Randa stared at the clock and wondered what to do. By seven, she knew it was too dark for Jack to be fixing gutters, so she’d decided he must be on his way home. By eight, she’d decided he was dead, hit by a truck while walking in the dark; he was lying flattened on the highway somewhere, human roadkill. She was about to go and look for his remains when she heard him open the door.
“Where have you been?” she asked, instantly sounding like a nagging wife. He closed the door and locked it.
“Jack?”
He was pale and shaking. She went to him and when she hugged him, she could smell alcohol. He held her so tightly she thought he was going to bruise a rib.
“Jack, what is it?”
“Something happened,” he said.
“What?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I blacked out again. I woke up in the woods. When I went back to Cathy’s, there was an ambulance—” He had tears in his eyes. “I think I hurt Cathy.”
“Are you sure the ambulance was at her place?”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe she got sick—”
“No. There were cops everywhere.”
He went and sat on the couch, put his head in his hands. “Oh, God. What if she’s dead?”
Randa tried not to panic. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe this was more of the same paranoia that had made him leave her at the Ritz-Carlton.
“Jack, do you know anyone who lives near Cathy?” He didn’t answer. “Jack?”
He looked up. “The old lady who lives next door.”
“Where’s your phone book?” Randa asked.
“Closet. But I can’t call—”
“I’ll call. I won’t mention you.” She found the book. “What’s her name?”
“Hardie. Mary, I think. Or Marie.”
Randa searched. “There’s a Martha Hardie on Chalk Level Road.”
“That’s it.”
The old woman answered the phone on the first ring. Randa identified herself as a neighbor from across the street and asked what all the commotion was about.
“What did you say your name was?” the old woman asked.
“Randa.”
“Amanda?”
“Yes.”
“And you live across the street?”
“Well, up the street a little. In the . . . brick house.”
“The one with the wagon wheel in the yard?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was Rufus Turner’s house.”
“No. He’s next door,” Randa said. Martha sounded too old to run across the street and find out Randa was lying. She looked at Jack and rolled her eyes at how long this was taking.
“Well, I hope you have your doors locked,” Martha said. “Because they haven’t caught whoever done it.”
“Yes, I was trying to find out—”
“And I’m here by myself,” Martha went on. “I called my son, but I guess he already left for work. His wife won’t answer the phone at night because she knows it might be me and she’s too stuck up to talk to me, ever since she started working for the school board. Jeanette Hardie. Do you know her? She used to be a Weatherford—”
“No, I don’t know her. But—”
“She thinks I’m tryin’ to move in with them, but I wouldn’t ask them for a biscuit if I was at death’s door starving—”
“Mrs. Hardie, I’m a friend of Cathy’s and I need to know—”
“Poor Cathy, I told her last week to be careful because we haven’t had nothing but problems since they built that apartment complex behind us, it’s just full of lowlifes and I knew it was just a matter of time before something like this happened.”
“Mrs. Hardie, is Cathy dead?”
Maybe the direct approach would work.
“Yes, she’s dead. I thought you knew that.”
Randa tried to keep it from registering on her face so Jack wouldn’t know until she could tell him. Martha was still going.
“I know it’s true because the policeman was Billy Thomas and I asked him and he said she’d been dead for a couple of hours when they found her. And I was sitting right here by myself, it could just as easily have been me . . .”
“Thank you. I have to go lock my doors now.” Randa hung up, looked at Jack. She’d rather die than tell him, but no one was going to offer her the option.
“Cathy’s dead?” he asked.
Randa nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Jack was quiet for a moment. Randa was about to go over and put her arms around him when he stood up. He walked to the door. He walked back to the sofa. He picked up a glass from the coffee table and hurled it against the wall.
“Goddammit!” he yelled.
“Jack, be quiet!” Randa grabbed his arm before he could throw anything else. “Jack! The last thing you need is the neighbors calling the cops.”
He jerked his arm away. He sat on the sofa again, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed.
Randa went to sit beside him. She hugged him. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t knock her away, either.
“Jack?” She shook his shoulder gently. “Jack?”
He didn’t answer. But then, she had no idea what she’d say if he did.
“It’s okay.” (It’s not okay.)
“Don’t take it so hard.” (He killed a woman. He should take it hard.) “You weren’t conscious, it isn’t your fault.” (So what? The fact that he wasn’t conscious doesn’t make Cathy any less dead.)
“Jack, you have to pull yourself together. We have to figure out what to do.”
“There’s nothing to do,” he said.
“If the cops come—”
“I’ll turn myself in.”
“No, you will not! You don’t even know if you did it.”
Jack put his face in his hands again.
“Oh, God . . . How can this be happening?” His tone was plaintive, as if she might have an answer.
“What is the last thing you remember? Were you—”
Randa was interrupted abruptly by the sound of pounding on the door. She gasped.
Jack pulled the curtain back, just enough to see out. “Cops,” he said.
“What do we do?” Randa asked.
“Let ’em in. What else are we gonna do?”
He reached to unlock the door. Randa took a deep breath and started to work on her lie.