Going to Maine for the week had been Lily’s idea, suggested toward the end of our meeting at the Concord River Inn. She said it was important for me to know what went on up there, what Brad’s work schedule was like, how Miranda spent her days.
“With me up there, everything will be different,” I had said. “Miranda and Brad will act differently.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m more interested in the work habits of the crew on your house. How many people are there on a regular basis? How often is Brad there alone? Just observe. The more information you get, the better off we’ll be.”
I’d agreed. The hardest part was clearing my schedule for a week. But I’d insisted, and Janine, my assistant, had managed to reschedule everything. The plan was that I’d go up to Kennewick late on a Friday and return to Boston nine days later on a Sunday afternoon. In a strange way I had begun to look forward to the extended time away, and I was secretly reveling in the idea that I would be putting Brad and Miranda’s affair on hold. I wondered what Brad’s reaction would be when Miranda told him. Even sitting there on my couch having broken the news to Miranda I felt the power shifting in my favor.
Miranda twitched and I turned to look at her in the flicker of the television’s eighty-four-inch screen. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. She had fallen asleep. I stared at her for a while instead of at the movie. Deep shadows accentuated her curves, and her face, cast in the TV’s light, seemed a black-and-white version of herself. Her mouth opened a little farther, a nerve fluttered in her temple. I was fascinated by her raw beauty while at the same time realizing that she would not age well. Her face, rounded and doll-like, would turn puffy, and her pinup body would sag. But she wouldn’t grow old, would she? I was going to kill her, wasn’t I? That was the plan, and the thought of doing it, and getting away with it, filled me with a sense of gratification and power, but also fear and sadness. I hated my wife, but I hated her because I had loved her once. Was I making a mistake that I would regret for the rest of my life? When I thought this way, when I began to be frightened by what I was planning to do, I wanted to make contact with Lily, to hear her talk about murder in her casual way, as though she were talking about throwing away an old couch. But we had agreed to not talk for a while, to not meet until I had spent my week in Maine, and that was another reason I was looking forward to that week in Kennewick. Each day was getting me one day closer to being back with Lily.
John, the hotel concierge who often manned the check-in desk, told me that Miranda was in the Livery, then offered to have my bags taken to the suite. I thanked him and went to find Miranda, navigating the narrow, Colonial-era stairs that pitched steeply toward the inn’s lower levels. The tavern, named for the livery stable it had once been, had stone floors, a stone fireplace, and a long oak bar that curved like the lines of a yacht. Miranda was alone at the bar but talking animatedly to the tattooed bartender, whose name was either Sid or Cindy. I could never remember.
I interrupted them, kissed my wife, noting the absence of the taste of cigarettes on her mouth, then ordered a Hendrick’s martini. I shed my wool blazer, soaked from the walk from the car to the inn. It had been drizzling in Boston, but in Maine, the rain had become biblical, my wipers on full speed barely able to clear the windshield.
“You’re soaked,” Miranda said.
“It’s pouring.”
“I had no idea. I haven’t been outside all day.”
Sid/Cindy was delivering my drink. “She lives the life, your wife,” she said and laughed hoarsely as she said it.
“I know she does.” I turned to Miranda. “What did you do all day?”
“It wasn’t an entire waste. I made decisions on furniture for all the guestrooms, and I got a massage, and I waited, with bated breath, for my husband. Oh, I almost forgot.” She held up her nearly empty beer. “To one whole week.” I clinked it with my glass of cold gin and took a long sip, the drink instantly making me feel warmer. “Have you eaten?” Miranda asked.
I told her that I hadn’t, and flipped open a menu to take a look.