Evil at Heart (17 page)

           
Archie had showered and put on clean clothes and brushed his teeth after dinner. They ate at five o’clock, like old people. Now he was drinking coffee out of a mug that had a cartoon of letters spelling MONDAY laid out on a psychiatrist’s couch. In a voice balloon, Monday is saying, “Everybody hates me.”

           
Archie took a sip out of the mug and glanced up at the clock. Six-thirty. Debbie was always on time. He watched the clock’s hands meet at the bottom of the clock, then looked over at the door to the break room. Debbie stood there, leaning against the doorjamb, smiling at him. Her summer tan, acquired from gardening, had faded. No garden at her secure Vancouver apartment. Still, she was more beautiful than ever. Short dark hair, a black sundress, bare arms crossed, silver bracelets on her wrists. She looked younger, almost happy.

           
Ben and Sara burst in on either side of her and ran to Archie. As time passed, they looked more and more like her. Her freckles.Her fine, straight hair.Her long limbs. It made Archie glad to see so little of himself in them, as if they might be spared some essential suffering. He hugged them both, inhaling the sweet smell of shampoo in their dark hair, holding them each a second longer than they wanted.

           
They were changing schools in the fall. But even if Debbie hadn’t moved, she’d never have allowed them to go back to their old elementary school. Not after what had happened there. It was the first place Gretchen had gone after her escape.

           
“Give your dad and me a minute,” Debbie said. The kids looked back at her, and Archie nodded and kissed them both again on the tops of their heads and watched as they went and sat on the couch in front of the television.

           
Sara pried her sneakers off and pulled her legs up under her on the couch and sat down next to Frank. It was after dinner and everyone except Frank and Archie was outside smoking. Free period.

           
Emergency Vets was still on. It must have been a marathon.

           
“Is this the one where the cat dies?” Sara asked Frank.

           
“Ferret episode,” Frank said.

           
“Good,” Sara said.

           
Debbie waited a moment, until the kids were absorbed in the show, and then walked over to where Archie was sitting. “What’s going on?” she asked him. Her arms were still crossed. He could smell her. The same shampoo as the kids, but other scents mixed in—a musky lotion, and a perfume he didn’t recognize.

           
They’d fallen in love in college, nearly twenty years ago. He still had a hard time imagining his life without her. But he was careful that she didn’t see it. He didn’t want to make things harder than they already were.

           
“What?” he said, thinking of the phone in his pocket.

           
“She’s back,” Debbie said.

           
“She’s a serial killer,” Archie said. “It was just a matter of time before it started again.”

           
“I thought she’d run,” Debbie said. “That she was far away.” She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “On an ice raft somewhere.”

           
“I guess she got bored killing Inuit,” Archie said.

           
The door to the balcony opened and two women came in and sat down at a table near the TV. One of the women had been in the hallway during Courtenay’s breakdown.

           
“When will this end?” Debbie said, closing her eyes.

           
“When she’s dead,” Archie said simply.

           
Debbie opened her eyes and looked at him. Then she turned and looked at the kids. The vets on TV were operating on a ferret who’d swallowed a Matchbox police car. Ben and Sara and Frank were sitting side by side, riveted.

           
“I’ll fix this,” Archie said quietly. “No matter what it takes.”

           
Debbie slowly turned back to Archie. “How will you fix it?” she said. “You’re in a mental hospital.”

           
“I like to think of it more as a ‘booby hatch,’ ” Archie said.

           
“I’ve got media camped outside my house,” Debbie said. She sat down, across from him at the table, where Henry had been earlier that morning. “That Charlene Wood person from Channel Eight showed up and started broadcasting live from in front of our building,” she said. She glanced back over at the kids and lowered her voice. “Like a pregame show. Like Gretchen’s going to show up there at the top of the hour.”

           
“She won’t bother you this time,” Archie said.

           
Debbie flinched and then she set her jaw and her eyes narrowed. “I forgot how well you know her,” she said. Know her. The words sat, ugly, between them. He deserved it. He deserved any vitriol she wished to dish out. His betrayal of their vows had been epic.

           
Debbie shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.

           
“I’m the adulterer,” Archie said. He was lucky, he knew, that she let him see the children at all. “What I meant to say,” he said, “is that I know how she thinks.”

           
“Then go back to work,” Debbie said. “She’s been on the loose for two months. They can’t catch her without you. Apparently.”

           
A staffer walked in. He didn’t look at Archie. He didn’t look at anyone. He walked over to the fridge, got a box of takeout from it, and sat down two tables away. Archie recognized him—the counselor Courtenay had stabbed.

           
“Are you even listening to me?” Debbie asked.

           
Behind her, another staffer walked through the door, pushing a mop. It was the orderly. George. Debbie turned around to see what Archie was looking at. “What?” she said.

           
Archie felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and there was that feeling again, that he was being watched. He glanced around the room. Minutes ago, they had been alone. He tried to think back to other visits, and realized that this always happened when the kids were around—people loitering just in earshot. He was so stupid. If Gretchen were keeping an eye on him, she wouldn’t just have someone in the hospital—she’d have someone in the ward.

           
Debbie brushed a piece of hair behind his ear and withdrew her hand. “You need a haircut,” she said.

           
Archie gave her a distracted smile. “I’m growing a ponytail,” he said.

           
“If you do,” she said, “I’ll kill you myself.”

           
“That would only be justifiable homicide if we were still married,” Archie said.

           
Debbie stood up. “I’m prepared to do time,” she said.

           
He watched her as she walked over to the kids and kissed them both and said good-bye. He searched the faces in the room for a reaction, some hint of too much interest.

           
He could use this. He could use his children as bait—see who found an excuse to get too close, to stay too long in the break room.

           
Debbie had walked to the door and stood there looking back at Archie. The black sundress was thin and he could see the shadow of her thigh through the cloth.

           
She listened for a moment and bent an ear down the hall toward Courtenay’s room. “Is that . . . ?” she asked.

           
“ ‘High Hopes,’ ” Archie said.

           
“They’ve got you guys on some good medication,” Debbie said.

           
Sara squealed. On Emergency Vets, something was going wrong on the operating table for the ferret.

           
Frank took Sara’s hand.

           
“Wait,” Archie said to Debbie.

           
He walked to her, took her by the arm and put his face next to hers, as if to kiss her on the cheek. Instead he put his lips against her ear. “Don’t leave the kids,” he whispered.

           
She winced.

           
Archie pulled his head back, his expression neutral, his hand still on her arm.

           
Debbie looked at him, eyebrows lifted. Then, slowly, she glanced around at the other people in the room.