Penance by David Housewright

Catherine,” I said. “Who’s the third?”
    “Thank you for your time,” Marion said.
    “It’s Anne Scalasi, isn’t it? That’s why you’re so confident. You think she’s protecting you.”
    “Your services are no longer required, Mr. Taylor,” Marion repeated with greater emphasis. “We can manage from here.”
    I stood before the desk, my hands clenched. If she thought for one minute Anne Scalasi was protecting her, if she thought my best friend would cover up for murder … My God! She thinks Annie committed murder. For her. I was shaking my head from side to side when she said, “Good-bye, Mr. Taylor.”
    I was impressed by her coolness, her forced detachment. This was one situation that Marion had not planned, could not have foreseen, yet she would be damned if she was going to let it intrude on her grand design, interfere with the destiny she had ordained for herself and C. C. Monroe. Marion would do with this setback what I have always done with mine: She would deal with it. Well , I thought, deal with this … I took the four one-hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and fanned them on the desk in front of Marion. She looked at the bills and then at me.
    “Nothing in writing, remember?” I said. “I never met you. So, I have no professional obligation to you.”
    It was an expensive gesture, I know, but I wanted her to be worried about something, if not Thoreau, then me. Well, maybe too expensive. I snatched one of the bills off the desktop and stuffed it into my jacket pocket. “I had some unexpected expenses,” I announced.
    I left the office.
    “Good-bye, Holland,” C. C. called after me. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”

NINE

    M Y HOUSE IS a two-story Colonial built in 1926 by a well-to-do businessman who paid for its construction with silver dollars. In those days Roseville was all farm country. Now it’s one of the oldest suburbs in the Twin Cities, a bedroom community feeding both Minneapolis and St. Paul, populated by row after row of houses whose most prominent feature seems to be an attached garage. I don’t like the suburbs, probably because I’ve never felt comfortable there, and I don’t understand how other people can feel comfortable there. There’s no connection between the place and the residents, no sense of community. In the city you live on a street, you belong to a neighborhood. Schools, parks, the hamburger joint down the street, the bar up the block, the drugstore on the corner—they all become a part of you and you become a part of them, a fusion of identities. The suburbs? You can swap locations, mix and match the houses, change names and it wouldn’t matter, no one would notice. In the Cities, you can be an Eastsider or a Highland Parker or a Nordeaster. But you can only live in Roseville.
    I moved to Roseville at Laura’s insistence. She had wanted a suburban neighborhood. Jennifer was still a gleam in our eyes back then. Even so, Laura wanted to live where she insisted the schools were better, the crime was less and the children were safer. So we bought the house, paying more for it than we could afford, even on two incomes. Now I own it outright, having used Laura’s mortgage-insurance policy to pay it off—funny, we took out the policy on me to protect her; adding a rider for her was an afterthought. I’ve considered selling the house several times since Laura and Jennifer were killed, only I can’t bring myself to put up a F OR S ALE sign under the willow tree in the front yard where Jennifer played. Maybe it’s because the house and what’s in it is all I have left of them—that and some photographs I’ve already committed to memory.
    I dropped the backpack on the kitchen table, opened it and retrieved the videotape, taking time first to read the note I found wedged in my front door. It was from Heather Schroten-boer. The note said she had come by about seven-thirty as planned and discovered I wasn’t home. She guessed I was working and