Bill and Karen bombarded us with questions right away, and it took Amanda long minutes of reassuring with calming words before they settled down to listen. Since it looked to be a longer conversation, Karen decided we all needed to eat something, so she went to the kitchen and started to take food out of the refrigerator and the cabinets. While she did that, the rest of us watched more of the news coverage, which offered little in terms of new information about the death of Kyle Dornan. Except when the reporter on the scene announced that sources inside the police department were telling her they believed Kyle Dornan was responsible for Jennifer Bates’s death. Kyle had had a criminal record. He’d committed an assault while he was in college in another state. And he was currently wanted for another felony assault, something having to do with an altercation in a bar. I assumed it involved a jagged broken bottle and too much bourbon.
Police sources theorized he had resisted and taken a stand because of that outstanding charge. If he had gone into custody, he’d have faced the music. He had opted to go down swinging.
I checked my phone as much as I could, refreshing the Twitter feed in desperate hope of finding new information and growing agitated when none came. The fastest means of information spreading known to humanity, and it wasn’t fast enough for me.
Amanda gestured to me, telling me to put the phone away, as we all moved to the dining room table, and while we ate—sandwiches and chips and some kind of insanely gorgeous and fresh fruit salad Karen seemed to have conjured out of thin air—Amanda finished telling her parents about Kyle’s appearance at our house. She spared them no detail, and both of her parents gasped repeatedly and shook their heads, a combination of indignation at Kyle’s craziness and fear for their daughter’s and grandson’s safety.
I added my own encounter with Kyle at Blake and Samantha’s house. The way he had broken in, the bottle he had menaced me with, his rush to get out of the house and avoid the police. They showed less concern for me than they did for Amanda and Henry—only to be expected—but when I finished, Bill attempted to sum it all up nicely for the table.
“Well,” he said, still chewing, a dab of mayonnaise on his chin, “good riddance to him. And you should get that alarm system. Listen to what I’m telling you. Innocent people, families—they’re vulnerable. You know, I’ve been thinking of getting a handgun—”
“Dad, not the gun again. Okay? Not that.”
My own feelings about those events we’d learned of on the news ran a more complicated gamut. I tried hard to reconcile my relief that Kyle would not be able to come back and menace Amanda or Henry or anybody else with the horror at the violent death of another human being. I certainly would have preferred that Kyle had surrendered, had a trial, and faced whatever music he needed to face without dying, but it was all beyond my control.
Could his death possibly signal a return to some semblance of normalcy? Did it mean Amanda and Henry could return home and have nothing to worry about?
While we ate, the news continued to play. A different reporter came on camera and told us that police were compiling a case against Kyle, one that included forensic evidence from the scene as well as the statements of friends and family who thought Kyle was growing too possessive and controlling of Jennifer in recent weeks.
“What a creep,” Bill said. Mercifully, he’d swallowed his food first.
I exchanged a look with Amanda. I saw the relief in her eyes. She said to me what I was thinking.
“Maybe this takes the heat off Blake. Maybe he can come back from wherever he is.”
“I hope so.”
It was a measure of how crazy and upside down things had become that even Amanda summoned empathy for Blake, who had found himself a person of interest in Jennifer’s death. While I harbored my own anger toward him for so many things, not the least of which was involving me in Jennifer’s death by sending me into her house the night before, I shared that relief with Amanda. Some of the weight that had been pressing down on my shoulders had been lifted.
But I still had Dawn Steiner and her looming deadline to deal with.
One thing at a time . . .
“Just don’t let him hold Henry anymore,” Karen said. “You have to be careful with those things.”
“Excuse me,” I said, and stood up from the table.
As I left the room, I heard Amanda assuring both of her parents that Blake wouldn’t be holding Henry anytime soon.
“He’s getting married this weekend,” Amanda said. “And Sam’s a good influence. He might be ready to grow up. . . .”
As I walked to the front of the house, I started to recognize a shift in my perspective. Compared to Kyle Dornan, trying to break down the door of our house, Blake seemed like an okay guy. If the worst thing he ever did in Amanda’s eyes was bonk our baby’s head against a lampshade, then he seemed to be doing okay.
I went into the living room, which was small, overfurnished, and barely used. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever spent any real time in there. When Karen and Bill hosted parties—at Christmas, say, or for the Kentucky Derby—their guests usually just threw their coats on the couch in there.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure I was alone and then I called Blake. And I waited while the phone rang incessantly.
“Come on. Come on.”
I heard the voice mail greeting again. I tried one more time, and on the third ring, he answered.
“Finally,” I said.
“Hey. Sorry.”
“Where have you been? What’s going on?”
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“I can imagine. But I’d like to know what you’ve been doing. The cops have been looking for you. Sam is worried about you. And this guy, this Kyle Dornan guy—did you hear about him?”
“Yes, I did. I just heard it on the car radio.” He let out a relieved sigh. “Yeah, it’s pretty crazy, isn’t it? I mean really, really crazy.”
“Have you talked to Sam again?”
“I’m going to talk to her. Soon. You know, she’s dealing with a lot too.”
“She’s at the police station,” I said. “At least, she was the last I knew. The detective working the case wanted to bring her in and talk to her about everything that was going on. I guess mostly she wanted to ask her about you.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Sure. I’ll get ahold of her. The police really wanted to talk to her?”
“What do you expect? She’s the person closest to you.”
“Right.”
“I’ll let you go if you want to get on that,” I said. “She’s probably worried. And scared.”
I chose not to tell him about Kyle trying to break into our houses. There wasn’t enough time to explain it all, and I wanted to let him talk to Sam. She could explain it to him. And if he needed to know more, we could talk about it at another time, when things were less frantic and rushed.
“Okay, I’m going to let you go call her.”
“Wait,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s something else I need you to do,” he said, his voice level. “Something only you can do for me.”
“Blake, what the hell else could you want? I went into that house. I risked everything.”
“This is an easy request, okay? Just meet me at your house.”