“No, no,” Maryann said. “I’ll be right here.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Jennifer asked.
“You can try,” Maryann said, not unkindly. It was just the way it was.
“Do you have a husband? In the real world?”
Maryann started to answer, then stopped herself. “Let me put it this way,” she said. “In the real world, it’s a 100 percent impossibility.”
“Ah,” Jennifer said.
“In this life here,” she said, “Levi is more than enough. And he’s a good man, you should know.”
“I know,” Jennifer said.
“Why do you ask?”
“I just wondered,” Jennifer said, “these months you’ve lived with us, how you’ve done it.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s easy.” She got up from the table, went back into the kitchen, where the pot of coffee was beside the stove. She refilled her cup, took a sip, added some sugar. “Your son’s safety is more important to me than my own comfort.”
Maryann returned to the kitchen table, opened her book again. For a few moments, Jennifer stood there, watching her.
“I appreciate that, I do,” Jennifer said. “But what about mine?”
“You chose this life, Mrs. Cupertine.” Maryann didn’t even look up from her book. “William didn’t.”
JENNIFER DIDN’T THINK SHE’D SLEEP THAT NIGHT, WAS CERTAIN SHE WASN’T asleep at all, her mind spinning with a mixture of rage and grief, until she sat up, gasping, bangs stuck to her forehead by a sheen of sweat, her T-shirt drenched. William was curled into the fetal position, asleep beside her. At some point, he’d thrown off all the sheets and blankets so that they were piled on top of her; no wonder she was broiling and dying of thirst. Jennifer touched the tiny mole on the back of William’s neck—she had one in the same place, this secret thing they shared—and his skin was cool, so she pulled a sheet over him. She reached across him for the glass of water she kept on the nightstand, but it wasn’t there.
She turned on her reading light and saw that the glass was shattered on the hardwood floor, a puddle of water spreading beneath the bed. It was 3:32 a.m.
Of course. That’s what must have woken her. She’d get another glass of water, plus a towel and broom, from downstairs. Clean up the mess.
Jennifer made her way downstairs, the only light coming from the kitchen and family room at the bottom of the stairs, the air for some reason freezing. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she figured out why: the front door was blown open. Even though it was April, nights on the lake were still frigid, dipping into the thirties. The house was old. Every windowsill needed to be repaired, air, water, and spiders leaking in regularly. Was Maryann out there smoking or something?
Jennifer poked her head out the door. “Maryann?”
Nothing.
She took a few steps out into the darkness. The moon was high up in the cloudless sky, its reflection shimmering on the lake. Jennifer trembled, wrapped her arms around herself, walked out onto the lawn, the wind blowing hair into her eyes. Normally, there’d be a man either in a boat or on the patio across the way, watching, but everyone was gone. She looked behind her, at the house where “Uncle Steve” and “Auntie Britt” lived. It was dark. They were in Las Vegas, too.
Must have been the wind.
She closed the door and turned the dead bolt, flicked on the foyer’s light, headed into the kitchen.
Maryann’s holster sat on the kitchen table, empty. Her coffee cup was on the counter, empty.
“Maryann?” she said again.
The family room, which was sunken by two steps, was dark except for the blue glow cast by the TV. The volume was too loud, Tommy Lee Jones screaming at Harrison Ford in the rain, Maryann watching something on the VCR. Jennifer stepped into the room and saw the agent was asleep on the leather recliner in the far corner, her head on her chest.
Jennifer switched off the TV. “Maryann,” she said, “you fell asleep.” She shook her foot, propped up on the attached footrest. “The front door was wide open.”
She turned her back to Maryann, thought she heard a low yawn coming from the FBI agent, went back into the kitchen, filled a glass of water from the sink, stared out the window above the rack of dishes, gulped it down. Outside, visible in the moon’s glow, the wind rippled the water. “It’s practically white water out there. We should have Levi look into some better doors, don’t you think?”
She turned back, thinking Maryann would be up now, wiping sleep from her eyes.
Except.
No.
Jennifer dropped her glass in the sink.
Maryann’s gun was on the kitchen floor, just before the steps, dropped next to a stack of newspapers for recycling. She must have missed it in the dark.
She walked over, tentatively, felt the gun.
The barrel still warm.
Maryann wasn’t asleep at all.
Jennifer saw that now.
With the light on in the family room.
The spatter of blood on the wall.
The hole in her head.
