Heartsick

CHAPTER 51

Archie was sitting at the coffee table, studying his cab receipts wondering how he was going to explain them, when the doorbell rang. He hadn’t slept. His blood felt thick and warm, his brain muddy. He looked, he thought, even worse than normal. He half-expected to find a reporter at his door, a TV camera, microphones. But in his heart, he knew that it would be Debbie. He hoped it would be her.

“You caught him,” she said when he opened the door. She was dressed for work: a gray skirt and a fitted black turtleneck under her long double-breasted coat. They were almost the same clothes she’d been wearing that last morning he’d seen her, two years ago, that day he’d gone to Gretchen’s house alone.

“Come in,” he said.

She moved past him, pausing a few feet inside to look around the living room. She had only been at his apartment a few times. She tried to act as if his sad little residence didn’t depress her, but he could see it in her eyes. She turned back to face him. “The news said that there was a hostage situation. With that reporter. That you went in.”

Archie closed the door. “It wasn’t that dangerous. He would have killed her before he killed me.”

She stepped forward, cupping his face with her hands. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t know how to answer the question. So he avoided it. “Do you want some coffee?”

She let her hands drop. “Archie.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I haven’t slept.”

She took off her coat and laid it on the back of the beige recliner. Then she walked to the sofa and sat down. “Sit with me,” she said.

He sank down beside her and rested his head in his hands. He wanted to tell her, but he was afraid to say it out loud. “I’m going to try to stop seeing her,” he said.

Debbie closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they were shining with tears. “Thank God,” she said. She kicked off her shoes and curled her legs up on the sofa.

Rain slapped against the living room window. So much for the forecast, Archie thought. The pillbox was on the coffee table. It had been a gift from Debbie. The day they’d let him out of the hospital.

“I think you should come home,” Debbie said. “Just for a few days,” she added quickly. “You can sleep in the guest room. It would be good for the kids.” And then, looking around, she added, “I don’t like to think of you in this terrible apartment.”

Archie leaned forward, picked up the pillbox, and placed it on his palm. It was a pretty little thing. The kid upstairs was awake. Archie could hear her scamper from her bedroom into the living room, squealing. Then a TV came on. The kid did a little jig above their heads as the bright, loud voices of cartoon characters filled the room.

Debbie sighed and the air seemed to catch in her throat. “What is it about us that makes it so hard for you?”

Archie felt all the pain and guilt he kept so carefully tranquilized begin to burn in his stomach. How could he even begin to explain? “It’s complicated.”

She laid a hand on his, covering the pillbox. “Come home.”

He let their faces into his mind then. Debbie, Ben, Sara. His beautiful family. What had he done? “Okay.”

Debbie’s eyebrows shot up, disbelieving. “Really?”

He nodded a few times, trying to convince himself that this was the right thing, that it wouldn’t just make things worse for everyone. “I need to sleep. Then go into work. I can get Henry to drive me out tonight. He’d love it. He thinks I’m going to kill myself.”

Debbie touched the back of his neck. “Are you?”

Archie considered this. “I don’t think so.”

The kid began to dance again, stamping her feet, jumping. The pounding of her feet echoed through Archie’s apartment.

Debbie glanced up at the white popcorn ceiling. “What’s that sound?” she asked.

Archie was tired. His eyes burned and his head felt heavy. He leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes. “The kid upstairs,” he said.

He felt Debbie rest her head on his shoulder. “It sounds like home.”

He smiled. “I know.”

Yes. He could give up Gretchen. He could do that. He could move home and rebuild his family. Maybe keep the task force together, as a special-crimes unit. He could even cut back on the pills. He could try. One last go at salvation. Not for himself. Not for his family. But because if he could do it, he’d win. And Gretchen would lose.

The thought kept the smile on his face as he surrendered his sore, tired body to sleep. He felt his hand relax around the pillbox. The last thing he was aware of was Debbie lifting it out of his hand and putting it back on the table.