Read Online No One You Know by Michelle Richmond - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michelle Richmond
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right now. You should be all right from here.”
I hesitated for several seconds before joining McConnell on the path. I looked back at the snake, then at him. We continued down the road, my heart beating wildly.
“Why Lila?” I asked. “You must have known how inexperienced she was. If you wanted to cheat on your wife, why couldn’t you have found someone else?”
“It wasn’t like that. Margaret and I had made a decent life together, and our son was everything to me. But Margaret didn’t understand my work. None of it mattered to her. As long as I continued to advance in my career, she was content. When we met, I liked that about her. She was into art and dancing, things I’d never understood. It was a nice balance, and I believed she was the kind of woman who could take care of things at home, give our children a happy life while I concentrated on work. But then I met your sister, and realized I wanted something more.”
“How did you meet her?” I asked.
So long ago, I had tried to get this very information out of Lila. Over the years I had told her everything about the guys I dated. She seemed to take pleasure in my escapades, and had said more than once that she was living vicariously through me. So I was hurt that, when there was finally someone in her life, she wouldn’t tell me anything.
“I was in my fourth year in the Ph.D. program,” McConnell continued. “I loved fatherhood, but it took its toll; my dissertation was going much more slowly than I had expected, and for some time I had been attempting to collaborate on a paper that was going nowhere.”
McConnell’s voice in the quiet night was deep, a smooth and calming voice. I imagined Lila sitting with him in one of those private booths at Sam’s on the final night of her life. Was his the last voice she ever heard, or was there someone else, someone I had never allowed myself to imagine—a taxi driver, a stranger on the street?
One number in Thorpe’s book had been burned into my memory: 23,370. It was the number of people who were murdered in the U.S. in 1989, the year Lila died. Only 13.5 percent of murder victims do not know their assailants, Thorpe wrote. Murder is rarely random. I remembered thinking that his word choice was inaccurate. There was nothing rare about 13.5 percent. 13.5 percent of 23,370 was actually a very large number. I couldn’t recall exactly how the paragraph was written, but one thing I did remember was that Thorpe had accused Lila of being a tragically poor judge of character. And I had been angered by the way he manipulated the words, as if Lila bore some responsibility for her own death, as if only the victims of “random” acts of violence were truly innocent.
“Then Lila came along,” McConnell was saying. “I remember the day she walked into the office of the Stanford Journal of Mathematics. She was wearing this orange dress and purple sneakers, and her hair looked like she’d just rolled out of bed.”
“I remember that dress,” I said, surprised to be complicit in this story, to add my memory to his own. “She made it herself. She made all her clothes herself. She didn’t use premade patterns. She’d just take her measurements and sketch the dress on a legal pad, then make calculations as she went.”
“The outfit was completely outlandish.” I was looking straight ahead, but I could hear the slight change in McConnell’s voice, and knew that he was smiling. It was strange to think that the man standing beside me had been intimate with my sister, had even been loved by her. I could not deny that there was a magnetic quality about him—something in the tone of his voice, his direct and un-apologetic gaze. There was something unmistakably sensual about him that I hadn’t noticed during my spying missions at Enrico’s.
“She looked beautiful,” he continued. “The editor, a stodgy old guy named Bruce, looked at her and asked how he could help her. He seemed to think she had
I hesitated for several seconds before joining McConnell on the path. I looked back at the snake, then at him. We continued down the road, my heart beating wildly.
“Why Lila?” I asked. “You must have known how inexperienced she was. If you wanted to cheat on your wife, why couldn’t you have found someone else?”
“It wasn’t like that. Margaret and I had made a decent life together, and our son was everything to me. But Margaret didn’t understand my work. None of it mattered to her. As long as I continued to advance in my career, she was content. When we met, I liked that about her. She was into art and dancing, things I’d never understood. It was a nice balance, and I believed she was the kind of woman who could take care of things at home, give our children a happy life while I concentrated on work. But then I met your sister, and realized I wanted something more.”
“How did you meet her?” I asked.
So long ago, I had tried to get this very information out of Lila. Over the years I had told her everything about the guys I dated. She seemed to take pleasure in my escapades, and had said more than once that she was living vicariously through me. So I was hurt that, when there was finally someone in her life, she wouldn’t tell me anything.
“I was in my fourth year in the Ph.D. program,” McConnell continued. “I loved fatherhood, but it took its toll; my dissertation was going much more slowly than I had expected, and for some time I had been attempting to collaborate on a paper that was going nowhere.”
McConnell’s voice in the quiet night was deep, a smooth and calming voice. I imagined Lila sitting with him in one of those private booths at Sam’s on the final night of her life. Was his the last voice she ever heard, or was there someone else, someone I had never allowed myself to imagine—a taxi driver, a stranger on the street?
One number in Thorpe’s book had been burned into my memory: 23,370. It was the number of people who were murdered in the U.S. in 1989, the year Lila died. Only 13.5 percent of murder victims do not know their assailants, Thorpe wrote. Murder is rarely random. I remembered thinking that his word choice was inaccurate. There was nothing rare about 13.5 percent. 13.5 percent of 23,370 was actually a very large number. I couldn’t recall exactly how the paragraph was written, but one thing I did remember was that Thorpe had accused Lila of being a tragically poor judge of character. And I had been angered by the way he manipulated the words, as if Lila bore some responsibility for her own death, as if only the victims of “random” acts of violence were truly innocent.
“Then Lila came along,” McConnell was saying. “I remember the day she walked into the office of the Stanford Journal of Mathematics. She was wearing this orange dress and purple sneakers, and her hair looked like she’d just rolled out of bed.”
“I remember that dress,” I said, surprised to be complicit in this story, to add my memory to his own. “She made it herself. She made all her clothes herself. She didn’t use premade patterns. She’d just take her measurements and sketch the dress on a legal pad, then make calculations as she went.”
“The outfit was completely outlandish.” I was looking straight ahead, but I could hear the slight change in McConnell’s voice, and knew that he was smiling. It was strange to think that the man standing beside me had been intimate with my sister, had even been loved by her. I could not deny that there was a magnetic quality about him—something in the tone of his voice, his direct and un-apologetic gaze. There was something unmistakably sensual about him that I hadn’t noticed during my spying missions at Enrico’s.
“She looked beautiful,” he continued. “The editor, a stodgy old guy named Bruce, looked at her and asked how he could help her. He seemed to think she had
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