I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.
After a long moment, she replied—No, you didn’t, or It doesn’t matter—and then slowly turned to face the table. I sat down across from her and ordered a coffee, I saw that her cup was already empty. The waiter asked if she would like another coffee. She nodded, without making eye contact. Only once the waiter had gone did she raise her head and look at me.
I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday. I should never have said those things about Christopher. Mark was very angry with me when I told him.
For a brief moment there was a ghost of coquetry in her manner, as if she were inviting me to imagine the domestic argument between them, the dinner theater of her feminine deference to his masculine authority—Mark was not, in my experience, any kind of a scold—a brief instant in which she forgot her sorrow and was amused.
Another moment and the mirth faded. She frowned, folding her hands in her lap. Her manner was careful, clearly she wished to rectify the impression created by the passions she had expressed the previous day, and about which she was now apparently so contrite.
They aren’t true. And in any case you obviously knew nothing about them.
She spoke with deliberation, nonetheless I was aware that her words did not make much sense, these things that were not true and about which I did not know (how could I have known about them, if they were not true, what would there have been to know about? Or did she only mean that I did not have the false suspicions, had not heard the false rumors?). She looked tired, no doubt she had not slept very well. I looked away.
Let’s not talk about that.
Isabella and Mark also had things to hide, I was not the only one. How unforgivable it would have been, if I had not known. I did not see how I could say to her that her declarations had been no more than the confirmation of what I already knew, what I had willed myself not to know for many years, until it was no longer sustainable or believable even to myself. There were arguments to be made—that monogamy is unnatural, it almost certainly is, but then a good many people manage it or something close to it, at the very least they try. Had Christopher also tried? It was possible, or at least it wasn’t impossible—but it was no longer the time to make those arguments. That had passed.
Isabella did not, in any event, look as though she felt particularly guilty, her contrition was neither a sincere nor a lasting emotion. The waiter brought our breakfast—a large tray covered in toast and orange juice and poached eggs and bacon for Isabella, who ate with startling appetite. I thought her distress might have overcome her appetite but like so many English people she had an excellent and unflagging constitution.
I sat opposite her as she consumed what would be considered a large meal under any circumstances and a positively enormous one given the present situation, her strong teeth crunching through the toast, bacon and eggs. She wiped delicately—the pretense of delicacy after such a display of appetite was absurd, but it was in character, both the pretense and the delicacy—at her lips and then lowered her napkin to the table.
How quickly do you think they will make an arrest?
I was startled by the question. She had not hitherto brought up the criminal investigation, or even the fact that her son had not simply died but been killed, in fact murdered, and there was a hard brightness to her voice that made her seem even more brittle. Usually people have only one unspeakable fact to contend with in these situations, namely the fact of death, but in this case there was the added unspeakable: the violent nature of this death, this killing, this murder.
I don’t know.
What did they say at the police station about the investigation?
I realized then that I had neglected to ask the police chief about the investigation, not even a single question. It was inexplicable, a telling omission, for which I could not account, certainly not to Isabella. How quickly do you think they will make an arrest? I thought again of Stefano, who had reason to hate Christopher and who had driven him, a couple times by his own account. Isabella would be seeking not only justice but vengeance, it is always the mothers who are the most bloodthirsty, and Isabella would expect me, Christopher’s wife, to desire the same.
They weren’t able to tell me very much, I said. The investigation is ongoing.
I understand that. But they must have suspects.
No doubt.
But nothing they could share with you.
I was there to identify the body.
She drew a sharp breath and leaned back into her chair, I reached a hand out to steady her. Her arm was more fragile than I expected, Isabella wore dramatic and voluminous sleeves, you never saw the limbs themselves, only the beautiful sleeves. It took me by surprise, I could have snapped her elbow between my fingers. After a moment, she reached her hand up and gripped mine.