More Bitter Than Death (31 page)

M
ONDAY MORNING
, I
WOKE UP AT HOME
,
IN MY
own bed, to a marvelous quiet. Brian had left for work hours ago, and I’d fallen right back to sleep after he left. There was no hum of traffic or the inner working of hotels, no feet padding along carpeting outside my door, no slam of doors down distant hallways, and no omnipresent throb of climate control and plumbing that isn’t mine. No rumble of cocktail parties that grows into a roar as one draws near, no restaurant racket, muted voices, or discreet clink of cutlery. I luxuriated in the silence, the lack of things demanding memory or attention or anything of me at all.

That lasted about five minutes. Minnie the cat hopped up and marched across my head several times until she was satisfied that I was awake and aware of her presence, whereupon she betook herself to the far side of the bed and began to wash. I listened to the tranquil repetition of rasping tongue on fur, but when she got to making a production of chewing on her hind claws, teasing off the old shells, I relinquished the bed to her. I got dressed and went downstairs, loving the fact that I would not have needed to get dressed if
I didn’t want, if it wasn’t for the fact that it was just below freezing outside. As the coffee dripped, I watched Quasimado licking his considerable belly—apparently it was bath time for all the Fielding-Chang felines—and he leaned back with a catty sort of sigh, his tongue still half stuck out. I didn’t blame him; it was an awful lot of cat he had to wash with that small tongue, and lounging like that, he resembled a beached killer whale. A furry killer whale, with a potbelly. He caught me looking at him sympathetically, and gave me a dirty look.

Tant pis,
cat, I thought.

Quasi hauled himself up, and strode off to continue his ablutions elsewhere. If he still wasn’t my best friend in the world, then at least, considering he now had to compete with Minnie—for my attention, body heat, or ability to disburse cat food—he was a lot mellower toward me.

I found a note by the coffeepot: Brian knew where to go to register on my radar. It said: “Babe, last night you were talking about how you loved me for all of the small things I did and knew and that Duncan might have been good at grand gestures but didn’t know what love really takes. I know what you meant, but I’m afraid the words ‘small’ and ‘little’ just didn’t sit right—guys don’t like those words, ever—not when you were making comparisons with a former boyfriend. I don’t care how long ago you broke up.”

Suddenly, my heart went icy. I continued to read, one hand clutching the countertop.

“So look at the other side of this paper, and let’s not ever have any talk of little/small ever again. I’m very glad you’re home. All love, Brian.”

I flipped the sheet over: The note had been written on the back of a computer printout. It was an online travel itinerary. Brian had booked us a trip to Hawaii.

In pencil was scrawled, “That BIG enough for you?” Below that, in smaller print: “We were talking of going to San
Diego to see my folks anyway. Don’t worry, I checked your summer calendar.”

A real vacation? Brian! I could exorcise every ghost haunting me, I thought, so long as I’m married to this man.

After a leisurely two cups of coffee, I went upstairs and flipped through my email. It was early, yet, to be getting any follow-up correspondence from the conference, and for a change, my mailbox was relatively empty, as almost everyone I knew had been in New Hampshire. I did, however, send an email to Brian, with “Message Received,” in the subject heading. The text of the message was just the URL for the bathing suit section at Eddie Bauer.

Enjoying lack of immediate demands, my glance fell on my Rolodex. I thought for a moment, then pulled it to me, and flipped through until I found the card I wanted. It had dirt creased into it from having ridden around in my pocket a couple of summers ago and it read: Stuart Feldman, Massachusetts State Police, Crime Scene Service Officer. Even if it wasn’t today, or next week, I knew I would call him eventually. Once upon a time, out at the Chandler site, he’d suggested I put my archaeological skills to official use, and offered to help me out. Now, I realized I would do it, though not today. I’d made the decision, I got through the conference, but the day after was always a holiday.

Back downstairs, I pulled on my boots and my parka and took my coffee mug with me to check the mailbox. Gravel crunched underfoot and I paused to remove a piece that got stuck in the tread of my boot. The snowbanks on either side were little glaciers, dirty and compact, dead grass and gravel entombed in icy piles at the side of the drive. The flag was up and it was with a knowing contentment that I hastened down the way to retrieve whatever happily ordinary deliveries there were.

Electric bill, oil bill, car payment. Catalogue for used historical books, catalogue for lingerie that was addressed to
me but always ended up in Brian’s pile—it was a discreet fiction that my name was on their mailing list. The usual stuff. But a blank postcard, the sort you buy at the post office, had slid all the way to the back, and my nails scrabbled against the cold galvanized zinc surface before I could raise an edge.

I glanced at it, assuming that it was something local as it was handprinted with my name and address and had no return address. Something was scribbled on the message side, but it was the postmark that caught my attention. It said Caldwell, Maine, which made me think of work and quite possibly recalled library books, but my heart began pounding painfully fast before I consciously realized that I recognized the handwriting of the address. Distantly I heard a flutter of paper and the sharp crack of my mug breaking as it hit the gritty asphalt. My head began to spin.

Black ink, bad handwriting, letters cramped from years of fieldwork, arrogant slants with wide spacing between the words. A smudge of a dirty fingerprint that I didn’t need a police lab to identify for me, though I had no training in reading such things. I would have bet the Funny Farm that if one went through the field notes and artifact logs at the anthropology department’s Mayan collections at Caldwell, there would be a thousand copies of this same mark. Only one word, four letters, was written in the message section. Enough to make my mouth go dry.

“Soon.”