Winonas, played loud music and smoked nonstop cigarettes, but were surprisingly quiet, and relatively good-natured. I found I had
a lot in common with
Mermaids
Winona, a bookworm who, like me, grew up idolizing Nancy Drew. On Thursday evening I would go to St. Dunstan's Manor for the weekly party. I would bring my largest purse, packed with a change of clothes and a few of my toiletries, since I would always spend the night, and sometimes the weekend. From Friday morning until Sunday evening Eric and I were rarely apart, with the exception of classes, and Eric's racquetball matches, or Ultimate Frisbee, or any of the numerous pickup games that it was important for him to win. We saw movies at the campus repertory theater, and would venture into New Chester to eat Italian food, and would sometimes go to parties not hosted by St. Dunstan's or any of its members, but that was rare. We slid into a comfortable relationship filled with predictable routine, a day-to-day of inside jokes and what seemed to me to be some highly well-suited sex. We called one another Washburn and Kintner. We were blessedly free of the dramatics of disappointment or infidelity. I cherished what we had become but kept it to myself, telling Eric and no one else how strong my attachment was. He echoed my feelings, and sometimes talked of our future together after Mather.

Eric's ex-girlfriend Faith was also a senior, and still a regular at Thursday night parties. She was now dating Matthew Ford, and because Faith and I were the respective girlfriends of the two most prominent members of St. Dun's, Faith attached herself to me that year, even occasionally asking me questions about my relationship with Eric, although I never took the bait. I didn't particularly like Faith, who was bubbly and devious and liked to be the center of attention, but I didn't mind spending time with her. If Faith hadn't been around at all, curiosity about the girl who had spent two years with Eric might have escalated into obsession. But she
was
around, and I got to know her, and, because of that, she had no place in my imagination.

I could see what had attracted Eric to Faith. She was round-faced and sexy, with short black hair. Her clothes were straight out of
The
Official Preppy Handbook
but her sweaters were always a little too tight, and her skirts were always a little too short. When she talked, she came in close and made disarming eye contact, but she laughed often, and made funny jokes about herself. If we went anywhere together, Faith would push her arm through mine, and if she was standing behind me, she would run her fingers through my hair. Neither of my parents had been physically affectionate with me, so I found Faith's touchiness often disturbing and occasionally reassuring. Once, when Faith was drunk, she told me she wanted to study the color of my eyes. She came in close, her own brown eyes huge in my vision.

“It's like a tapestry in there,” Faith said, her breath warm against my cheek. “There are flecks of gray and yellow and blue and brown and pink.”

Eric rarely spoke of Faith, but one night as we lay in his bed, he asked if it bothered me that Faith was around so much.

“Not really,” I said. “She's decided we're best friends. Have you noticed that?”

“She's best friends with everyone. No, delete that. I think she genuinely likes you and wants to be your friend, it's just that . . .”

“Don't worry. I know what you mean. I have no intention of becoming her best friend. I'm not sure we have anything in common. Besides you.”

“No, you have nothing in common. I can vouch for that. She's not a bad person, and she and Matt make a good pair.”

“I guess so,” I said.

And that was the extent of our conversation on the subject of Faith.

That summer I returned to Monk's. My mother had a new boyfriend, Michael Bialik, a bearded linguistics professor from the university, who was surprisingly grounded. He had his own place about a half mile from ours, a converted barn where he lived with his son, a piano prodigy named Sandy. Michael loved to cook, and because of this, my
mother spent a lot of her time at his house, leaving Monk's to me. My library job was only four hours a day Monday through Friday, and I spent the rest of my weekday time either reading or puttering around the property. I was in love, and I was at peace. I even returned to my favorite meadow, the final resting place of Chet. The well cover was still in place; it looked the way it had—years ago—when I had first discovered it, hidden by winter-yellowed grass. The nearby farmhouse was still unoccupied.

My plan had been to visit Eric in New York on the weekends, but when Eric came to visit Monk's he fell in love with it, or at least he claimed he had.

“I want to spend every weekend here, Kintner. This will be the perfect life. Weeks in the city, and then I can take the train out Friday evening and be here with you. Country weekends.”

“You won't get bored?”

“Not a chance. I love it here. What about you? I'd be asking you to spend all your time here.”

“You're describing every summer I've ever had. I don't mind. And I'll have you to look forward to on the weekends.”

And so our summer turned out to be a replication of our school year. Weeks alone. Weekends together. I didn't mind, because I had never minded spending time alone. And the days I spent alone were days that were getting me closer to the weekend, to seeing Eric step off the commuter train, overnight bag slung across his shoulders, huge grin on his face. And these weekends were that much more intense. Away from Mather, our relationship seemed more mature, more comfortable. We felt married. So, no, I didn't mind just seeing Eric two days each week.

And Eric didn't mind, for reasons of his own.

I might never have found out about those reasons, and might have left for London in the fall feeling as though Eric was still the love of my life, if it hadn't been for my father's visiting New York in the last week of August and asking to see me for lunch. He had a new book
coming out, a collection of short stories, and was in New York to meet with his American agent and his American publisher, and to give a reading at Strand Books. He hadn't invited me to the reading, which wasn't a surprise. I'd asked him once—my junior year of high school, I think—if I could go to one, and he'd replied, “God, Lily, you're my daughter. I wouldn't expose you to that. It's bad enough you'll eventually feel the need to
read
my books, let alone have to listen to me speak them out loud.”

So I took a day off from the library and caught the train to New York City. My father and I ate lunch in a swank restaurant attached to the lobby of his midtown hotel, and we talked about my upcoming year in London. He promised to e-mail me a list of friends and relatives I had to visit, along with a few of his favorite London landmarks, most of which were pubs. Then he drilled me for tidbits about my mother and the new boyfriend. He was very disappointed to hear that the linguistics professor was, on the whole, a decent man. After lunch, we parted ways in front of the hotel. “You turned out all right, Lil, despite your mother and me,” he said, not for the first time. We hugged good-bye. It was a strangely nice day for late August in the city, so I headed downtown, toward Eric's office, a place I had never visited. The air that had been stifling for the entire month was suddenly free of humidity, and I was just happy to be walking along the quiet midday corridors of the city. I hadn't decided whether I would intrude on Eric's workday to surprise him or not, but was considering it, beginning to imagine the look on his face as I stepped into his office. I was taken out of this reverie by hearing someone shout my name. I turned to see Katie Stone, a junior at Mather, and someone I knew from St. Dunstan's parties, crossing the street and waving at me.

“I thought that was you,” Katie said, stepping onto the curb as a yellow cab hurtled by. “I didn't know you were in the city this summer.”

“I'm not. I'm at my mom's house in Connecticut, but my dad's here and I had lunch with him.”

“Do you want to get coffee? I got let out of work early. God, New York's depressing in August.”

We went to a chain coffee shop at the nearest corner and both ordered iced lattes. Katie prattled on about Mather students we both knew, and several I'd never heard of. She was a gatherer and purveyor of gossip, and I was surprised that she wasn't asking me about Eric, so I asked her, “Do you see Eric much?”

Katie's eyes widened a little at the mention of his name. “Oh. I wasn't going to bring him up. No, not much, but a little. He works around here somewhere, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Why weren't you going to bring him up?”

“I just didn't know how you felt, now that you're not seeing each other. I didn't know if you wanted to hear about him.”

A cold flush went over my skin. I very nearly told Katie that of course I was still seeing Eric but something stopped me. Instead, I asked, “Why, what's going on with him?”

“Nothing that I know of. I've seen him a little, but he's never here on the weekends. His dad's sick. Maybe you knew that?”

“No,” I said. “What's wrong with him?”

“Cancer, I think. Eric goes there every weekend. They must be close?” She phrased it like a question, and I managed to nod, despite the sudden need to get out of the coffee shop, and away from Katie. Fortunately, Katie's cell phone began to ring, and as she dug within her enormous purse, I excused myself. I borrowed the key from the barista, then locked myself into the closet-size restroom. My mind galloped, desperately trying to understand the information I had just received, and while there was a part of me that was questioning what Katie had said—that it must be some ridiculous misunderstanding—there was a more logical part of me that knew it was true, that I had been a fool. Eric was leading two lives, and no one knew that he was seeing me on the weekends. After returning the key I saw that Katie was still on her phone, and I took the opportunity to tap her briefly on the shoulder, point at my watch, and move quickly toward the door.
Katie lowered the phone and stood, but I simply mouthed the word “sorry” and kept moving.