Episodul 75 · The House Key

— Didn’t Varren walk you to your car?

— He did. I drove a loop past the riverbed and came back.

Soles opened the back door. Krista came in, looked at the chair standing guard in the hall and at the patch on the wall behind it, and asked nothing. She switched on the kettle as if she had always known where it was kept.

— I won’t stay long, she said. I know you’re leaving tonight.

He had not told anyone tonight. He did not ask how she knew.

Soles went upstairs to pack. He did not need much: two changes of clothes, Kale’s flashlight, a pocketknife, the charger, the bandages from the hospital he had never used.

On the way down he stopped in the doorway of his parents’ room. The short screw, the faded receipt and the knotted string still lay on the bedspread where he had left them on Saturday. He put them in the drawer of the nightstand without deciding what they were: things to throw away, or the last things Kale had brought home.

When he came down, Krista had poured tea into two mugs and was sitting at the table with her hands around one, not drinking.

— You’re afraid, she said.

He sat down across from her.

— Yes.

— Good. I’d have worried if you’d said no.

A car went by outside. Its headlights slid across the ceiling from one corner to the other.

— This morning I read the article four times, Krista said. The first time I was angry at whoever put my name there. The second time at myself, for taking the photographs. The third time I only read the name. It sat under my pictures like a signature I never gave.

She turned the mug slowly on the table.

— I’m not afraid of the committee. Or the lawyer. I’m afraid of someone who uses my name like an object, without asking.

— I won’t use it.

— I know. That’s why I’m here and not at home.

Soles felt he ought to say something and could not find it. He pulled the jacket tighter around him. Kale’s, from the bedroom; he had put it on without thinking. Krista looked at it.

— It’s your father’s.

— It’s warm.

— The collar’s turned under.

She stood, came around the table and straightened it with two short, precise movements, the way she straightened the corners of photographs in their frames. Her hands did not leave at once. They stayed on the collar a moment, then came down and stopped above his ribs, not touching.

— It hurts.

— Less.

— You’re lying.

— A little.

Krista let out a breath that was almost a laugh and went back to her chair. Soles watched her sit and thought, with a clarity that frightened him, that he would miss the way she caught him lying.

— I have to tell you something, he said. I haven’t told Maxim. Or the others.

She waited.

— On Saturday, by the water. The lawyer looked at me. Not at my face. Here.

He touched the place under his arm.

— Only for a moment. That was enough. That’s why they went to your room. Not for the photographs. Because they’ve seen me with you.

Krista did not move. Only her fingers tightened on the mug.

— And you think if you leave, they’ll stop.

— I think they’ll come after me instead.

— And that’s better.

— For you, yes.

She looked at him the way she looked at a photograph that did not match the date on its back.

— Do you know what I don’t like about your plan? That it’s good. If it were bad, I’d argue with you and you’d stay.

Soles smiled before he could stop himself. His ribs stopped it halfway.

He took the spare house key from his pocket, the one on the loop of string, and set it on the table between the mugs.

— Maxim’s on the road from Wednesday. The investigator’s coming for the box. You let him in.

Krista looked from the key to him.

— You’re giving me the key to your house.

— I’m giving you the box. The house comes with it.

She took the key. Her fingers touched his hand and did not draw back at once. Soles did not move his. They sat like that in the yellow light of the kitchen, the tea going cold, as long as it takes to count to five. Nobody counted.

— Every evening, Krista said. One word. So I know you wrote it.

— What word?

She thought.

— Here. And if one evening you can’t manage even that, send a period. I’ll understand.

— And if nothing comes?

Krista put the key in her coat pocket, beside the paper from the wooden room.

— Then I’ll come looking for you. And I won’t ask where you are first.

She stood, picked up her folder and stopped in the doorway. She seemed about to say something more. Instead she came back two steps across the kitchen, kissed him on the forehead, quickly, like someone setting out on a long journey, and was gone before he could stand.

Soles stayed at the table with the two mugs and the place on his forehead where she had touched him. Then he washed the mugs, set them to dry and turned off the light.

He met Maxim at the back gate. The dogs came back first, pulling, wet to the belly from the riverbed. Maxim stopped when he saw the backpack.

He did not say anything about it. He reached out, tugged the strap straight on Soles’s good shoulder and let go.

— Charger?

— Yes.

— Bandages?

— Yes.

— Liar, Maxim said, and stepped aside to let him pass.

Lucky tried to follow. Maxim caught his collar and held him, and Soles heard him talking to the dog in a low voice long after the gate had closed.

He walked down the empty street under the streetlamps without looking back. Locks were no use anymore. He knew that. He had locked nothing.

About halfway to the riverbed, he felt for the first time that someone was walking behind him. So far back that he would not have seen them even if he had turned.

He did not turn. This was what he had wanted.