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We sit in silence for a moment. “You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Good. It’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”
“I don’t know what that means, Anna.”
“I know. Just trust me, okay? Everything will be fine.”
Thirty
Luis arrives back home and he stands in the kitchen, his shoulders bowed, his features distorted with sadness. I take him in my arms. I hold him, stroke his hair, and we stand there a while until he disengages himself and sits down heavily at the table. I sit opposite him and take his hand.
I tell him about Detective Jones’s visit. We swap notes. Both our interviews—if that’s what they were—were strikingly similar. When did you last see her? What was her state of mind? Did she seem upset? Preoccupied? Depressed? Was she afraid?
I drop his hand. “Did they ask that? If she was afraid?”
He nods, runs his fingertip over a spot on the table.
“They didn’t ask me that. As far as I could tell, her fall was an accident. What did you say?”
He shrugs. “That she was great.”
Great.
“Did she seem strange to you when you walked her back to her car?” I ask. I can’t help it. It’s because he said she wasgreat.
He flinches, but there’s tension in his jaw. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, I’m just asking.”
He doesn’t reply. He scratches at the same spot but with more vigor now.
“Talk to me, Luis.”
He remains silent and doesn’t meet my eye. Then he gets up, grabs a knife from the cutlery drawer and returns to his chair. He uses the knife to scrape off something at the same spot.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a bit of wax or something. Or some gum. I’m removing it.”
He’s like a man obsessed. I put my hand on his. “Stop.”
He raises his head and looks at me, and his features crumple with misery. I squeeze his hand. I check the clock behind me. “Pull yourself together, Luis. The kids will be home any minute.” Just as I say that, Matti and Carla bounce through the front door into the kitchen. They leave traces of slush from their shoes on the clean floor and I don’t care. I hug them tight, together and in turn. They complain, of course: “Mom! You’re crushing me!”
“I don’t care,” I tell them. I just want to hug them forever. Luis just sits there scratching at the spot on the table but they don’t seem to notice. I cut up some fruit for them, ask them about their day. For once I’m grateful for their trite responses.Good. Fine. Okay.
Matti grabs a chocolate milkshake from the fridge and drinks straight from the carton. Carla goes upstairs to do some coding for her school project. Matti takes his milkshake into the living room, mumbling something about playing with his Xbox. Normally that would be out of bounds at this time of the day—or so I hope, I’m not usually here now—but not this time. I am so overwhelmed with love for them that it makes my eyes swim. I will never stop striving to keep my family together. It’s what courses through my veins, this craving to be everything that my mother wasn’t, to keep my children safe, and happy. My kids will never grow up thinking they’re unloved, or unwanted, or not enough for either of their parents. Anything I do to achieve that goal is, as far as I’m concerned, fair game.
My reverie is broken by the sudden sonorous tones of a news bulletin:Homicide detectives are investigating after a woman was found dead in her home—
Luis and I stare at each other, then rush to the living room. For a moment I’m confused, but it’s only that Mateo has set up his Xbox game on the TV set. I snatch up the remote.
“Hey!”
“It’s just for a second, Matti.” I switch channels until I find it.
—this morning. The woman was found just after 9:30 a.m. by a cleaner.
