I sat by the window most of the night keeping watch with my candle, frightened by the images of Mary Rae in the back of the portfolio. Had William hidden them when she went missing to avoid being implicated? I kept trying his cell, and at first the calls went to voice mail, but the thought of leaving an apology, my recorded voice saying those words, irked me. Eventually, the calls stopped going through at all, and I guessed the cell was dead. I had no idea where he might go in the middle of the night—if he had colleagues he socialized with, if he might find a business open. He’d invited people to a party he’d given the night I first met him; he had to know someone in town.
Yet, the only people I’d seen him with were in Milton. He must have stayed in his office. Surely he wasn’t out in the night, just walking in the snow. I fell asleep in the duck-carved chair and dreamed of William’s body covered in ice like the homeless people you saw occasionally on television, like the vision I’d had of Mary Rae in the Silver Streak. I wasn’t sure whether I was keeping watch out of fury or fear. I couldn’t assess my feelings for him. I was holding my watch for Mary Rae—determined to find out the truth.
I was awakened by a scream—one I quickly identified as Del’s. It came up the stairwell, and Geoff threw open his door. The power was still out, but weak daylight came in through the window and I could see my breath. I rushed to the door. Del was down in the foyer crying over and over, “Oh my God!”
Geoff stood with Suzie at the top of the stairs. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said.
He looked toward my door, where a trail of blood began, and then down the stairs, where it continued—large, vivid smears on every step. Del rushed up the stairs, avoiding the stains. “I thought something terrible had happened to you,” she said.
“Call the crime scene detectives,” Geoff said. He was half asleep, his hair sticking up at the top of his head.
The blood, in the daylight through the transom, was terrible. I found the trail of it in my apartment, all of it smeared over by my own footprints the night before. I’d tracked some into Del’s apartment, too. Blood covered the bottoms of my feet.
“William cut his foot,” I said. “I’ll clean it up.”
“Well, is he OK?” Del said, wiping her eyes with her shaking hand.
“He’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her what had happened. I went into my apartment. I got a bowl and filled it with water and dish soap. Del stood in the doorway as if afraid to come inside.
“Where is he?” she said.
I carried the bowl out to the landing and began to wipe up the blood. Geoff went back into his apartment and I could sense Suzie behind the shut door, sniffing at the crack. My head felt heavy—I had barely slept.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Del didn’t make a move to leave. I rinsed the blood from the cloth, my hand cold in the water.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
I sat back on my heels. “I mean I have no idea where he went. He left.”
“He couldn’t have taken his motorcycle,” she said.
“Yes, we’re snowed in. No, he couldn’t have taken his motorcycle.”
She had her arms folded tight across her chest. “So he just left? Did anyone pick him up?”
“Why do you care?” I said. I threw the cloth into the bowl and I stood. “Why do you care what happened to my husband?”
She bit her lip and looked away from me. “That sounds funny,” she said, softly.
“I know,” I said. I was so tired I began to laugh, and then Del was laughing. It was, suddenly, the strangest of things to have married him.
“It does look like a crime scene,” Del said.
“Whatever,” I said. “It’s not.”
She shrank back from my glare and slipped down the stairs to her apartment.
“Don’t forget to lock up,” she said before she closed the door.
Del had become vigilant about locking doors. Each night she moved about the house, checking them all. She’d climb the stairs and I’d see my own knob turn.
“Go to bed,” I’d say.
It was almost like when we were young, but then we shared a room, and I couldn’t put a door between us. Her sleeplessness had always made me anxious. It seemed wrong, somehow, to remain awake while others slept. Sleeping was a rule you couldn’t break—like refusing food or water. Yet Del slept very little during the night. And I was now experiencing the same wakefulness.
I went back to cleaning. I had to change the soapy water in the bowl, and by the time I reached the bottom step I felt drained. William still hadn’t returned. I climbed the polished stair treads to my apartment, and inside I discovered the television on, its screen flickering a jumbled static; the stove burner brightening under the teakettle; the lamp’s yellow circle illuminating William’s papers and notes spread out on the table. The power had come back on.