Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [36]
10
Julie turned it off. Sat there, stunned. Didn’t know what to think. She glanced at the clock on the wall—it was nearly eleven.
After several more of these brief video clips, she found the video that had the woman in it.
The woman in the city.
She was young, and she was beautiful, and she looked like the kind of woman in her twenties who would make Hut happy.
Julie felt an insane kind of jealousy. She hated the woman. She wanted to know who she was. She felt she must be losing it if she thought a woman who happened to be at the edge of a video that her stepson had shot might be a woman who had been seeing her husband.
But still, her blood boiled a bit when she saw the redhaired woman, and her mind began imagining things.
11
She used the close-up feature to try and get a better look at the red-haired woman. Had she seen her before? She didn’t think so. Surely this was just a stranger who happened to cross the street at the moment Hut had asked Matt to put down the camcorder.
Then, she replayed other videos of the city trips on Boys’ Day Out. She saw the street again. Rosetta Street. She wasn’t sure where that was. Why would Hut and Matt be walking down that street more than once or even twice? Four times, over four or five months? Winter to spring?
Then, on the edge of one of the digital videos, she thought she saw a flash of red. She hit the close-up button, and zoomed in. The woman? Was that her face? It looked like it. It might’ve been just some other person with red hair. But it looked like the woman.
She went back to the first video that Matt had watched when she’d arrived. The Chelsea Market. Matt and Hut coming out, the camcorder capturing a moment when Hut took a sip from the white cup of coffee.
Just over Hut’s shoulder, a handful of people. She had thought they were waiting for a bus or just talking at the corner with each other.
The woman with the red hair was there, too. This time, without sunglasses. She was a bit indistinct, even in close-up. But she had glanced over to Hut and Matt and the camcorder’s unerring lens just before Matt turned the camcorder off.
12
“Why don’t you just ask him?” Mel asked. They went out for a brisk walk in the late afternoon sunshine, while Laura looked after the kids for an hour. They were walking along the road in front of the house, then headed down the hill toward the lake.
“I can’t. You know how he is. I just don’t want to nudge him.”
“Nudge him?”
“Push him. I saw some of his videos. Some are all sunny and bright and happy. But a few are just…strange. And he filmed me sleeping. And the one of his classmate. I don’t know. It seemed…intrusive. Like he was making her do something.”
“You’re reading too much into it, Jules. For all you know, that was a drama assignment. Or it was something completely innocent. You won’t know unless you ask him.”
“All right. All right,” Julie said, clenching her fists as she walked. “But those other tapes. In the city. Seeing that woman.”
“Maybe you’re looking for things to make yourself feel better about it,” Mel said, her voice having a curious edge to it as if she were hiding something.
Julie stood still. Mel walked a few paces behind her, then turned around. “What?”
“What did you mean by that?” Julie asked.
“Nobody would blame you. It’s overwhelming to me that Hut’s gone, too. That some psycho kills him in the woods not five miles from his home. But you have got to set your mind in balance, fast, Julie. You have two kids who are depending on you. Who need you badly. I’m sorry to put it this way. I am. But you have to pull it together, slap yourself awake and forget anything you’re afraid of from the past and move forward. You want to see a therapist? See a therapist. You want to take a month off work? I bet