Chapter 36

We couldn't go to the beach, William explained, because he had certain obligations to fulfill to his family first. Once he put the time in, he assured me, we would do everything that we dreamed of doing in our letters.

I didn't point out how much it sounded like he was still serving a type of sentence.

We spent the night in my hotel room, splurging on a variety of food delivery in between sessions of lovemaking. In the morning, he took me out to breakfast after I shoved the rest of my belongings in my car and drove to his hometown, where there was a house already waiting for him.

"Not my house," he told me over pancakes. "Our house."

I smiled at him as I bit into a piece of bacon. I hoped that he didn't expect me to contribute to the mortgage. Later, I would learn that the house was actually owned by William's parents, who didn't deal, as the peasantry did, with mortgages.

The house was in the historic district in the city that William grew up in. I pulled into the driveway and took in the white single-story home with an expansive porch featuring a swing that looked out over the sidewalk. The door was painted a bright blue as a measure of quirkiness and next to the door was a plaque that declared the building historic.

The inside of the house was modernized, with white furniture on top of refurbished dark wood floors. Pristine couches bordered a rug placed before a wall-mounted television that hung over the fireplace. Behind the living room was a formal dining room with a table that stretched the length of the room.

I dragged my suitcase in behind me. It had been a gift from my parents before my study abroad trip when I was in college. Since then, one of the zippers had broken and the front pocket was starting to come apart at the seams. I'd never had the money to travel extensively, never mind buy myself luggage to take with me. The suitcase looked out of place in the house, the single belonging not curated by interior decorators. I took solace in the fact that there was no mirror in front of me to see if I looked the same.

The kitchen was small and tucked away at the back of the house, though its smallness was offset by an adjoining butler's pantry. The three bedrooms were lined up in a row on the right side of the house with the original bathroom placed between the first two smaller bedrooms and a second bathroom added on to the largest bedroom as a means of creating a master suite. The bathroom was large, taking up much of the space that had formerly belonged to the middle bedroom—now an office—and featured both a freestanding tub and a shower. There were two sinks, one for William and one for me.

William's belongings were already neatly tucked into the drawers of the dresser and hung in the closet according to fit and color.

"These are your drawers," he told me, gesturing to the left-hand side of the dresser. It was the first time that a man had ever offered me a sliver of space within his home. I once asked a man that I was dating if it was okay if I kept a spare outfit at his house and he broke things off the next week, saying that things were "getting too serious." The offer of the drawers and some closet space seemed like an outrageous act of kindness that could be eclipsed only by diamonds.

My belongings looked shabby next to William's, the difference between my twenty-dollar shirts and his brand-name products apparent in a way that they never had been before.

"We'll go shopping," he told me as he watched me hang my dresses in the closet.

I enjoyed the prospect of a man paying for my purchases even as I resented the implication that the things I owned weren't good enough as is.

I kept waiting to round a corner and discover a murder room decked out in a plastic tarp and a wall full of weapons, but there was nothing. There wasn't even a basement or a shed in the backyard. A true search, I knew, would have to wait until William was gone. A girl couldn't just come out and ask her fiancé if he was a murderer. That was something that needed to be kept private, like how I waited until William was on the other side of the house before daring to take a poop. Until then I marveled at my surroundings. It was the nicest place I'd ever lived, my childhood home included, and all it took to get there was getting engaged to an accused serial killer.

No, I corrected myself. I was engaged to an acquitted serial killer, though I wasn't yet convinced that there was a difference.

William made us dinner on our first night in the house together.

"I've missed cooking," he explained.

In his previous life, before anyone thought he was a murderer, William enjoyed taking gourmet cooking classes. This type of cooking was distinct from what I'd done in my studio apartment, when I grudgingly made food to stay healthy and alive. When William cooked, he wanted it to be a luxury experience.

I sat on a stool in William's kitchen—our kitchen—a wonder to me after spending weeks living off vending machine food in a hotel, and watched as he expertly tied a seasoned pork loin with twine and diced tomatoes for bruschetta.

We swung on the porch swing while the pork loin cooked, drinking red wine and eating melon wrapped in prosciutto. A couple walking by with their dogs waved at us and we waved back. They didn't know they were waving at William Thompson, the acquitted serial killer, and I wondered what it was like to move through the world with such obliviousness.

Inside, William set the table with candlesticks and dimmed the lights in the dining room. He opened a second bottle of wine before cutting into the meat, which dripped with juice.

"Cheers," he said, and we clinked our glasses together.

I'd often claimed that I couldn't tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine, but the stuff in my glass proved otherwise. It was possible that I'd never had good wine in my life.

"Tell me, Hannah. What is it that you would do with your life without any limitations?" William asked.

I took a bite of my salad and chewed thoughtfully. I didn't know where to start. There were always limitations. It wasn't a real question. It was like asking someone what books they would bring if they were stranded on a desert island. I was too worried about survival.

"I've always wanted to write a novel. Something really epic, you know? I used to love to write when I was younger, but I haven't had time in years," I told him.

William smiled through the candlelight.

"What else?" he said.

"I guess I've always wanted to run a marathon. Is that too cliché?"

"No," he replied. "Nothing is too cliché when you really want it. What else?"

"I don't know. Travel? I've been to a few places in Europe, but never to other continents. I would love to go to Japan."

"Done," William said.

"What?"

"I want you to take this time for you to do what you want. All of it. Write your novel, run a marathon, go to Japan. Don't worry about getting a job." He paused and looked at his plate, a momentary sorrow flickering across his features. "I've let down other people that I loved and I don't want to let you down. You can help me by letting me help you."

I swallowed the food in my mouth.

"I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything," he said.

There was a nagging discomfort from William's offer. I was so used to men giving me nothing that I greeted all kindnesses with suspicion. Later, I would realize that this was the standard dynamic for the Thompson family. The men went off to work while the women entertained themselves with their little hobbies and everyone acted like this was a gift.

We moved on to talking about the books that William had read in prison.

"I thought it would be a good time to read the classics," he said and laughed. "I realized quickly that Bleak House didn't provide the intrigue that I needed. I ended up reading trashy thrillers more than anything else."

"You can't beat a good thriller. Sometimes you need to be on the edge of your seat."

"That's absolutely true," William said and topped off my wine.

I was polishing off the side of roasted carrots when my hand bumped the glass, spilling red wine across the table. I froze.

William grabbed one of the white cloth napkins to wipe up the spill and I watched the crimson liquid spread across the fabric.

"I'm so sorry," I apologized.

"It's okay," he said. "Really, it's fine."

I realized that I was still waiting for something to happen, for William to wrap the twine he'd used on the pork loin around my neck, to slip poison in my glass of wine, to grab my hair and drag me across the room for ruining his perfect table. Instead, I had merely grown drunk and clumsy.

William came up behind me in the kitchen as I helped clear the plates. My body tensed as he cornered me against the counter, pressing his body against mine. He spun me around and lifted me up so that I was sitting on the counter, surrounded by the remnants of his cooking.

I thought that it was possible that he might try to kill me until he unzipped his pants and pulled my underwear aside and fucked me like he was a normal man and we were a normal couple enjoying our first night in our new house together.

Afterward, I passed him dishes and we put them in the dishwasher one by one.

I waited until he was asleep before I got out my notebook. I wrote down what William made for dinner and how he'd kissed my forehead, wet and sloppy, after we had sex.

The evening was everything I'd ever dreamed of from a man. The most that Max had ever cooked for me were some drunken pizza rolls. And yet, I could still feel that void inside of me that ached for something more. I'd gotten William the lover, but where was William the killer? Maybe I'd been misinterpreting my dreams all along. It was possible that I'd always wanted violence and not love. Or maybe I'd intertwined those things so closely that it was impossible to separate them.