Full Dark, No Stars

passenger seat, singing “Pennies from Heaven” in his on-key but not particularly melodious voice. He was drunk, she realized. Not just high, but actual y drunk. It was the first time she had seen him that way in ten years. Ordinarily he watched his booze intake like a hawk, and sometimes, when someone at a party asked him why he wasn’t drinking, he’d quote a line from True Grit : “I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my mind.” Tonight, high on his discovery of the double-date, he had al owed his mind to be stolen, and she knew what she intended to do as soon as he ordered that second bottle of

bubbly. In the restaurant, she wasn’t sure she could carry it through, but listening to him sing on the way home, she knew. Of course she could do it. She was the Darker Wife now, and the Darker Wife

knew that what he thought of as his good luck had real y been her own.

- 16 -

Inside the house he whirled his sport coat onto the tree by the door and pul ed her into his arms for a long kiss. She could taste champagne and sweet crème brûlée on his breath. It was not a bad

combination, although she knew if things happened as they might, she would never want either again. His hand went to her breast. She let it linger there, feeling him against her, and then pushed him away.

He looked disappointed, but brightened when she smiled.

“I’m going upstairs and getting out of this dress,” she said. “There’s Perrier in the refrigerator. If you bring me a glass—with a wedge of lime—you might get lucky, mister.”

He broke into a grin at that—his old, wel -loved grin. Because there was one long-established habit of marriage they had not resumed since the night he had smel ed her discovery (yes, smel ed it, just

as a wise old wolf may smel a poisoned bait) and come rushing home from Montpelier. Day by day they had wal ed up what he was—yes, as surely as Montresor had wal ed up his old pal Fortunato—and

sex in the connubial bed would be the last brick.

He clicked his heels and threw her a British-style salute, fingers to forehead, palm out. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t be long,” she said pleasantly. “Mama wants what Mama wants.”

Going up the stairs, she thought: This will never work. The only thing you’ll succeed in doing is getting yourself killed. He may not think he’s capable of it, but I think he is.

Maybe that would be al right, though. Assuming he didn’t hurt her first, as he’d hurt those women. Maybe any sort of resolution would be al right. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life looking in

mirrors. She wasn’t a kid anymore, and couldn’t get away with a kid’s craziness.

She went into the bedroom, but only long enough to toss her purse onto the table beside the hand mirror. Then she went out again and cal ed, “Are you coming, Bobby? I could real y use those

bubbles!”

“On my way, ma’am, just pouring it over ice!”

And here he came out of the living room and into the hal , holding one of their good crystal glasses up before him at eye level like a comic-opera waiter, weaving slightly as he crossed to the foot of the stairs. He continued to hold the glass up as he mounted them, the wedge of lime bobbing around on top. His free hand trailed lightly along the banister; his face shone with happiness and good cheer. For a moment she almost weakened, and then the image of Helen and Robert Shaverstone fil ed her mind, hel ishly clear: the son and his molested, mutilated mother floating together in a Massachusetts

creek that had begun to grow lacings of ice at its sides.

“One glass of Perrier for the lady, coming right uh—”

She saw the knowledge leap into his eyes at the very last second, something old and yel ow and ancient. It was more than surprise; it was shocked fury. In that moment her understanding of him was

complete. He loved nothing, least of al her. Every kindness, caress, boyish grin, and thoughtful gesture—al were nothing but camouflage. He was a shel . There was nothing inside but howling emptiness.

She pushed him.

It was a hard push and he made a three-quarters somersault above the stairs before coming down on them, first on his knees, then on his arm, then ful on his face. She heard his arm break. The

heavy Waterford glass shattered on one of the uncarpeted risers. He rol ed over again and she heard something else inside him snap. He screamed in pain and somersaulted one final time before

landing on the hardwood hal floor in a heap, the broken arm (not broken in just one place but in several) cocked back over his head at an angle nature had never intended. His head was twisted, one

cheek on the floor.

Darcy hurried down the stairs. At one point she stepped on an ice cube, slipped, and had to grab the banister to save herself. At the bottom she saw a huge knob now poking out of the skin on the

nape of his neck, turning it white, and said: “Don’t move, Bob, I think your neck is broken.”