“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.” She set her coffee down on the kitchen table and, her posture rigid, left without another word.
I heard the front door slam her departure, the rumble of the VW’s exhaust as she backed out of the drive. I stood motionless as granite while minutes ticked off and the mug grew cold on the table, but she did not return. I must have stood there like that for half an hour. Staring into the emptiness. Then a fury of motion took me. As I tore through the rooms as if possessed, I remembered what Sophie had once said about an acquaintance, a woman who never seemed to stand still. Can’t hit a moving target, she’d said. That best described me as, in spite of the searing headache, I began a frenzy of cleaning, as if setting the house straight would be the start of getting everything in order. I started in the kitchen, working as if to eliminate the criminal evidence. In the living room, cleaning as an act of atonement. I dumped the accumulated trash into a plastic bag, dusting, hauling out the Hoover. As I pushed the wand of the vacuum cleaner beneath the skirt of the sofa, it struck something. A shoe, I thought. I knelt, the motion causing a momentary wave of nausea, and reached under the sofa, knew instantly a shock as I felt the cold contour even before I withdrew the pistol. Or revolver. I didn’t know the difference. I cast a swift glance toward the hall, afraid Sophie might have returned, but of course she hadn’t. I had absolutely no memory of retrieving the weapon from the studio where I’d hidden it, but obviously at some point in the past days that was exactly what had happened. A thought chilled me. What if instead of under the sofa I had left it out on the table or on the sofa cushion? What if Sophie had seen it? I stared at the gun in my hand, knew it was no longer safe to keep it in the house. But where? The car was a possibility, stashed in the trunk. Or the glove compartment. I remembered I didn’t have a—what was it called?—a license to carry. Hell, I didn’t even have a license for a weapon, never mind driving it all around town. I tried to think. I abandoned the vacuum there in the middle of the floor and went upstairs. I needed to get sober and devise a plan. I carried the gun into the bathroom with me, shoved it in a vanity drawer, and turned on the shower, adjusting the water until it was as hot as I could stand, and gradually, as it streamed over me, washing away my sour stench, a plan formed. I dressed, then retrieved the pistol and headed out, intending to drive to our bank and open a safety-deposit box where I could stash the gun, but before I had even turned on the engine, it hit me that the entire purpose for the gun was to have it on hand. I sat behind the wheel, and my gaze fell on the backyard shed. Sophie never went there. It was dark inside, and I paused to allow my eyes to focus, then settled on a row of paint cans, three of which were empty, waiting to be recycled. I pried open the lid on one that had held the stain I used for the front steps, wrapped the gun in one rag, the ammunition in another, and dropped both in the can, reassured that now the weapon would be safe from Sophie but available for when I needed it. Available when I finally learned who had killed our Lucy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Illustrated Book of the Saints was still on the side table in the living room.
In the past days, Father Gervase had not returned for the book, nor had Sophie dropped it off at the rectory as I had asked. Again, as I had been the first time I had glanced at it, I was put off by the gaudy sentimentality of the cover art, the blatant piety. The book was thicker than I would have thought necessary. I had no idea how many saints there were but estimated they must number no more than one or two hundred. But then my knowledge of this realm could fit in a thimble with space left for my thumb, just bits and pieces I had gleaned from Sophie over the years: they had suffered for their faith, lived holy lives, many had been martyred and rewarded by sainthood. I thought of the childlike sentimentality it must take to believe in the supernatural power of these beatified to comfort or console, to intercede or heal. And yet people did believe.