What the Night Knows

45

ON THE EVENING OF OCTOBER NINETEENTH, COMPLAINING about recent bouts of insomnia, John revealed that he had called Dr. Neimeyer, their internist, to request a prescription for Lunesta. He took one and retired early.

Recently Nicolette had been worried about him. He seemed to be preoccupied by his current case to an even greater extent than he had been by previous homicides. He didn’t have his usual appetite, either. She was sure he had lost weight, at least five pounds, but he claimed that he felt fit and that his weight was the same as ever.

When he first mentioned having trouble sleeping, she suggested he see Isaac Neimeyer, but for a full checkup, not to obtain pills. Usually he was averse to being medicated. His insomnia must be worse than he had told her.

With John off to bed early and with the kids absorbed in their interests, Nicky returned to her studio. She intended to spend two or three hours with the problematic picture of Naomi, Zach, and Minnie.

As she was laying out her brushes and paints, she realized that the time of year might have something to do with John’s condition. His parents and sisters had been murdered on October twenty-fifth, which was just six days away. Every year, he became pensive around that date, somewhat withdrawn. Although John never marked the dark anniversary by talking about it, Nicky knew it lay heavy on his mind. Perhaps he was more deeply troubled this time because of the twenty-year milestone. Time didn’t, as advertised, heal all wounds. Although the wrenching immediacy of grief eventually passed, the settled sorrow that replaced it might in its own way be even more intense.

As Nicky completed preparations to paint, her younger sister, Stephanie, called from Boston. Stephie had just gotten home early from her sous-chef job at the restaurant. In this economy, business was off, as it had been for some time. Nicky sat on her high stool with the swiveling seat, turned toward the vase of peach-colored humility roses, and worried with her sister about various economic catastrophes in the news, talked about food, and swapped stories about their children.

Neither of them had ever been awkward with the other, but Nicky sensed her sister circling around a subject that she hesitated to raise. This perception proved correct when Stephie finally said, “Maybe you’ll think I’m flaky when I tell you this.…”

“Honey,” Nicky said, “you’ve always seemed as flaky to me as one of your pie crusts. What’s on your mind?”

“The thing is—you do have a really good alarm system there, don’t you?”

“A house alarm? Yes. Surely you remember accidentally setting it off during your last visit.”

“So you didn’t take it out or anything. You’re sure it’s working like it should?”

“The perimeter doors and windows—they’re armed right now. John has a zero-tolerance policy about forgetting the alarm at night. It’s a cop thing.”

“So then I guess—what?—does your alarm company test the system regularly?”

“Stephie, what is this? All the creepy murders here in the news lately?”

“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. Last night I had this dream about you guys. You and John, and the kids.”

“What dream?”

“It was gross. I’ve never had a dream so gross, and I never want to have another one. I don’t want to repeat the gory details, all right?”

“I can probably do without hearing them.”

“This terrible thing happened, I think partly because your alarm wasn’t working.”

“It’s working.”

“The panic button,” Stephie said. “Your system has one of those panic buttons, doesn’t it?”

“On every keypad and every phone, too.”

“The panic button wasn’t working. Isn’t that a strange detail for a dream? So specific?”

Nicky swiveled on her stool to look at the painting of Naomi, Zach, and Minnie. Their unfinished faces.

Stephanie didn’t know anything about the tragedy John endured twenty years earlier, but after another hesitation, she said, “Is John doing okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“At work, you know. His health. And, like, things between you—everything good?”

“Stephie, things have always been great between us. John is the dearest man.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything like that. I love John, I really do. I meant … I don’t know. It’s the damn dream, Nicky. Been thinking about it all day. Trying to make sense of it. You know how dreams are. They don’t make sense, you’re not quite sure what you saw.”

Nicolette looked past all the kids in the painting, to the half-seen mirror in the dark background. She had not included the shadowy figure that appeared in five of the photographic studies; but she half expected to see it in the portrait.

“I’ll call the alarm company first thing in the morning,” she said. “I’ll have them come out and test the system. Will that make you feel better?”

“It will, yeah,” Stephie said. “It’s just a dream. This is so silly. But I’ll feel better.”

“I will, too, now that you’ve dropped this centipede down my blouse.”

“I’m sorry, Nicky. I didn’t mean to spook you. Or I guess maybe I did a little. That dream really walloped me. Don’t be angry with me, will you?”

“I couldn’t be, Stephie. I love you to death.”

“Jeez Louise, don’t put it that way.”

“Sorry. How’s Harry?” He was Stephanie’s husband. “Is he still wearing his mother’s dresses?”

“His what?”

“His mother’s dresses—and then stabbing sexy blondes in their showers?”

“Oh, I get it. Payback for John. I deserve it. No, Harry’s still wearing his mother’s dresses, but at least he’s over the stabbing thing.”

A few minutes later, after they hung up, Nicky sat staring at the unfinished painting of her children. John Singer Sargent was an impossible act to follow. Maybe that was the only problem. She put away her paints and brushes.

In the master bedroom, she stood beside the bed, watching her husband sleep, his face in the penumbra of the lamplight. He looked at peace. The Lunesta had done its job.

They hadn’t made love enough lately. If the mood was wrong, you had to change it.

Using the front stairs, she went down to the second floor. She knocked at Zach’s door, and then at Naomi and Minnie’s. The kids were safe, doing their homework, though they all seemed more subdued than usual.

Although John would have walked the house, checking doors and the operable windows, Nicky toured the perimeter. She found nothing amiss.

In the living room, she stood for a while in front of the tall mirror in the baroque frame. Her reflection was considerably smaller than the shadowy form in the photographs.

The house had felt odd to her for so long that she had adjusted to the new atmosphere and didn’t feel it as strongly as before. But the difference remained. Nicky couldn’t have described the change to anyone; it was something you simply felt, for which all words were inadequate.

Suddenly she thought the oddest thing of all was that she hadn’t mentioned this sense of wrongness to John, no matter how resistant to description it might be. It was as though the house, employing some strange power that no inanimate object should possess, schemed to isolate them, one from another, within its rooms.