Page 10 of A Talent for Murder

“You do, actually, but I’ll play along. Martha just broke up with me, and since you’re here to shepherd her home safely I’ll say this to you: If I wanted to get her back it would be the easiest thing in the world. But, honestly, I just don’t care enough to go through the effort. Also, since you’re here now, I realize you’re probably just pissed off at me because I wasn’t attracted to you, but you would have been too easy. You’re already a monster, Lily. It takes one to spot one.”

“Hey, Ethan,” I said, lowering my voice. “I am a monster. Remember that, okay?”

Martha was coming back to the booth, a little unsteady on her feet, either from too many drinks or from the stress of telling Ethan it was over. I stood up quickly and said, “Martha, I don’t feel too good. I hate to do this to you, but could you walk me home?”

“Of course,” she said, and after getting her coat we left together, Ethan laughing in his booth.

Martha came back with me to my rented room. We had to pass Ethel Watkins, my landlady, who liked to sit in the front room watching reruns of sitcoms on her old flickering television set. I thought she’d make a comment about my visitor, but she just glared at us both as we headed upstairs. Martha spent the night. She was full of adrenaline, telling me again and again exactly how the conversation had gone, then explaining how she really was going to give up men going forward. She fell asleep in her clothes on top of the covers and I curled up next to her.

That following week we were inseparable, Martha alternately giddy and bereaved because of the end of her relationship with Ethan, while I was wary of a counterattack. But it didn’t come. I only saw Ethan once, crossing the quad in a rugby shirt and cargo shorts. Our eyes briefly met, but there was no expression on his face.

Sometimes I wonder if Martha and I would have stayed friends after graduate school, or if I blew it by what I’d said to her on the final night before our summer break began.

“What are your plans?” she’d asked. We were sitting on the front porch of Ethel’s house, drinking wine and trying to ignore the blackflies.

“I’ll probably spend time with my mom, do some reading. And I might go up to Vermont and kill Ethan Saltz.”

She’d laughed her toothy laugh, and said, “Yes, make the world a better place.”

I should have left it there, but I was young then, and maybe I thought that Martha could handle hearing about my transgressions. “I’m serious,” I said. “I’m a firm believer in ridding the world of people like Ethan Saltz. It wouldn’t be hard to get away with it.”

A look of genuine shock crossed Martha’s face as she realized that I really was serious.

“Or not,” I said, and laughed.

That summer I kept the rented room and bounced back and forth between Maryland and Monk’s House in Connecticut. I spent August in London with my father. I didn’t visit Vermont and I didn’t kill Ethan Saltz. Martha and I stayed friendly for the next year of school, but, honestly, it was never the same, and I wasn’t surprised that Martha and I lost touch after school. All of which made me curious as to why she was contacting me now.

Chapter6

“Is this Martha?”

“It is. Hi, Lily. Long time.” Martha could tell that her voice was shaky. She was in her office at the library and got up to close her door.

“It is a long time. But it’s nice to hear your voice,” Lily said, and Martha felt that she was being genuine.

“It’s nice to hear yours, too. You’re back living with your parents?”

“I am. It’s a long story, but the short version of it is that they got divorced but my father can’t be alone, and my mother doesn’t have enough money to support herself, so they need to live together. I’m there to keep them from killing one another.”

“Sounds like a lot,” Martha said, settling into the conversation, realizing that she’d missed Lily over the years.

“It’s not too bad,” Lily said.

“Are you working?”

“Do you know Winslow College in Massachusetts? I got a job there about a year after we both finished school. It was good, but I left a couple of years ago to come back here, and now I am mostly unemployed, although I’m busy working on my father’s archives.”

“Oh, how’s that?” Martha said, happy to keep the focus on Lily for a while.

“He keeps threatening to burn them in the fireplace, but he’s all bark and no bite. He kept everything, including some pretty scandalous journals. How about you? Working?”

“I’m the director of a public library in Kittery right now. Before that I was doing archival work at Boston University, but I don’t mind being back in a classic library setting.”

“No, of course not.”

Martha didn’t say anything right away. Part of her just wanted to keep talking about what they’d been doing since they’d known each other all those years earlier, but she also wanted to get to the point. Finally, she said, “So, I called you for a reason.”

“Okay,” Lily said. “I’m listening.” The way she said it made Martha feel as though they were hanging out in her dormitory room in Maryland all over again.

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