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The year that they met, they spent the last few days of summer together at a new teacher orientation, Nina running it, Lily attending. I remember how, when Lily would come home at night, all she could talk about was Nina. How nice she was, how funny and easy to talk to. Lily’s first year of teaching was rough. She went into it with the best intentions. By the end of the first day, she’d discovered that learning to be a teacher and being a teacher were two very different things. It was harder than she expected. Burnout was very real that first year. Lily would cry when she came home and more than once, said she wanted to quit. Teenagers are jerks. They’re little assholes. No matter how many times I told her that, it didn’t make a difference. I didn’t have to deal with them every day. They didn’t listen to her. The girls, especially, were mean. She would overhear them, whispering about her and making fun of catty things like her clothes. Somehow Lily persevered. She and Nina commiserated with each other about how hard it was and the asshole kids they had in common. It helped. Nina got her through it. Lily grew stronger, more tenacious. She made the kids respect her somehow. By her second year of teaching, Lily was a pro.
When all this is said and done, Lily and Nina’s friendship will be over. It makes me sad for Lily, for how much she will lose before this is through. But you can’t have a relationship built on secrets and lies.
“Do you know if they have a home security system?” I ask Lily before she leaves. I’ve been up for hours. I got up early to catch up on work from the week. I took one day off and left early another and, even when I’ve been physically there, I haven’t been mentally present. I sat at the kitchen table preparing for a meeting with a focus group on Monday, and then, when Lily woke up, I went back up to the bathroom to shower.
Lily has plans to meet Nina for breakfast at ten. I’ll leave after she does. I’ll drive to Jake and Nina’s house, and then wait a couple blocks from it, until she texts to let me know that Nina has made it to the restaurant to go in. It’s foolproof.
“No, they don’t, or they didn’t last summer when I watched the cat.”
“What about a video doorbell?”
Lily shakes her head. “I don’t know. I went in through the garage. I never used the front door.”
“Okay.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure it out. It will be fine.”
“Please, Christian, just don’t get caught,” she says. Moving Jake’s car feels like the finish line at the end of a marathon, if we can just get there. Once his car is far away from Langley Woods, no one will know he was ever there. No one will know he and Lily ever ran into each other that day. For all intents and purposes, Lily was there, but Jake was not.
“I won’t,” I promise her. The stakes are high. This isn’t some high school prank. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous as hell, but the last thing I’m going to do is tell Lily that. Lily is nervous. She’s so worried that she’ll slip up at breakfast and say something she’s not supposed to say. She’s been trying to avoid Nina as best as she can this week. Now she has to talk to her, without interruptions. She’s worried Nina will see right through her and that, even if she doesn’t verbally slip up, that her eyes, her body language will somehow betray her. It took longer than normal for her to pick out something to wear. She was indecisive, doubtful, as if there might be some hidden message, some unspoken truth, a confession in a pair of jeans.
“Deep breaths,” I say to her now, forcing her eyes on mine. We breathe together. In and out. I make her hold her inhales. It helps the oxygen settle in the lungs. We do it three times, and I watch as Lily visibly calms before me. “Just be you. If you start to panic, excuse yourself. Go to the bathroom and breathe.”
Lily nods. She hasn’t talked much about the nausea or the fatigue this week. I guess it’s hard to distinguish between pregnancy nausea and what it must feel like knowing you’ve killed a man. Lily has nightmares. She doesn’t say it. But she makes sounds in the middle of the night, like she’s running, gasping for air, trying to get away. Sometimes she cries, and I think that’s for what she’s done. Lily would never intentionally hurt anyone or anything. I, myself, have been having heartburn. It feels like there’s acid pooling in my abdomen and chest, weakening the abdominal wall, forming a hole. Lily and I are running on adrenaline, but it’s running low.
I can’t wait for this to all be through.
For a long time before we go our separate ways, we hold on to each other.
I take the bag of Lily’s bloody clothes with me when I go, the ones I pulled from the laundry that first night after she told me what happened. For the last few days the bag has hung on the garage doorknob, in full view.
Lily first noticed the bag hanging there last night. “What’s this?” she asked. I said nothing back, though in retrospect I should have just said it was garbage and been done with it, because then Lily wouldn’t have had to look for herself what it was.
Lily asked, “Christian?” when I said nothing, because I couldn’t think of a lie fast enough. My silence roused her curiosity.
“Lily, don’t,” I said as she took the bag from the garage doorknob, untied the handles and looked inside, to see for herself what it was, because I still hadn’t told her. Lily’s face turned white and her body recoiled.
“What is this?” she asked at first, and then, taking the items out of the bag, recognizing her own clothes, “Is this—”
I could almost see the passage of bile going from her stomach back up through her throat. It wasn’t necessarily the sight of blood that did it, but the knowledge of where the blood came from.
She went to the sink for water. As she did, I reached to take the bag from her and she let me, glad, I think, to be free of it.
“You don’t need to see that,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to see that.”
I looked in the bag myself, to see what she saw. Blood gets darker over time, turning it more brown and less red. Still, there was no denying that what was in the bag, all over Lily’s clothes, was blood.
Jake and Nina Hayes live in an upscale neighborhood that’s all custom homes, each house trying not be outdone by someone else. They must be something like four or five thousand square feet, with brick and stone exteriors, turrets, cathedral doors, things like that, which make me think of castles. It’s the kind of place that also makes me wonder how, exactly, people can be this rich. It’s envious, but it makes me think about people in developing countries dying from things like starvation. The discrepancy is shocking, and I think if the Hayeses or their neighbors gave more instead of keeping it all to themselves, this world might be a better place. The only thing that I find surprising is how small their lots are. If I had the kind of money that Jake and Nina have, I’d want privacy and land.
The weather today is advantageous. It’s a windy, gray day. It’s not raining, not yet, but there is a threat of rain, which keeps everyone inside.
I park a few houses down from Jake and Nina’s house. I wait a second, and then I get out of the car and walk back, along the sidewalk. It’s late September. The days are getting cooler but the trees are mostly still green, only a meager few leaves starting to turn. Over the next few weeks, the rest will change colors and fall.
I wear a baseball cap. I pull it down low. I walk confidently, with my hands in my pockets, as if I have as much right as anyone to be here.
When I get to the Hayes’s long driveway, I go straight to the front door. I don’t hesitate. I’ve been thinking about the very real possibility of a video doorbell and need to know what I’m up against. When I get to the door, I make like I’m going to press the doorbell but I don’t press anything. For a second, I stand on the stoop, accessing the button. Ring, Nest and the rest—they all look the exact same, part doorbell, part camera. The cameras are meant to be visible, not hidden. The intent is to deter people from vandalizing property or breaking in, rather than to catch them in the act. If the Hayeses have a video doorbell, I need to know. I have a story in my back pocket for if I get caught on camera now, ringing the doorbell, one I made up about how I misunderstood and thought Lily was here. I’d come looking for my wife, because I needed her for some reason. Family emergency. She wasn’t answering her phone. I didn’t have all the details worked out, but I could make them up on the fly if I needed to.
