âRight. She trusts me. I got the feeling she trusts you, now, too.â He arched his eyebrows at me.
âI wonât let her down,â I said. âI promised her Iâd do whatever I can.â
Five
I was in bed slogging through some whaling lore in my tattered copy of Moby-Dick , my customary bedtime reading, when the phone rang. I glanced at the clock. Eleven-thirty.
It had to be Evie. No one else would call me at that time of night, and besides, I hadnât talked to her all day. Evie and I talked every day when one of us was away.
I picked up the phone and said, âHi, babe.â
âHi, honey.â Evie had a low, throaty telephone voice that never failed to make me think about sex, no matter what words she happened to say. âAll tucked in?â
âMe and Melville, questing for the white whale.â
âBeware of white whales,â she said. âTheyâll take you down with them.â
âWhy donât you junk that conference and come home,â I said.
âIt was eighty-seven degrees at the pool today. Not a cloud to be seen. I got in almost an hour of bikini time. How was it there?â
âCruddy.â
âI rest my case, Counselor,â she said. âSo how was your day, aside from the weather?â
âCould have been a lot better, actually.â I told her about finding the girl under the snow, how I carried her inside, and how she was dead. âShe couldnât have been much older than fifteen, sixteen,â I said. âJust a child.â
Evie was silent for a long minute. Then she said, âI donât think I ever want to have children.â
âI understand,â I said. âYou never stop worrying about them.â I had two grown boys. Billy, the older, lived in Idaho. He guided fly fishermen in the summer and was on the ski patrol in the winter. He was hard to track down, and sometimes weeks passed between the times we talked. Joey, a couple of years younger, was studying to become a lawyer, of all things, at Stanford. He and I talked and e-mailed regularly. That was the difference between the two of them.
I loved them equally and boundlessly.
âThis girl,â I said. âShe had a scrap of paper with our address on it.â
Evie was silent for a moment. Then she said, âAs if she was looking for our house?â
âYes.â
âMeaning she was looking for you?â
âI guess so.â I hesitated. âOr you.â
âMe?â
âDo you know any sixteen-year-old girls?â
âI donât know,â she said. âI suppose so. I see lots of people at the hospital. Maybe if I saw her pictureâ¦â
âWhen you get home Iâll show it to you.â
âDid it have one of our names on it? That note she had, I mean?â
âNo,â I said. âJust our address.â
âMaybe she was looking for Walter or Ethan.â
Walter and Ethan Duffy had lived in our townhouse. Evie and I bought it from Ethan after Walter, his father, died a couple of years earlier. âGood point,â I said. âMaybe the girlâs one of Ethanâs friends. Though she looked quite a bit younger than him.â
âSomething to think about,â she said.
âYes,â I said. âBut Iâve got to admit, thinking about this whole thing is unpleasant. There are other things Iâd rather think about.â
âLike what?â said Evie softly. âDo you miss me or something?â
âOh, yeah.â
âMe, too,â she said.
âA bikini, huh?â
âThat little lime-green job,â she said. âWaitâll you see my tan.â
âItâs your tan lines that Iâm thinking about.â
âIâve got to admit,â she said, âtheyâre quite dramatic.â
Â
The next morning, Wednesday, when I woke up, sunlight was streaming in through my bedroom window and Henry was sitting in
Learning to Kill: Stories