Bit by bit—all to Melissa, as if they were telling the story for her sake, to make her laugh—they reconstructed the evening for me (or at least most of it: they skipped delicately over the brunette giving me the eye, and the work trouble). As they talked, my memory twisted and flicked into life—fitfully, almost playfully, filling in a vivid sweep of images here and just a brushstroke there and then skimming away, leaving behind tantalizing patches of shadow and blankness. Sean pointing at Dec, “—where to go for our holiday, and Toby and I are all on for Thailand, but this contrary git here, right? he just has to be different, he keeps banging on about Fiji—” and a flash of me waving my phone at Dec, Look, look at this, this guy says the beaches in Fiji are covered with wild dogs, you want to get eaten? I laughed along with Melissa, but every flash went through me like a zap of electricity.
Except—I realized with a slow sinking, as Sean and Dec worked their way through the evening—there was nothing there. I had been hoping for the vital fragment that would bring all the pieces together; instead I was getting a lads’ night out, unremarkable in every way except for the cheap filter of hindsight that gave everything a sinister foreshadowing loom. Worse: I’d been so focused on that hope that I’d forgotten to consider what it would do to me, hearing about that night. It felt like they were talking about someone else, someone I had been close to a long time ago; a favorite brother maybe, cocky and laughing and innocent enough to break your heart, at ease with all the world and his place in it, and now lost. The longing to have him back was like a physical force sucking my guts out, leaving me hollow.
The thing that saved me was, weirdly, the fact that I had brought it on myself. The vortexing sensation was as strong and as hideous as ever, but for the first time, it hadn’t been slammed into me out of nowhere; I was using it, riding it, for my own reasons. The Leon revelation might not be enough but it was something, a start, and I had pried it out myself. I was running this evening, and it felt good. It had been a long time since I had felt capable of running anything more complex than the microwave.
“So then we poured Dec into a taxi,” Sean said. “Before he could start telling us he loved us.”
“In your dreams. I’ll do it at your wedding, how’s that? Just so all your new in-laws can see you welling up like a great big—”
“Who says you’re invited?”
“We’re your best men, you tool. You want me to do it by Skype?”
“I do, yeah, that’d be great—”
“Did you guys go to Thailand, in the end?” I asked. “Or Fiji?”
“Nah,” Dec said. “This big sap”—a nod at Sean—“wanted to wait for you. I was all on for leaving your sorry arse behind, only—”
“He said he didn’t have the dosh,” Sean told me. “Meaning he wanted to wait for you, only he didn’t have the balls to say it. We’ll go next year.”
“If Audrey lets you out of the gaff,” Dec said.
“She’ll be delighted to see the back of him by then,” I said. “Probably push him out the door.” I had had a fair bit to drink, what with the wine and the Armagnac. That and the candlelight wrapped the two of them in a deep golden glow, like heroes out of legend, timeless and steadfast. I wanted to reach out across the table and grip their arms, feel the warmth and solidity of them. “Cheers, guys,” I said instead, raising my glass. “Thanks. For everything.”
“Ah, Jaysus,” Dec said in disgust. “Not you too.”
* * *
?“It was good to see them,” Melissa said, when Sean and Dec had left and we were tidying up. It was late, candles burned down to stalagmite stubs, old crooner radio station playing low enough that we would hear Hugo if he called. An unsettled wind was moving around the garden. “Wasn’t it?”
“Huh?” I had been loading the dishwasher, humming along to the music—I should have been fading from booze and fatigue, but instead I felt like I was speeding. Half my mind was working on how to get Leon over to the Ivy House, and what to say to him once I had him. If he was somehow behind all this, a part of me was almost impressed: I wouldn’t have thought he had the organizational drive to mastermind something that elaborate. The part I couldn’t work out was the timing on the break-in. If he had been after the camera, why not tell his scumbag pals to go in during the day, when I would be out at work and they could hunt for it in peace? Unless the nighttime part had been their own addition, easier to walk out with a big flat-screen in the middle of the night—or unless Leon had actually wanted me to run into them, wanted me shaken up, even beaten up: some bitchy poetic-justice thing, see how you like it— “Oh. Yeah. It was great.”
“Sean’s so excited about the wedding, isn’t he? He was trying to act all blasé about it, but it’s lovely. And Dec’s in better form than I thought he’d be, after Jenna.” Melissa had tried very hard to be friends with Jenna, but even she had her limits.
“He’s way better off. He knows that, deep down.”
Melissa swept crumbs off the tablecloth into her hand. “And you had a good time?”
That was twice she’d asked. “Oh yeah,” I said cheerfully. And when I caught her quick glance: “What, did it not seem like I was?”
“Oh, yes! Almost all the time. Just . . . all that about Dominic. And Leon.”
“Well,” I said, with a grimace: pained but not upset, everything in perspective. “Yeah. That was nasty stuff. But it was a long time ago. And I guess you guys were right: I did everything I could. I’m not going to beat myself up over it.”
“Good.” A fleeting smile, but there was still a tiny worried crease between her eyebrows. After a moment she said, picking a blob of candle wax off the tablecloth: “You were asking Sean and Dec a lot of questions.”
I was lining up glasses in the dishwasher, fast neat rhythm, even my hand grip felt stronger. “Was I? I guess.”
“Why?”
“I figured they’d remember Dominic a lot better than I do. Apparently I was right, too.”
“Yes, but why does it matter? Why do you want to know about him?”
“I’d like some clue what’s going on,” I said, reasonably enough, I thought. “Seeing as we’ve somehow ended up in the middle of it.”
Melissa’s eyes came up to meet mine, fast. “You think they know something about what happened? Sean and Dec?”
“Well, not like that.” I laughed; she didn’t. “But yeah, they might know something that they don’t realize means anything. Probably not, but hey, it’s worth asking, right?”
“The detectives are doing that.”
“Sure. But they might not tell us what they find out, or they might not find out fast enough. Hugo wants to know; he says he feels like he’s got a right. You can see his point.”
She brushed her handful of crumbs into the bin, not looking at me. “I guess.”
“And there’s stuff I might be able to find out that the detectives can’t.”
A moment’s silence. Then: “So you’re going to keep asking. Trying to find out what happened.”
I shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
Melissa swept the cloth off the table in one swift neat motion and turned to face me. She said flatly, “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“What?” I hadn’t seen this coming. If anything I would have expected her to be all encouragement and support, anything that Hugo wanted, anything that got me amped up and interested— “Why not?”
“Dominic might have been murdered. It’s not a game. The detectives are professionals; it’s their job. Leave it to them.”
“Baby, it’s not Agatha Christie. I’m not going to get stabbed in the library with a letter opener for getting too close to the truth.”
She didn’t smile. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Then what?”
“You don’t know what you might find out.”
“Well, that’s kind of the point.” And when she still didn’t smile back: “Like what?”