Her eyes weren’t blinking. There was still something almost dead in them, something very far away. She seemed to be seeing all the way
through to the back of him and beyond, out into the cold space of the future in which they would both soon be dead, out into the nothingness that Lalitha and his mother and his father had already passed into, and yet she was looking straight into his eyes, and he could feel her getting warmer by the minute. And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after life was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still in touch with the void in which the sum of everything they’d ever said or done, every pain they’d inflicted, every joy they’d shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind.
“It’s me,” she said. “Just me.”
“I know,” he said, and kissed her.
Near the bottom of the list of conceivable Walter-related outcomes for the residents of Canterbridge Estates had been the possibility that they’d be sorry to see him go. Nobody, least of all Linda Hoffbauer, could have foreseen the early-December Sunday afternoon when Walter’s wife, Patty, parked his Prius on Canterbridge Court and began to ring their doorbells, introducing herself briefly, noninvasively, and presenting them with Glad-wrapped plates of Christmas cookies that she’d baked. Linda was in an awkward position, meeting Patty, because there was nothing immediately unlikable about her, and because it was impossible to refuse a seasonal gift. Curiosity, if nothing else, compelled her to invite Patty inside, and before she knew it Patty was kneeling on her living-room floor, coaxing her cats to come and be stroked and inquiring about their names. She seemed to be as warm a person as her husband was a cold one. When Linda asked her how it had happened that they’d never previously met, Patty laughed trillingly and said, “Oh, well, Walter and I were taking a little breather from each other.” This was an odd and rather clever formulation, difficult to find clear moral fault with. Patty stayed long enough to admire the house and its view of the snow-covered lake, and, in leaving, she invited Linda and her family to the open house that she and Walter were hosting on New Year’s Day.
Linda was not much inclined to enter the home of Bobby’s murderer, but when she learned that every other family on Canterbridge Court (except two already in Florida) was attending the open house, she succumbed to a combination of curiosity and Christian forbearance. The fact was, Linda was having some popularity problems in the neighborhood. Although she had her own dedicated cadre of friends and allies at her church, she was also a strong believer in neighborliness, and by acquiring three new cats to replace her Bobby, who certain irresolute neighbors believed might have died of natural causes, she’d perhaps overplayed her hand; there was a feeling that she’d been somewhat vindictive. And so, although she did leave her husband and kids at home, she drove her Suburban over to the Berglund house on New Year’s and was duly flummoxed by Patty’s particular hospitality toward her. Patty introduced her to her daughter and to her son and then, not leaving her side, led her outside and down to the lake for a view of her own house from a distance. It occurred to Linda that she was being played by an expert, and that she could learn from Patty a thing or two about winning hearts and minds; already, in less than a month, Patty had succeeded in charming even those neighbors who no longer opened their doors all the way when Linda came complaining to them: who made her stand out in the cold. She took several valiant stabs at getting Patty to slip up and betray her liberal disagreeability, asking her if she was a bird-lover, too (“No, but I’m a Walter-lover, so I sort of get it,” Patty said), and whether she was interested in finding a local church to attend (“I think it’s great there are so many to choose from,” Patty said), before concluding that her new neighbor was too dangerous an adversary to be tackled head-on. As if to complete the rout, Patty had cooked up an extensive and very tasty-looking spread from which Linda, with an almost pleasant sense of defeat, loaded up a large plate.
“Linda,” Walter said, accosting her while she was taking seconds. “Thank you so much for coming over.”
“It was nice of your wife to invite me,” Linda said.
Walter had apparently resumed regular shaving with the return of his wife—he looked very pink now. “Listen,” he said, “I was awfully sorry to hear your cat disappeared.”
“Really?” she said. “I thought you hated Bobby.”
“I did hate him. He was a bird-killing machine. But I know you loved him, and it’s a hard thing to lose a pet.”
“Well, we have three more now, so.”