Free Skull Session by Daniel Hecht

main house got straightened up a bit.
    The sun disappeared behind the hill as they went down the driveway, leaving the woods glowing a watery blue. Lia and Dempsey continued their conversation, but Paul couldn't get involved. Seeing the house had stirred up an odd mix of feelings, an upwelling of the past. Mainly family stuff—the brighter early years of living here in Westchester, then Ben's death and the dark years of grieving and poverty, moving away, Aster's withdrawal from the world. Lia could manage her ebullient mood because for her this had nothing to do with past, parents, death in the family. It had only to do with the future, a puzzle, a little morsel of danger to be savored. Paul doubted that he could find her point of view. "Fuck it," he said out loud.
    Dempsey turned to him. "Coprolalia, or just plain old regular profanity?"
    "Maybe a little of both," Paul told him.

7
     
    P AUL DROVE ON THE FOUR-HOUR trip back to Vermont, Lia next to him in the dark car. They'd eaten an early dinner at the Corrigans' and promised to stay over when they came down again. Now Lia leaned against the seat back, talking about Dempsey and Elaine.
    Paul grunted replies.
    At last Lia took his hand off the gearshift knob and held it loosely on her thigh. "So," she said. "What's going on?"
    "I'm not sure." Paul tried to put his thoughts in any order that would make sense. The evening with the Corrigans had been pleasant—a fire in the Franklin woodstove casting a warm light on the room, Elaine's terrific scallops, a lot of laughs. But none of it had succeeded in dispelling the sense of unease that the visit to Highwood had brought on. "Maybe I shouldn't do this job," he said.
    "Why not?"
    "I don't know. It brings up a bunch of stuff for me."
    "Like?"
    "The old days. There was a sort of golden age—then my father died and it all got complicated." He drove without turning his face toward her. "Fuck. It sounds like I'm feeling sorry for myself. I guess going up there put me in one of those 'look at your past and wonder what you've done with your life' moods."
    Lia waited for him to continue. After a moment she carefully placed his hand palm-down on her thigh and traced his jaw with one finger.
    "You have a beautiful chin," she told him. "Look at this beautiful line.
    Brave. Like the bow of a fine ship." The sweet non sequitur that only the woman you love can pull off. He was grateful for her touch, circumventing words and logic to remind him of all that was good in his life. Lia waited expectantly, as if she knew there was something else.
    "And," he went on reluctantly, "it disturbs me to think of someone smashing the place up that way. Your revenge theory—what if the people who did it come back?"
    "While we're up there? With plumbers and furnace repairmen and electricians and Dempsey and you and me there? Not the perp's pattern, as my father would say. Let me ask you something—did you see the mouse turds in the mess? The mildew that was all over anything made of cloth?"
    "Yeah, I did. Another reason why Vivien had better hurry up and do something about it, if she wants to salvage anything."
    Lia nodded. "True. But you're missing the implication. If there's that much mouse and mildew damage, it means that stuff has been lying like that for some time. It's been too cold for mildew for at least a month. Whoever did it hasn't been back."
    "Maybe not. And maybe they'll get a hankering for that particular kinky thrill again. I can't believe you aren't more concerned."
    Lia was quiet for a long moment. "Once when I was eight," she said at last, "my father and I went to a shopping center to get me some shoes.
    My father was off duty, but while we were driving home he got a call on the radio that he was needed at a crime scene. When he parked the car, he told me absolutely not to get out. I sat there for a little while, watching the lights of five or six police cars and ambulances, and then got curious and wandered down there. It was a