Page 18 of The Husband Hour
He handed over his debit card and she plugged an adapter into her phone to swipe it. “Isn’t technology amazing?” she said.
“Okay, well, I’m just going to settle in for now. Thanks, Ms. Boutine. It’s a really nice place you’ve got here.”
“Please, call me Henny. And yes, it is a nice place. So give it a good rating or whatever it’s called on the web. That’s the way to build business. Or so I’ve read. Enjoy your stay.” She closed the door behind her.
Matt unpacked his Canon C100 and set it on the desk but left his backup sound pack in his bag. Hopefully, he’d get funding to pay a local crew and he wouldn’t need it.
He pulled out his laptop and booted up his Rory Kincaid folder. He opened the interview he’d done with one of Kincaid’s high-school coaches, Roger McKenna.
“And that was the thing about Rory,” the coach said, folding his arms behind his head and sitting back in his office chair. Above him was a framed photograph of Rory’s team the year they’d won the state championship. “It wasn’t just his reflexes or his speed. It was his absolute calm under pressure.”
Matt nodded. He’d heard the same thing from the coach at Harvard and from members of Rory’s battalion.
He fast-forwarded to the footage of the gym. Lower Merion High School had just under fourteen hundred students in any given year and every kind of team and extracurricular club you could imagine. From what he understood, LM, as it was commonly called, offered the quintessential all-American high-school experience.
Rory’s retired jersey, number 89, hung framed next to a maroon-and-white banner that read RORY KINCAID. PA STATE CHAMPIONSHIP 2005. MCDONALD’S ALL-AMERICAN. GATORADE PLAYER OF THE YEAR.
While Matt’s camera guy got B-roll of the gym, Coach McKenna had gotten choked up.
“I still can’t believe it. What a waste,” the coach said. “What a goddamn waste.”
The simple statement hit Matt in the gut. It was exactly how he felt about his older brother. After 9/11, Ben had dropped out of Syracuse University to enlist. Three years later, they’d lost him.
What a goddamn waste.
Maybe, if Matt managed to pull off the film, Rory’s death—and his brother’s—wouldn’t be a total waste.
His phone rang, startling him. He looked at the screen.
Craig Mason.
Chapter Ten
We have to sell this house.
The beat of her sneakers on asphalt steadied Lauren’s nerves. Still, the run over to Nora’s wasn’t something Lauren had thought through very well. It was, after all, Memorial Day weekend. And sure enough, when she arrived, sweaty and anxious, on the doorstep, she found a house overflowing with guests.
Nora clapped in delight to see her. “You came after all!”
Her party. Lauren had completely forgotten.
Taking in Lauren’s running clothes and less-than-festive expression, Nora said, “What’s the matter? Come get a drink. Or, better yet, eat your drink. April made her famous watermelon balls.” Every summer party, Nora’s friend April showed up with vodka-infused fruit.
“I’m good. Thanks. I just need some quiet, so this was probably not the best place—”
“Come on upstairs.”
Across the hall, her friend Henny Boutine waved at her. Lauren raised her hand in response, trying to muster some enthusiasm, then followed Nora to the second floor.
Nora’s room overlooked the bay. Two of her three cats—Nadia, the Russian blue, and Benson, the tabby—had taken up residence on the bed. Both were sprawled out, reveling in the late-day sun streaming through the window. The felines were so large, she had no room to sit without encountering a paw or a sleepy cat’s head.
Above the bed, a wooden sign read CATS WELCOME; PEOPLE TOLERATED.
It was one of Henny’s handmade signs; she displayed them on the walls of Nora’s restaurant and sold them for twenty-five dollars each. It was apparently not much of a moneymaker; she’d decided to list her house on Airbnb for the first time. Henny was nervous about it. All of her friends except Lauren were nervous about it. She figured it was a generational thing. At the book club last month, April said to Henny, “I hope you’re careful. I don’t know how y’all let strangers in your houses.”
April, a widow, was living off the estate of her fifth and final husband. Her hair was silvery blond, her mouth never without matte red lipstick, and her cheeks always powdered. She was a throwback to a time Lauren could scarcely imagine and never would have survived.
“Some of us have to work for a living, Miss America,” Henny had replied. Indeed, April had been a Miss America pageant contestant circa 1964.
