Page 4 of Kill Your Darlings

“I pushed you, naturally,” she said.

Wendy had a morbid sense of humor, she always had, and he sometimes wondered if it was because of what the two of them had done in the past. Or was it in spite of it?

“No, really, you must have heard me fall.”

“I did. I was brushing my teeth. For a moment I thought you were dead.”

“And how did that make you feel?” Thom was pouring himself coffee and noticed a slight tremor in the hand that held the cup. It was worrying.

“In the time it took me to walk down the stairs and check on you I’d already spent the life insurance.”

“Oh yeah? What on?”

“A couple trips to France. A new downstairs bathroom. Maybe a Birkin bag.”

“Youdidthink about it.”

She smiled, and Thom felt colder.

“You read the text from Jason?”

“No,” Thom said, pulling out his phone.

Their son had planned a visit for the weekend, and Thom assumed that the text was a cancellation, but instead he’d texted to remind them that he was now completely vegetarian and then he’d asked if he could bring a friend along, some girl named Ashtyn.

Thom nearly asked who Ashtyn was, because he couldn’t remember, but something told him not to ask, something told him that, once again, he’d forgotten some crucial information about his family’s life. “I think I’ll go read,” he said, and took himself to his office.

He lay down on the couch across from his desk, looked at his phone a little, checking his son’s Instagram to see if there was a picture of this girl he was bringing. They’d only just gotten used to the previous girlfriend, Tonya, who had been eerily uncommunicative but whom Jason seemed to genuinely love. And now he was dating someone called Ashtyn. He put his phone down and picked up his book—Lying to Doctorsby Catalina Soto—reading just a few pages before shutting his eyes, hoping to get some sleep. But images kept appearing and disappearing in his mind. His wife’s face in the dim hallway light, her eyes cold and unloving. Emily’s face in the firelight as he spoke words at her, words that he couldn’t conjure up. What had they been talking about? He felt deep shame that he couldn’tremember. And then all he could think about was the coldness in his bones. He turned onto his side, tucked his knees up. Something flickered in the corner of his attic office, and for a moment he thought it was his cat, Samsa, skirting the baseboards. But Samsa had been dead for six months. And for a terrible moment Thom thought he might cry, something he hadn’t done in years. Instead, he sat up, rubbed at his ribs again, and wondered how long Wendy would be in the kitchen. He wanted a beer but didn’t want her to see him get one.

iii

The weather had cleared by Sunday morning and they all took a walk, Wendy and Thom; their son, Jason; and his new girlfriend, Ashtyn, who had turned out to be the exact opposite of his last girlfriend. Blond instead of dark, inquisitive and talkative instead of standoffish. In fact, she’d barely stopped talking since arriving late on Friday evening. She was talking now—she just couldn’t getoverhow beautiful it was on Goose Neck, and she couldn’t believe she’d never been here, but she was really more of a South-Shore girl, having grown up in Wareham.

“You’ll have to switch your allegiance,” Thom said.

“What, South Shore to North Shore? I’m a Cape girl; you’re kidding, right?”

Wendy watched as Thom sped up ahead of them so that he was just with Ashtyn. He liked her, she could tell. Well, Wendy liked Ashtyn as well. She wasn’t intellectual, exactly, but she seemed to exude some joy, a character trait not usually shared by Jason’s string of moody girlfriends. Wendy slowed her pace, Jason beside her, so that she could talk privately to her son.

“So?” Jason said.

“So what?”

“What do you think of Ashtyn? You were just watching her and analyzing. I could tell.”

“She’s lovely. So different from Tonya.”

“You didn’t think Tonya was lovely?”

“Lovely to look at, but she wasn’t exactly a conversationalist, was she?”

Jason kicked at a horse chestnut, knocking it a few feet ahead of him. She’d taken enough walks with him, ever since he’d been a boy, to know that he would keep kicking that particular chestnut for as long as he could keep it in front of him. “No, she was difficult. Ashtyn’s easy, although she’s smarter than she looks.”

“Did I say she didn’t look smart?”

“You probably thought it. She went to school on a full scholarship, you know.”

Up ahead, Thom and Ashtyn had stopped walking so that Thom could point out the city hall across the harbor. Wendy and Jason stopped as well. “Yes, she told me. What are her parents like?”

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