“I lost my mind,” Apollo said. “I didn’t understand what Emma had done until I came out of surgery at the hospital. I was lying in my bed and watching it on the news. That’s how I found out.
“The apartment was still considered a crime scene, so I wasn’t allowed in. I stayed at my mother’s place after I was released. When I felt strong enough, I went directly to the Fort Washington branch of the New York Public Library, where my wife worked. It was a Thursday. They didn’t open until noon. I got there by eleven, when I knew the other librarians would be inside preparing for the day. As you probably also heard in the news, I had a shotgun with me.”
He had been forced to recite the events of that morning with his lawyer, a few times, and then in front of the judge and the prosecutor as well. He’d never stood before a jury, though he felt as if he was doing so now.
“I had her work keys, and I let myself in. I found two of the three librarians on the first floor. We had to wait for the third to come from using the bathroom.”
“Were they scared?” Alice asked.
“Of course they were,” Apollo said.
Now she looked down into her lap.
“I don’t think I was making much sense,” Apollo said. “It took awhile for me to speak clearly. To tell them why I was there. That early part of the day was when I shot the ceiling by mistake. Somebody outside heard it. Which was how the police got called. Then me and the three librarians went down into the basement. I took them down there. We spent the rest of the time locked in the reading room.”
One woman got out of her seat and left the circle. She practically sprinted from the basement.
“When I came out of the hospital, the big story was already about the hunt for Emma Valentine. The FBI and NYPD were on the case. They’d both come to me and asked for information that might help catch her. Maybe they’d already been to the library and spoken with all three of those women. But the women obviously hadn’t told them what they knew, what I thought they knew, about Emma. Who else would she have spoken to? Those librarians were her family. Her own parents were dead, and her husband and child meant nothing to her. I couldn’t get hold of her sister. So I showed up to ask my own questions. I was sure Emma had told them something that would help me track her down.”
“And had she?” the guy with the gray beard asked, leaning forward in his chair.
“No,” Apollo said. “They swore to it again and again, but it still took me six and a half hours to believe them. At the end I gave the shotgun to Carlotta. Ms. Price. I turned myself over to the police. All three women testified on my behalf. They refused to file any charges against me. That’s one reason I got out as quickly as I did. It was incredibly forgiving of them.”
The younger woman, who’d first spoken, said, “Do you think your wife is still alive?”
“I hope not.” He looked at her, then realized how he must sound. “I mean, the FBI and NYPD haven’t found her yet,” Apollo said. “So I don’t know.”
“But what were you planning to do anyway?” the young woman continued. “If the librarians had information. If you had found your wife.”
“She killed my son,” Apollo said. “If I’d found her, I would’ve killed her. Then myself.”
Apollo couldn’t think of what else there was to say, so he said nothing. The Survivors sat in silence.
“Okay,” Alice finally said. “Thank you all for coming. Time’s up.”
HE STAYED AT the Yorkville branch until they closed their doors at seven o’clock. He spent those remaining hours on the main floor, in a chair near the checkout desk with a magazine in his lap. It hadn’t been comfortable to tell the Survivors about what he’d done, but right after the group session he felt even worse. At least down in the basement he’d been among others like himself. The guy with the gray beard had been on his phone—texting—when he’d rolled into an intersection, and his car got smashed by a moving truck. His fiancée was dead before their car stopped spinning. But after all of you have shared, shouted, or cried, then what? Then it’s just Wednesday evening, and you’re back on your own. Six months of that? No fucking thanks. But if he didn’t go, he’d be on a bus back to Rikers, and there’d be no quick release date to secure. So he sat in that chair for hours trying to talk himself into tolerance, tenacity, and recovery. Finally he had to face it. He had to go to the apartment.
Still, as he reached his block, as he approached the building, as he entered the elevator, he kept expecting someone to leap out and stop him. No one did. He reached the front door of his apartment and hesitated. He slid the keys into their locks.
Apollo opened the front door.
Had he expected noise when he walked inside? Not really. But then why did he feel so surprised by the silence? Maybe because it had been so loud the last time he’d been in here. Three months ago. Only three months.
He entered the apartment and shut the door behind him. He stood in the darkness and slowed his breath. Even with the lights out, he could see the wooden floors were clean. Supple and almost wet looking.
He walked into the living room and stood in the silence. More space, more quiet, no life in here at all. But there was the couch, where it had always been, under the living room windows. The lamp in the corner, the low bookcase, the radiator. Even the radiator didn’t make any noise. It must’ve been shut off. The bedroom he’d once shared with Emma lay to the left, the kitchen to the right.
He went to the bedroom door and opened it, half expecting to find Emma there, a fugitive hiding in plain sight. But of course he found only their bed, the sheets made, the floor just as clearly swept and mopped. The curtains had been left open, and he looked down to the street below. He watched a man trying to park his car in a space that was obviously too small. When Apollo left the window, the man still hadn’t figured that out.
He entered the kitchen. When he looked at the floor, he saw the pellets of rat poison. When he looked at the counter, he saw the claw hammer. When he looked at the oven, he saw the kettle, the fire underneath it making the bottom glow, steam spraying from the spout. He saw it there, but he couldn’t hear it. It rattled on the stovetop, but there was no clatter. He brought his hand to the cloud of steam but felt no heat.
He backed away from the phantom teapot and shuffled his feet to avoid the pellets he thought were still on the floor. But when he moved to the kitchen table, when he looked down at the chair where he’d been chained, he saw no ghostly repetition of the scene. No chains. No blood. He pulled the chair from the corner. The hole in the floor had been repaired. He got down on his knees to check.
Lillian had done all this. Who else would have bothered?