فصل 85

85

PATRICK

Patrick no longer dreamed of his wife. Nowadays he had a different dream, in which that day at the house played out differently. Instead of confessing to the detective, he took the paring knife from the table and put it into her heart, and when he was done with her, he started on Nel Abbott’s sister. The excitement of it built and built until, finally sated, he pulled the knife from the sister’s chest and looked up, and there was Helen, watching, tears coursing down her cheeks and blood dripping from her hands.

“Dad, don’t,” she said. “You’re scaring her.”

When he woke, it was always Helen’s face he thought of, her stricken expression when he told them what he’d done. He was grateful that he did not have to witness Sean’s reaction. By the time his son returned to Beckford that evening, Patrick’s confession had been made in full. Sean came to visit him once, on remand. Patrick doubted he would come again, which broke his heart, because everything he had done, the stories he had told and the life he had constructed, it had all been for Sean.