The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [1]
But Jack was in London, she told herself again. And Mattie was in bed.
There was another knock then, three sharp raps on glass. A small stoppage in her chest traveled down into her stomach and lay there. In the distance, the dog started up again with short, brittle yips.
She took careful steps across the floor, as if moving too fast might set something in motion that hadn’t yet begun. She opened the latch of the bedroom door with a soft click and made her way down the back staircase. She was thinking that her daughter was upstairs and that she should be careful.
She walked through the kitchen and tried to see, through the window over the sink, into the driveway that wound around to the back of the house. She could just make out the shape of an ordinary dark car. She turned the corner into the narrow back hallway, where the tiles were worse than the floorboards, ice on the soles of her feet. She flipped on the back-door light and saw, beyond the small panes set into the top of the door, a man.
He tried not to look surprised by the sudden light. He moved his head slowly to the side, not staring into the glass, as if it were not a polite thing to do, as if he had all the time in the world, as if it were not 3:24 in the morning. He looked pale in the glare of the light. He had hooded eyelids and a widow’s peak, hair the color of dust that had been cut short and brushed back at the sides. His topcoat collar was turned up, and his shoulders were hunched. He moved once quickly on the doorstep, stamping his feet. She made a judgment then. The long face, slightly sad; decent clothes; an interesting mouth, the bottom lip slightly curved and fuller than the upper lip: not dangerous. As she reached for the knob, she thought, Not a burglar, not a rapist. Definitely not a rapist. She opened the door.
“Mrs. Lyons?” he asked.
And then she knew.
It was in the way he said her name, the fact that he knew her name at all. It was in his eyes, a wary flicker. The quick breath he took.
She snapped away from him and bent over at the waist. She put a hand to her chest.
He reached his hand through the doorway and touched her at the small of her back.
The touch made her flinch. She tried to straighten up but couldn’t.
“When?” she asked.
He took a step into her house and closed the door. “Earlier this morning,” he said.
“Where?”
“About ten miles off the coast of Ireland.”
“In the water?”
“No. In the air.”
“Oh. . . .” She brought a hand to her mouth.
“It almost certainly was an explosion,” he said quickly. “You’re sure it was Jack?”
He glanced away and then back again.
“Yes.”
He caught her elbows as she went down. She was momentarily embarrassed, but she couldn’t help it, her legs were gone. She hadn’t known that her body could abandon her so, could just give out like that. He held her elbows, but she wanted her arms back. Gently, he lowered her to the floor.
She bent her face to her knees and wrapped her arms over her head. Inside her there was a white noise, and she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Consciously, she tried to breathe, to fill up her lungs. She raised her head up and took in great gulps of air. As if in the distance, she heard an odd choking sound that wasn’t exactly crying because her face was dry. From behind her, the man was trying to lift her up.
“Let me get you to a chair,” he said.
She swung her head from side to side. She wanted him to let her go. She wanted to sink into the tiles, to ooze onto the floor.
Awkwardly, he placed his arms under hers. She let him help her up.