“Well,” Donnie said, clearly wanting to move the conversation to less spongy ground, “Annalee told me how much she liked meeting you last year.”
I wasn’t sure what I found more curious: the idea that Lindsay had never told me that he had once been a hypnotist or that my mother had told Donnie Hempstead she had met Rowland the Rogue one day in Somerville. The more I learned about people, including my late mother, the more they surprised me.
I was unexpectedly nervous when I was finally able to speak with Gavin in my home. Despite the crowd on the first floor of our house, I always felt that my father or Paige or even Marilyn Bryce was watching me when I chatted with the detective. I understood this was paranoia; there wasn’t a soul in our living room or kitchen or den who knew I had said a single word to the detective since the day my mother had disappeared. (Even now, I still view August 25 as the day my mother disappeared, rather than the day she died. But, of course, it was both.) He was sipping coffee from a mug with a silhouette of William Shakespeare that I had put in my father’s Christmas stocking years ago and leaning against the walnut sideboard in the dining room when I asked him to tell me everything he could. I wanted to know what the police had learned since redoubling their efforts, and whether he had noticed anyone at the funeral who might have murdered my mother. Did I sound to him the way my sister had sounded to me that morning? Na?ve and silly and rather childlike? Perhaps. But I asked anyway. The truth is, I had always viewed my younger sister as smarter than me.
“Here? Seriously?” he said, his tone a little incredulous.
“I didn’t just ask you to have sex with me on the dining room floor,” I told him.
“It’s not the time or the place to talk about the investigation. Are you around later today? We could go somewhere and talk then.”
“No. I’ll be here. I want to be with my family. My dad. My sister. My grandparents. You know, the whole crowd.”
“Good. That makes sense. What about tomorrow?”
“Sure. But at least tell me this: Did you see someone here who’s a suspect? A person of interest?”
He smiled at me. “Spoken like someone who’s seen one too many cop dramas.”
“I don’t watch cop dramas.”
“But you have a pop culture implant. You know the terms.”
“And?”
He sighed. “I promise you, there is no one here you should worry about.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
“So you have absolutely no new leads?”
He shook his head. “But we’ll talk more tomorrow. Can I take you to dinner?”
“Okay. I’d like that.”
“Can I pick you up?”
“No.”
“Got it. I’m still a secret.”
“I honestly can’t tell: Are you offended or relieved?”
“Neither. You have your reasons for not telling your dad, I have my reasons for not telling my boss,” he answered. But then, in a gesture that felt oddly threatening, he took his coffee and went to the living room to say hello to my father. I scanned the room for Paige and saw her. She was with two of her friends from the ski team, and I could tell that she had been watching me from the corner of her eye.
SOME MEN DON’T mind when their lover has sexsomnia. They view it as a little something something—an unexpected sexual bonus. Others are threatened: they fear they aren’t sexually satisfying their partner if they wake up and the person beside them is masturbating or reaching for their penis in the night. And still other men? They’re merely annoyed that they’re being woken from a sound sleep at one or two in the morning.
It’s different for a woman whose man has sexsomnia. Occasionally, especially if they’re young, it’s a pleasant extra. Again, a bonus.
But most male sexsomniacs aren’t especially giving lovers. They’re not known for their gentleness or sensitivity. They get in and get out and then continue on their descent to serious REM sleep. Their partner’s pleasure? Irrelevant. (Certainly this is true for female sexsomniacs, too, but men—especially young men—rarely complain when sex is offered. Recall those students in Scotland.) Moreover, what if the woman once was sexually assaulted or raped, or was abused as a child? A sexsomniac, male or female, doesn’t take no for an answer. For those couples, therein lies the greatest sadness of all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A MEMORY CAME to me the night we buried my mother, unbidden and forlorn, as I was trying (and failing) to fall asleep.