The day after the phone message from the detective, I drive the forty miles to Oldham Town and sit outside my brother’s estate. I keep my car idling and watch the morbid tourists who have come here on Henry’s homecoming day—a few students, a townie or two dressed in rumpled orange slickers, passersby who stare at the windows for any sign of the man. Since he was cleared, Henry hasn’t said anything new about the lost week or the man in the cabin, nor will he; I know this as well as I know my own face in the mirror. He will tease them, play with them, punish them for their suspicion of him after Laura’s death. And in the end he will reveal something, something only he knows, and the puzzle will fall wickedly into place.
I’ve seen it all before.
It’s raining, one of those cold, bending squalls that central New York is famous for. My windshield is fogged, and I smear a space away with my palm and stare into the distance, where a photographer stands beside a tree, camera slung around his neck, screwing a kerchief across the lenses of his eyeglasses. Just up the street from me is a long dark sedan, two cops inside craning their necks to see if anyone suspicious is watching from a safe distance. Anyone like me.
I have my notebook with me, as I always do, and I sit in the cramped front seat making notes. I’ve been working on the New Book for months now, and it still isn’t clear to me. Just fragments, disparate shards, meaningless pieces of a narrative that has thus far escaped me.
To write is like a hit of morphine, and a relaxing feeling settles over me as soon as I hear the pen’s nibble against the paper. I write, Are you a good person, Jonathan Malcolm?
I think about that, turn it over in my mind, finally responding, my hand shaking a little, I am a good person most of the time.
Is your twin brother a good person?
I look out the windshield again. The onlookers are leaving, ducking into the scrub behind the garden Laura once kept, which is now choked with black snaking weeds.
No, I write, my hand quavering more, the ink smearing on the soft padding of my palm. Henry Malcolm is not a good person.
Why do you say that?
His moods.
What do you mean, “his moods”?
I mean
Something catches my attention, and I look up. There is someone at a second-floor window. A man, fuzzy at first and then coming into focus between the slats of rain—Henry. My twin. My heart quickens, my palms begin to sweat, to shake. I watch him, and from this distance it appears that he turns his head toward me. Looks right at me. Impossible. My car is parked too far away for him to see. And yet he appears to be looking in my direction, waiting for me to make up my mind, to explain why I’ve come to spy on him this morning.
Something moves at my lap, and I look down. I have written: What happened to her? What happened to Laura?
But when I look back up, search that window for some kind of an answer, Henry has vanished.