—
And so he did.
He listened to Matt talking for over six hours. He listened as Matt spoke of the sexual abuse Diana had endured as a girl by her father since she was young. He listened as Matt described how their mother knew about this, and not only had she done nothing but she had seemed to resent Diana more as time went on.
“Did your brother abuse her too?” Bob asked.
“Oh man—I just don’t know. Thomas left, and when Diana was fifteen, I always, always remember this—Thomas had been gone for maybe two years—when Diana was fifteen, she said to my father one night, in this really deep weird voice, she said, ‘If you ever touch me again, I will kill you. I will kill you, don’t think I won’t, because I will.’ ”
Matt looked exhausted. Finally he added, “I’ll never forget her voice that night. And I think my father never did touch her again. He left maybe—I don’t know? A few months later?— He just moved out, gone. My mother must have heard from him, because they eventually got a divorce, but I never heard a thing about him again until he died in North Carolina, where he was remarried and running an accounting office.”
—
Bob listened as Matt told him that Diana had in fact been in the house a few days before their mother disappeared and that Ashley Munroe had been there on one of those days. Matt said, “Diana must’ve stolen the credit card and driver’s license from Ashley’s pocketbook. Ashley would leave her bag on the table by the side door, and Diana must have taken it out then.”
And then Matt said, “But, Bob, when I heard my mother was found in the quarry, I knew Diana had done it. Because Diana was raped near that quarry when she was sixteen. By a friend of my father’s who had always been nice to Diana, I mean, she respected him, and he was kind to her after my father left, and he took her to that quarry one Saturday, I think it was supposed to be some sort of fun outing, and when she got home she was hysterical and she said she had been raped, and my mother—my mother yelled at her and called her a whore.” Matt paused, looking around the room. “This man—this man who knew our father, he was kind to her. And he raped her that day. So when I heard about the quarry I thought, Diana is getting her revenge. But I never told anyone, I couldn’t turn my sister in. I couldn’t do that, Bob.”
“I get it,” Bob said.
“But does that make me an accessory or something?”
“No, Matt.”
Matt stood up and went to the corner of his bedroom, and when he turned back he handed Bob two notebooks. “My mother’s journals,” he said, and Bob took them. Matt also took a piece of paper from a drawer near his bed and handed that to Bob as well. It was Diana’s suicide note. “I don’t ever want to see this again,” Matt said—and so Bob took that as well. Bob had read the note many times. In surprisingly good handwriting, rather girlish, it detailed Diana’s confession to the crime of killing her mother and stated her intentions to kill herself. The killing of her mother had been “blocked as a memory,” she had written. Not until she had found the dirt and twigs on her shoes after she had arrived home in Connecticut did what she had done come back to her in parts, like a dream. She wrote that her husband’s desertion had undone her, and now she was a free woman. Free of her crime, free of her punishment, free of her pain. But I did a good job with my life, for the most part, she concluded. And then she added, If Matt had been convicted of this, I would have confessed.
*
As Bob lay down that first night on Matt’s mother’s bed, he thought, Oh God, I can’t believe I’m doing this. But he did.
He turned the light on and read through the two notebooks written by Gloria Beach. The woman had hated herself deeply. She wrote of Matt’s illness, “This is the only thing in my life that might redeem me, if I can keep him alive.” And then Bob lay there for a very long time; he thought of Lucy—he had texted her that day, and she had texted back—and he thought of this woman, Bitch Ball, and all that she had gone through. He thought of Diana and the tragedies that she had suffered. And he felt that he—Bob Burgess—was one of the luckiest people alive.
Bob must have fallen asleep at some point because he heard, as though in a dream, the sound of a cat mewling and he thought, There are no cats here. And then he realized that it was Matt in the room next to him. Bob got up and went to the door of Matt’s room, which was ajar. The mewling sound grew in intensity, and Bob walked in and sat on the bed and said, “Hey, Matt,” and then Matt began to cry the gasping sobs of a child. He reached for Bob and clung to him and he cried and cried, the sounds becoming almost screeches at times. “It’s okay, you go ahead and cry,” Bob said. The crying grew more intense. It went on for almost an hour—Bob saw this on the clock that was near the bed—this man crying in Bob’s arms. And then he finally slowed down, and he yawned. He yawned!
“Don’t go,” Matt said, and Bob said, “I’m staying right here.”
And he waited a long time until Matt settled himself on the bed again, and still Bob did not leave him. He sat there in a chair by Matt’s bed until dawn came through the tiny crevices of the shrubs by the window.
*
And so Bob stayed with him, as we have said, for five nights, returning to him again for much of each day. Margaret came over one of those days and brought them food; she showed up in a long flowery dress and told Matt that she was sorry about everything he had been through. After she left, Matt said to Bob, “How long have you guys been married?” “Almost fifteen years,” Bob said. “She’s nice,” Matt said, and Bob said, Yes, she was. Then Matt said, “What’s it like being married?”
Bob considered this, and he said, “It’s good. What’s interesting about it is that you get to know each other in new ways.”
“What do you mean? What kind of new way have you gotten to know Margaret?” Matt asked.
And so Bob told him about how Margaret was in fear of losing her job at the church and how—paradoxically, he thought—it had made her a better minister.
“How?” Matt asked.
“I’m not sure how to put it, but she’s just more sincere when she speaks to her congregation. She’s just talking to them, she’s more herself.”
Matt watched Bob for a long time, and then he said, “Why?”
Bob nodded. “I’ve wondered, and I think it’s because she was humbled. That’s my thought.”
Matt just watched Bob and didn’t say anything.
*
On the third day, as Matt slept in his room—he had been up most of the night—Bob drove into Shirley Falls and bought white paint, and he brought it back and painted the room in which Diana had shot herself; there were blood spatterings on the ceiling and the walls. He had already removed the mattress and pillow and quilt, putting them all out in a huge plastic bag that had been picked up by a special garbage truck. Matt walked up the stairs and watched. “Thanks,” he finally said.
“No problem.” Bob rolled the roller over the last part and turned to look at Matt.
—
“I can’t believe she used my gun,” Matt said. He had said this before. Bob had gone over it with Matt many times. Razor blades were found in the room, and it was speculated that Diana had planned on cutting her wrists, but as the police drove up she must have panicked and gone to get the rifle in Matt’s closet. The police officers had heard the shot.
“It’s not your fault,” Bob said. He placed the roller covered with white paint into a plastic bag. He had told this to Matt many times over these last few days.
Through the window the new leaves shone a bright green in the early afternoon sunshine. Matt turned and went back down the stairs, and after a few minutes Bob followed him; Matt was sitting at the dining room table. “I don’t feel right,” Matt said, and Bob said, “I keep telling you that means you’re normal.”
Matt’s elbows were on the table, his hands holding his face as he gazed at Bob. “You look like shit,” he told Bob, and Bob said, “So do you.” There was a moment between them—not of humor exactly, but some sort of camaraderie, Bob thought.
“You called me son,” Matt said after a few moments of silence. Bob raised his eyebrows. “When you called me that day while I was waiting in the hotel parking lot, you said, Come on home, son.”
Bob stretched his legs out to one side. “I know I did.” He added, “I’ve never called anyone son in my life.”
“I liked it. But I’m way too old to be your son.” Then Matt said—he had said this before—“Diana wanted me to go to the hotel to protect me, right?”
