“Of course,” Charlie echoed. “I’m just saying, I’d forgotten. I’ll see you later.”
He went out with the dog.
He’s upset about me contradicting him in front of Fernandez, Matthew thought, watching Charlie through the glass doors. Well, he’d certainly made Charlie look like a liar. Had he intended to? He hoped not. It was a matter of principle with him not to indulge any feelings of ill will toward Charlie. Not for Charlie’s sake, but his own. His sense of personal dignity was tightly bound up in the disavowal of anything that might have been termed resentment. The position he had taken, from the start, was that he was above such pettiness. He preferred to be thought pragmatic, even coldly detached, than vindictive.
He stared out at his cousin: the tall, straight figure walking away from him, as it always was in Matthew’s imagination; the slight stiffness of his bearing conveying, as it always had, Charlie’s obstinate sense of the world’s being forever in his debt. For a brief moment Matthew allowed himself to recall how he had acquiesced in that sense; unprotestingly handing over his own existence when Charlie had required it of him. After all, Matt, things are already screwed for you, so you might as well… It was the first time since coming to America, he realized, that he’d permitted himself a direct glance at this incident through the intervening years, but the words came back as clearly as if Charlie had just spoken them.
Lily was still upstairs. Alone with Chloe, Matthew felt an unaccustomed awkwardness. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something about the interview, but it was hard to think of anything that wouldn’t sound either too knowing or too bland. He wondered if he should make some comment on her lie about not seeing Grollier’s movies. It occurred to him that if he didn’t, she might think he was deliberately making things easier for her-effectively colluding in the deception-which in turn might make her wonder why. Maybe that was what she was waiting for: some harmless explanation. He plunged in:
“I thought that was extremely cool of you, telling the detective you hadn’t seen Grollier’s movies.”
She looked away, but he had a feeling he’d been right.
“Oh… I just didn’t feel like going into it.”
“That’s what I assumed,” Matthew said quickly. “I’d have felt the same. The guy was obviously just stirring things up for the sake of it. Making insinuations, like Charlie said. Why should you play along with it? I was impressed. It showed real sangfroid, as my father would have said.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then said:
“What if I had been having an affair with Grollier?”
“Ha!” Matthew exclaimed, trying to sound lightheartedly amused.
“Seriously…”
“Well…”
“I’d be in trouble right now for not having told them, wouldn’t I?”
“I guess so. If they found out.”
“They’d find out, don’t you think?”
“Why?”
“Like Charlie said, if he was having an affair up here, there’d be traces of it all over the house, wouldn’t there? Hair, body fluids…”
“I suppose. But they’d have to have some reason to try to match them to any particular individual, wouldn’t they? I mean, they couldn’t just demand DNA samples from every beautiful woman in Aurelia…”
“I imagine they’d figure it out, sooner or later,” Chloe said, ignoring the compliment. “They aren’t actually idiots, whatever Charlie thinks.”
“Well, even if they did, so what? It’s not as if it would help solve the murder. Unless you did it yourself!” Matthew laughed.
“All the same, I should probably tell them, shouldn’t I? I mean, if I had been having an affair?”
She was practically confessing. In fact he wondered if at this point it would even be plausible for him to go on pretending she wasn’t. But if he let her talk, he knew he’d have to tell her to go to the cops, or else risk looking shifty himself. It struck him that she probably wanted him to tell her to go to the cops; that she was looking to him precisely for reassurance that it was the right thing, and that she shouldn’t be afraid. Well, he was damned if he was going to do that.
“Depends if you wanted to get dragged into a murder investigation,” he said. “Have the affair splashed all over the papers… I don’t imagine the police would keep it secret for long.”
“I thought they sometimes made deals about that kind of thing…”
“That seems highly unlikely. Anyway, since you presumably weren’t having an affair with the guy and didn’t kill him, there’s no need to torment yourself, is there?”
Matthew smiled at her as encouragingly as he could, wishing he could just tell her she’d handled the detective impeccably, and that she had nothing to worry about.
She nodded vaguely.
“I should go and shop for dinner,” he said, eager to change the subject. “Anything you need?”
“No, thanks.
“I’ll make something nice.”
She managed a frail smile.
“You always make something nice, Matt.”
He drove off. At a deer farm by the Thruway that advertised all-season meat, he bought a short loin of venison. She’d told him once that venison was her favorite meat, and he wanted to cook something special for her. He’d begun to think he might not be coming back after all. Not that he felt in any immediate danger, but it seemed tempting fate to come back to Aurelia while the police were-effectively, though they didn’t know it-looking for him. Also, Charlie obviously didn’t want him around.
Both cars were gone from the driveway when he got back. He was putting his purchases in the fridge when he saw what had been somehow invisible to him earlier: the little dish of kumquats and chocolates that Chloe had brought out during the game of Scrabble. They’d been on the coffee table, staring him in the face all the time he’d been trying to figure out what the detective had seen. She’d left the same snack in the A-frame. He could see it in his mind’s eye, down on the glass table beside the love seat. He’d even been dimly aware of it in the darkness and tumult of his departure, but far from thinking he should get rid of it, he’d thought it added a natural touch to the scenario he’d tried to create, of a random burglary gone wrong. Quinotos, he thought, remembering the detective’s word… Had the guy been deliberately signaling to Chloe that he was on to her? Giving her a chance to tell him about her affair in private? Was that where she’d picked up the idea of some kind of confidentiality deal? In which case, he wondered uneasily, what was she doing right now?
He was still unpacking the food when he heard a car pull up outside. Chloe came into the house. She was wearing a white blouse, gray skirt and blue Mary Janes.
She regarded him a moment, the bones of her face outlined by a shaft of sunlight piercing the trees along the driveway. He smiled at her.
“You look like you’ve been to a job interview!”
“I went to church. I haven’t been for a while.”
“They have services in the afternoon?”
“Yes.”
He turned away, not wanting to look too interested.
“Did you go to confession?” he asked, putting the meat in the fridge.
“Of course.”
“I can’t imagine,” he said, “what someone as saintly as you could possibly find to say inside a confessional.”
“Oh, there’s always something.”
He turned back to her.
“Charlie took Lily tubing,” she said. “They’ll be home by six-thirty. We should eat early if that’s okay.”
She went out of the kitchen. He heard her open the bar fridge by the drinks cabinet in the living room, before climbing the stairs up to her bedroom.
He wasn’t sure what to think. It made a certain amount of sense, he supposed, that she’d go to church. She’d certainly have been in need of relief from the unremitting tension of the last few days, and maybe she’d decided this was a safer bet than going to the police. Priests were sworn to secrecy, as far as he knew. Anyway she’d have been careful about that, knowing her; kept anything identifiable with Grollier out of whatever story she’d told. No doubt there were established formulas she could use without going into details. Father, I’ve strayed from my vows, or something. The priest would have given her some Hail Marys, and told her to end the affair. And, of course, she’d be able to assure him that she already had.