The first few weeks after I’d moved from DC to Virginia, my senses were still attuned to him. I thought I saw his slick-haired, preppy-clothed frame everywhere. I could have sworn I heard his confident voice. Recognized his laugh. I even woke up sometimes at night thinking I’d felt the fan of his breath on my neck.
But we were done.
As categorically as a lawyer could, I’d broken things off. I left him just as surely as I left all the little gifts he’d given me. I put them in a pile on his kitchen counter, keeping only a small cactus, an aloe plant, and a planted palm. They were his, but I didn’t figure he’d notice. The diamond tennis bracelet, the smartwatch I’d never really liked, the cashmere sweaters, the calfskin boots, the luxury handbags—I left them all behind.
He understood my background. He knew I didn’t have the money to spend on myself. I’d protested every gift he gave me, but he always replied the same: “It’s all in the details. I know you’re brilliant and it’s what’s inside you that counts. But if you look the part of a successful, high-powered lawyer, then it will be easier for other people to see you that way too. You don’t want to give them any reason to discount you.”
In hindsight it was a bunch of BS. He gave me all those things for another reason entirely, but he was right. He was absolutely right. Especially in the world of the DC elite.
If I had sold those gifts on Craigslist I might have made a couple thousand dollars. I could have used that money. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe I was leading with my heart instead of my brain, but he’d taken enough of my past from me. I didn’t want him to have anything to do with my future.
I scootered past brick colonials and sprawling Arts and Crafts bungalows.
Past a school.
More houses.
I heard the thump of tires as a car pulled up next to me at a stop sign, baking me for a moment in the heat from its engine. Then it rolled through the intersection, leaving me behind.
I let it. I’d rather have a car ahead of me than behind me. I waited until the air had cleared of the exhaust, until the dust and pollen had come to rest. Then I pressed down on the throttle and glided on.
At the end of the block, where a modern, angular concrete-and-glass home stuck out like a pariah, I turned onto a narrow curving street. The houses along it didn’t have garages and, for reasons that weren’t apparent to me, most of the residents ignored their driveways. Fortunately, my side was mostly clear.
Behind me, I heard another car coming, wheels churning over scattered gravel that had been left behind after a road repair project.
I pulled my elbows in, moving away from the middle of the street toward the sidewalk.
I threw a glance over my shoulder.
The car was coming up fast.
There was a pothole right in front of me. I slowed, made a sharp turn to the right, and tried to navigate the thin strip of road between the pothole and the curb. I’d have to turn left—hard—to avoid running myself into a parked car.
As I scootered around the pothole, the car flew past me so closely that its tire thumped into the pothole and the side mirror caught the scooter’s handlebar.
It pulled me along for a moment.
The sudden momentum was dizzying. I put a hand to the side mirror and tried to lever myself away.
Didn’t work.
“Hey!” I bent, taking one hand off the handlebar in an attempt to pound on the window.
The car jerked in my direction, throwing me off balance.
On instinct, I pressed my foot on the back wheel to brake.
The wheels scraped against the pavement, making everything worse.
If I didn’t break free soon, I was going to get dragged into a parked car.
But we were going too fast for me to risk jumping off.
I squatted, lowering my center of gravity, and tried to rock myself free.
That didn’t work either.
The car sped up. As it did, it hit another pothole, shaking me free.
The sudden abandonment of our game of tug-of-war left me reeling. I lost my balance. I put a foot to the pavement, then jogged a few steps.
By that time, the car was already turning the corner at the end of the street.
I walked beside the scooter for several long minutes, taking deep breaths between sobs, chanting a shaky mantra. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re alright.”
Chapter 6
Riding a scooter was not the safest form of transportation, and I’d had close calls before, but never that close. Had the driver not seen me? But how was that possible? How could a person wearing a red blouse not be visible? If I hadn’t swerved toward the sidewalk to avoid that pothole, the car would have hit me!
All I wanted was to get inside. To be safe.
I left the scooter at a wide spot in the sidewalk. If someone scootered away with it before I had to work in the morning, then I would just use my app to find another.
I walked down the sidewalk and then up the long driveway toward the house. The blue iris that lined the drive in June had melted during a series of summer thunderstorms, then were overtaken by hordes of orange daylilies. At the top of the driveway, I ignored the paver stones that wrapped around the side of the house and took the herringbone brick path that led to the front door. I walked up the front steps and rang the bell.
Though my rent was rock bottom and the utilities and Wi-Fi were free, it came with a stipulation. I was supposed to check in daily with the eighty-year-old owner. She lived upstairs in the main part of the house.
A month before I moved in, she had a heart attack. The basement apartment was a compromise with her children. They kept asking her to sell the house and move into a retirement community; she kept refusing. I was the buffer that permitted civil conversations.
“Whitney Garrison! You’re home early!” Mrs. Harper always greeted me with enthusiasm, as if she’d been waiting all day for me to return. “Come in, come in!” She opened the door wide as she pushed a pair of purple tortoiseshell readers from her nose up into her hair. “Come in and tell me about your day.” She said the words as she walked from the front hall into her living room.
The walls were covered with framed damask fabric panels in cream, peach, and pale blue. A gleaming chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling.
A grand piano sat in front of the room’s bay window, and a set of skirted furniture clustered around the brick fireplace.
When I first moved in, I told her I’d taken piano lessons once upon a time, and she told me to use her piano whenever I wanted. Her children were living out somewhere in Loudoun County. Her grandchildren much too busy to visit. And her hands? They’d betrayed her. She held them out for me to see. Beneath her sparkling rings, arthritis had bent and twisted what once had been long, elegant fingers.
In spite of her invitation, I hadn’t yet used the piano. I didn’t have time.
I shed my backpack and sat down in a swivel chair as she perched on a love seat. My hands were still trembling, so I tucked them under my thighs. I gave her the short version of my day, leaving out the part about the murder. And the part about almost being hit by a car.
Due to her heart condition, I was not, under any circumstances, to distress her.
She told me about her day. Her daughter, Jess, the one who’d been a champion swimmer at the country club, had called. Besides that? She’d been out and about running errands and had gone to the club to work out. She didn’t mind water aerobics so much—she’d signed up because you could only do it in summer when the pool was open—but she’d be happy to get back to her Pilates. Her conversation moved on to her friends.
I’d never met Doris or Helen or Irene, but I knew almost everything about them. Whose husbands had died. Whose children lived in the area and whose lived away. They all liked to travel together. At the end of the next week, they were headed to Bermuda. As she talked, I found myself thinking about the shooting, and a longing for my apartment crept over me. After about ten minutes, I couldn
’t help myself. I stood. Grabbed my backpack. Smiled. “I’d better get back to studying.”
She stood as well. “Forgive me! I shouldn’t keep you.”
The kitchen had a back door, which opened onto the deck. It was a quicker route to my basement than going out the front door and around. I might have used the interior stairs that led from the front hall down to the basement, but in deference to my privacy, she never used them herself. Her folding step stool leaned against the door and her collection of reusable grocery bags hung from its knob.
She walked to the back door with me.
As I went out, she called me back. “I almost forgot! I have a package for you.”
For me? “I haven’t ordered anything.” I didn’t have the money to.
“Maybe someone ordered it for you. Birthday present?”
“My birthday’s in the fall.”
“Well. Surprises are always nice, aren’t they?”
It had to be from my father. He was the only one who knew where I lived. Was that why he’d been so strange when we were texting? Maybe he was waiting for some sort of reaction to the package.
“Can you wait for a minute? I’ll go get it.”
I really didn’t want to wait. I just wanted to get to my apartment, close the door, and lock it behind me. Maybe I’d even study in bed. But she had already disappeared. She soon came back, hand at her hip. “I thought I put it on the front table, but I can’t find it now. I don’t know where I put it.”
I told her not to worry. “It’s nothing I’ve been waiting for. Just let me know when you find it and I’ll come back up to get it.”
I continued on my way, crossing the deck, then went down into the yard to access my apartment. It would have been convenient if the steps down to the basement met the steps that led up to the deck, but they were at opposite ends. I’d worn a trail in the grass going back and forth.
Shadows were creeping toward the house from the trees that lined the property. The space under the deck was already a dark void.
I hurried past.
My basement door was at the bottom of a concrete stairwell. I’d placed a big terra-cotta planter filled with impatiens on the retaining wall beneath the deck. Mrs. Harper had won it at a garden club meeting and passed it on to me. The plants liked the cooler air that pooled there in the shade. But now the planter rested, shattered, at the bottom of the stairwell.
I glanced over my shoulder out into the backyard.
Daylilies and giant hostas waved back at me.
How had the planter fallen? The wind had been fierce earlier in the day, but not against that wall. It was too well protected by the deck.
Slipping off my backpack, I knelt and pulled the terra-cotta pieces from the dirt and the flowers. I stacked them inside the half of the planter that was still intact and pushed it toward the wall. I’d dump it in the garbage on my way to work the next morning.
But what to do about the impatiens? With their roots exposed, they’d soon die.
I fished a scoop-shaped shard out of the remains and used it to dig a hole in the dirt beneath the deck. I placed the impatiens in it and then covered their roots. They’d be safe there, and sheltered, until I could find something else to put them in.
I brushed the dirt from my hands, then picked up my backpack and let myself in the door. Turning on the light, I stepped into what Mrs. Harper called the rec room.
Despite the heat of July it was unpleasantly, humidly chill. With its faux beams and wet bar with accompanying spindle-backed oak bar stools, it was a time capsule from the midnineties. There was still a green leather wood-framed couch beneath one of the windows and some ghostly marks pressed into the carpet where several chairs used to be. What some people might have preferred to disguise with throw rugs, posters, or tapestries, I had decided to ignore. Mostly because I couldn’t afford to do otherwise. But also because it reminded me of a picture I’d once seen of a ski chalet in Switzerland.
I’d always wanted to visit Switzerland.
I moved the plants I kept on the bar top. When I left in the mornings, I made sure they sat squarely in the ray of sun that slanted in through one of the high, narrow basement windows. When I came home at night, I grouped them beneath a grow light I’d picked up at a bargain. It was the one luxury I’d allowed myself since I’d moved in.
My ex had only used the aloe vera, palm, and cactus as decorating props. He paid a plant whisperer to come in every week and take care of them, so I hadn’t felt guilty when I took them with me.
Since then, I’d added a start from Mrs. Harper’s hoya and one from her jade plant.
Some people had cats. Some had dogs. I had plants. Which were just as demanding as any other life form. If I was being honest, they gave me structure and purpose . . . as well as peaceful vibes and clean air. But more importantly, I recognized them.
Every single one.
The aloe, with its long, prickled, fleshy spears, was different from the jade with its shiny, rounded, plump leaves. The palm was the opposite of the cactus. They required nothing of me that I couldn’t give. And in return for my attention, they thrived.
Okay. Maybe not the hoya. The hoya grew best with a regimen of benign neglect.
They say every child, even those born into the same family, has his own unique requirements. Plants do too.
I ran a fingertip along the leaves of the palm. It came away dusty. I wet a paper towel and used it to wipe down the leaves.
Even though I hadn’t eaten lunch, I wasn’t that hungry. But I was exhausted. And shaky. I walked over to the bar where I kept milk, eggs, and cheese in the mini fridge beneath the counter. I made my nightly two-egg omelet on a hot plate and added some toast. Then I grabbed an apple from a plastic bag filled with them and hauled my study books out of my backpack along with a new pack of index cards.
As I dove into my study guide, Mrs. Harper phoned. “I was wondering if you might be able to help me, Whitney.”
I helped her with something almost every night. Sometimes it was a lightbulb that needed to be changed. Sometimes it was an investigation of some strange noise. She was always very appreciative. “You sure made that look easy!” she would say as she patted my forearm when she let me out the back door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I decided that, in fact, was the reason for the phone calls and little tasks. If I didn’t say, “See you tomorrow,” in return, she’d repeat the phrase.
See you tomorrow.
I didn’t mind. I’d done the same when I was a kid. I’d placed an inordinate amount of faith in the fact that if my mother said she’d see me in the morning, then she would. If I were Mrs. Harper, if I’d had a heart attack, I probably would have pressed for assurance that I’d see another sunrise too.
As I hung up, I glanced out the window of the back door.
The concrete stairwell was already shrouded in twilight. Who knew what was out there in the shadows?
I tried to reason myself out of the prickling of panic that had spread up my arms.
What’s out there? Birds, squirrels, rabbits.
My argument wasn’t very convincing.
I’d played along with Mrs. Harper since the night I moved in. But I didn’t feel like playing tonight.
My phone rang again.
I jumped and then stretched across the bar to pick it up. To make it stop ringing.
It was Mrs. Harper. “Whitney? Are you coming?”
“Sorry. I just— Yes. Can you turn on the deck light for me?”
I waited until the light slanted through the boards of the deck before I left my apartment. And when I did, I had my phone in my hand, ready to make an emergency call if I needed to. Detective Baroni had insisted that everything would be alright, but it didn’t feel that way. Not yet.
That night Mrs. Harper’s task involved her television. It didn’t take long to fix. And then I had to go back outside.
“See you tomorrow?”
I was so absorbed in steeling myself to open
the kitchen door that I almost forgot to say my part.
“Whitney?”
“What? Sorry. Yes. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mrs. Harper.”
* * *
I tried to study that night, I really did, but I kept hearing things.
I put my pen down several times and turned toward the door to listen.
Nothing.
I decided it was just nerves.
But as I had done when I’d first moved in—still traumatized by my ex, still anticipating him around every corner—I moved my books down to the far end of the bar and I angled my stool so I was facing the door and the windows that sat high on the outside wall.
It didn’t help.
I could have sworn I saw things moving at the top of the steps. I blinked once. Twice.
I had to get a grip. Had to shake off the shooting and the scooter incident. I told myself—again—that it was probably just squirrels.
But I got up and let the mini blinds down over the windows on the door, and then I found my cell phone. All I’d wanted earlier was to get to my apartment and be alone. Now? I desperately wanted company, someone to talk to. I needed something to keep my thoughts from the murder. I called my dad.
“Whit.” I could almost hear him clamp down his smile by biting the inside corner of his cheek. “I must be some hot property. Can’t get enough of me?”
“Never. I just—I just wanted to say hi.”
There was a long pause on the other end. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine. Everything’s fine. I was just thinking maybe I could come out for a few days at Christmas maybe.”
“Oh. Christmas? Let’s talk. Maybe when it gets a little closer. We can figure it out.”
He was always saying he wished I lived closer, and now he wasn’t sure about seeing me at Christmas? “Sure. Yeah. Well, I’ll talk to you soon then?”
“Hmm?”
“Talk to you soon?”
“Yes. Of course. Yes. Great talking to you. You just keep living the dream.” He paused. “So proud of you.”
“Are you okay, Dad?”
“What? Fine. Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Just distracted. Sorry. I’m fine.”
Everywhere to Hide Page 4