Before Newport Cove
DISBELIEF HAD FILLED HARRY’S eyes. He hadn’t even realized Tessa had left the house, or that the woman now standing before him was no longer the same person who had cut up carrots and boiled noodles for his dinner.
“Here,” she’d said, handing him the photograph of Addison. She shuddered as she passed it to her husband; the glossy paper was imbued with evil.
“Where did you get this?” Harry had asked. So she told him the story again. It had just tumbled out of her, without inflection or emotion, like she was reciting a list of things for him to pick up at the grocery store. But then her hands started to shake. They fluttered wildly, like trapped birds that had been attached to her wrists and were desperate to be freed.
“I’m going to be sick,” she’d said. She bent over the trash can and retched.
Her physical state, more than her words, seemed to convince Harry. He leaped up from his chair and ran outside. Tessa had followed him as he circled her car, checking the rear bumper. “There isn’t even a scratch,” he’d said.
So maybe it hadn’t happened after all. Had it only been a dream? The car blurred as Tessa’s vision swam and she reached out an arm to steady herself against the vehicle. But the photograph! Harry was still holding it. Tessa stared at that rectangle with the jagged edge, wondering if she was losing her mind.
Harry bent down and looked under her Toyota. He pulled out his iPhone and aimed it at a certain spot, apparently using the screen’s light for a better look. Just as she had done earlier in Danny’s basement. When his face came into view again, something had changed in his eyes.
“What is it?” Tessa had whispered. Was Danny still— No, no, her mind recoiled at the thought. Besides, she’d seen him lying in the driveway, motionless.
“I need to think,” he’d said. He circled the car, his face intent. Tessa watched him pace, feeling oddly numb, her mind’s bandwidth taken up by the work it required to keep track of Harry’s movements. Shock. She knew she was in shock.
“Take a shower and seal your clothes into a plastic bag, even the shoes you were wearing,” Harry had told her. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Where are you going?” Tessa had asked, but Harry merely went inside, came back out with his keys, and moved her Toyota into the garage. She was still standing there when Harry pulled out in his Honda, the one they rarely used because the Toyota was roomier.
Harry pulled up alongside her and rolled down the window. “Tessa,” he’d said urgently. “The shower, now. Go!”
Tessa had nodded.
“Don’t answer the phone. Don’t answer the door. Just wait until I get back.”
Shower. Plastic bag. Tessa’s mind had latched on to those words as if they were life preservers. She’d think only of the tasks ahead, and block everything else out. She turned and walked into the house and headed for the shower as Harry pulled onto the street, heading in the direction of Danny Briggs’s house.