The Last September: A Novel

Deirdre’s brows knit together. She picked up the gift certificate, a pale mauve piece of cardboard wrapped in a beige piece of twine. “That’s so nice,” she said, not able to look me in the eye, just melting and breaking in front of me. She raised the gift certificate to her brow, as if shielding herself from too-bright light, and didn’t start to cry until she’d turned around and headed toward the back of the restaurant, the kitchen.

Even looking back, I like her better in that moment than I ever had or would. It was a very human reaction. Someone she’d done a terrible wrong to was doing her a kindness. I saw that, even as I realized exactly what it meant. My gift broke through whatever rationalization she’d worked out for her relationship with Charlie and made her feel guilty enough to break down—though not guilty enough to keep from turning away from me and heading straight for my husband.

From where I stood, I could just see him, showing a sous-chef how he wanted something chopped. And as he raised his head, noting Deirdre coming toward him, his face rearranged itself into an apologetic kind of sympathy, not seeing the wife, standing back and watching—absorbing—it all.

And then he did see me. It wasn’t so obviously visible, the fear that crossed over his face. Deirdre probably didn’t register it, not knowing him—whatever she might think—the way I did. But the way he blinked and paused, that was Charlie, crestfallen, and it was the last shred of proof I needed.

WALKING AWAY FROM THE restaurant up Main Street, I couldn’t get out of the commercial district fast enough, the wide plate windows serving my reflection back to me—in my boxy wool coat and flyaway hair. Unlike my mother and me, my father had specialized in twentieth-century literature. He would have appreciated my thinking of Rosemary Hoyt the first time I saw Deirdre. And he was the one who chose my name. Hemingway had modeled Lady Brett Ashley on Mary Duff Stirling, a glamorous British socialite. Trying to make it home, I couldn’t have felt less like my namesake. Instead I felt like Hemingway’s wife must have, the first time she’d read the book, realizing the romantic lead had been based on Duff and not her.

At Maddie’s, Sarah lay asleep in her removable car seat. As I carried her down the hallway to our apartment, I could hear the phone ringing from inside. Sarah slept, a thin bubble on her lips, sparse blonde curls damp with sweat on her forehead. I waited till the ringing stopped before opening the door, then carefully lowered the carrier. Tab thumped off the couch and wound herself around my legs. I couldn’t bend to pet her. My hand found its way to my heart, fingers curving into my chest as if I could actually cup it, squeeze it, measure it. But the beating didn’t seem to be any faster than usual. Maybe it was a sign—that I hadn’t seen what I thought I had, that I was wrong, that it was all just some weirdness of Deirdre’s combined with some paranoia of mine.

Behind me, the door opened and in came Charlie, wearing an expression so similar to the one I’d seen—as Deirdre had walked toward him in the restaurant—that if I’d been holding something in my hands I would have thrown it at him. The door closed loudly behind him and Sarah woke, her infant’s wail filling the apartment almost before her eyes were open. I bent down to unbuckle her.

“Look,” Charlie said, his hands outstretched, his eyes unable to stop twinkling. Did I ever see Charlie without that light in his eyes, even when his mother was dying? No matter what was taking place, he always had that air, of being deeply amused by the world, even deeply moved by it. But never quite wholly, entirely, here.

Sometimes now I imagine him turning, with that expression, toward his killer. Whatever argument had arisen, Charlie would have been so certain he could soothe the other person—could elicit whatever response he wanted. Maybe he could. Maybe that’s why the killer needed to wait for him to turn his back, before bringing the hammer down.

I sat down on the couch and unbuttoned my shirt to nurse the baby. Charlie took a step closer to us.