Her Every Fear

by Peter Swanson

  “It was nice meeting you, Jack,” Kate said, and they shook hands again. He kept his gloves on this time. “I’m sorry, but I need to get some shopping done.”

  She left him on the street corner and walked, at a pace she hoped wasn’t too noticeably brisk, toward the small grocery store she’d been to the day before. She felt guilty, but she also knew that she couldn’t really do anything to comfort him. He needed to find someone else who knew Audrey. She also wanted to be on her own to think about what she’d learned. Corbin had been involved with Audrey. They’d been sleeping together, and it had turned sour, at least in the eyes of Audrey. Maybe in his eyes as well. Kate’s mind spun out possibilities. Audrey becoming possessive and Corbin panicking, trying to get away from her. He accepted the job transfer to London. But, then, on his last night in Boston he thought he’d go and say goodbye to Audrey, tell her that he was leaving town. And maybe she freaked out on him, attacked, and Corbin, defending himself . . .

  Kate pushed the escalating thoughts out of her mind and opened the glass door of the grocery store. But with a single look at the narrow, crowded aisles, panic flooded over her, hollowing out her insides. She backed away from the fragrant warmth spilling from the inside of the store, and bumped into a couple in running gear, trying to push past her. “Sorry,” she said, eyeing an empty bench in front of a store that sold vintage prints.

  She sat down and did her breathing exercises.

  Face it. Accept it. Float with it. Let time pass.

  A plane went by overhead, too low, she thought, and the sound of its engine made Kate’s scalp prickle and tighten. She began to tap her finger pads together, then made herself stop, and stood up. She was no longer hungry but knew she had to eat. Across the street was a small, walk-up pizza place called the Upper Crust, where she bought herself a slice of pesto pizza and a cream soda. She went back to the bench to eat. It was cold, but the open air felt better than being inside.

  Walking back home, she half expected to see Audrey’s lovelorn friend still at the corner where she had left him, but he was gone. He wasn’t stalking the front of 101 Bury Street either, and Kate was relieved to make it back up to her apartment without encountering anyone else.

  Back inside, she studied the walls around her. Was this the apartment of a killer? If it was, would she be able to tell? There was so little of Corbin here. Besides being luxurious and spacious, it didn’t feel like anything. No, that wasn’t entirely true. It felt like a dead man’s apartment. It felt like Corbin’s father’s place. The furniture was beautiful but slightly dated; one of the sofas was upholstered in a floral print. And the artwork on the walls—most of it original—was abstract oil paintings, interesting (Kate thought) but dated somehow. No, very few, if any, of the furnishings in the house belonged to Corbin. He’d inherited his father’s place and kept it exactly the same, even down to the framed photographs.

  Kate, starting to relax a little, sat down and thought about what it meant. What would she have done if she inherited this place? Probably the same. It looked nice—why change it? And maybe Corbin had been particularly fond of his father, and keeping everything the same was a way to honor him. It was a possibility. But it was also a possibility that there was nothing of Corbin’s around because he wanted to hide, because he didn’t want people to see who he really was. And if that were the case, was there a place where he did express himself? Where was the real Corbin?

  Kate went to the window with the best view of Bury Street. It was still quiet. She’d expected to maybe see Audrey’s lovelorn friend again, watching the building for any sign of another inhabitant he could grill. Hadn’t she read somewhere that criminals liked to return to the scene of their crimes? No, she thought. Jack Ludovico had been strange, but one thing he hadn’t seemed was guilty of a crime. For once, her mind was not unspooling toward the worst possibility. He was what he seemed. An old boyfriend grappling with disbelief and grief. Easy to read, not like Corbin, who had an apparently complicated relationship with Audrey, plus a key to her apartment.

  Thinking about the key made her remember that she needed to call the detective.

  She went to the bedroom where she’d left Detective James’s card, then thought of her sketchbook under the bed. She was suddenly sitting on the carpet, the sketchbook open to a new page, drawing Jack Ludovico’s face, her hand moving automatically and without thought over the page. She drew him with his head cast down slightly, eyes looking up. When she finished, she pulled the charcoal pencil back and knew that she’d got him on the first try. It was a perfect rendering. She dated the picture and put his name under it.

  She sat for a moment more, trying to remember why she had come into the bedroom. The detective’s card. She was going to call her. She walked to the phone in the living room. The detective picked up after two rings.

  “Hi. It’s Kate Priddy. You left me your card.”

  A slight pause, then: “Hi, Kate. What can I do for you?”

  “It’s about Audrey Marshall. I found a key in my apartment, in Corbin Dell’s apartment, really, and it has the initials ‘AM’ on it.”

  “You think he might have had a key to Audrey’s apartment?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Did you test it?” the detective asked.

  Kate was surprised, not expecting to be asked that, but something about the detective’s casual nature caused her to own up to the truth: “Actually, I did. It’s the key. It’s Audrey’s key. I mean, he probably just had it so that he could water her plants when she was gone, or something.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. We’re in contact with your cousin and he’s been helpful. I’ll ask him about the key.”

  “Oh, he knows now?”

  “He does. He’s been helpful but said that he didn’t know Audrey particularly well. He sounded most concerned about you.”

  “He said he didn’t know Audrey well?”

  “That’s what he said. Excuse me a moment . . .”

  Kate listened to muffled voices for a moment—the detective speaking with someone else.

  “Sorry, Kate, I’m back,” Detective James said. “Was there anything else?”

  “No, just the key. And I talked with a friend of Audrey’s. Jack Ludovico.”

  “Oh yeah?” She sounded interested. “How did you meet him?”

  “He was in front of the building, said he was coming from the police station—that he’d talked with someone there, and he was hoping to get more information.”

  “What’s the name again?”

  “Didn’t he come to the station?”

  “He might have, Kate. I just got here myself and I haven’t checked in with all my colleagues yet.”

  “It’s Jack Ludovico. He actually had a different story about Corbin and Audrey. He said they were involved.”

  “I’d like to follow up with you about this, Kate, if I can. Can I call you back? Is this a good number to reach you?”

  “Sure. Yes, I’m calling from the apartment.”

  “And thank you for letting us know about the key, and don’t hesitate to call again with anything, okay? Even if it seems insignificant.”

  Kate hung up the phone. She sat quietly for a moment, thinking: Did I make a mistake by not telling her that I’d seen the man from across the courtyard peering into Audrey’s apartment? She decided, swiftly, that not telling the detective about Alan Cherney was not a mistake. Of course he was looking across and into the apartment. There’d been a murder. He must have heard about it, and he was curious. Curious and upset, probably. It was natural.

  When bad things happened, the world always looked. Kate knew that more than most people.

  Chapter 9

  Kate finished her long e-mail to her mother, detailing what had happened since she’d arrived in Boston. She knew that as soon as she sent it, her mother would ask her to come home. Not so much for the sake of safety—although that would obviously be part of it—but because of what Kate had gone through
with George Daniels.

  She’d met George her first year at university. He was in earth sciences, and she was in the arts, but they’d ended up in the same beginning Greek course. Kate struggled in the course and ended up asking George for help. She’d only asked him because he looked studious and trustworthy. He wasn’t bad looking, but at eighteen years old he looked like a fully licensed chartered accountant. He was tall and lanky, most of his height coming from his long legs. He wore plain spectacles, always dressed in corduroys and sweater vests, and was beginning to lose his hair. But the hair loss had left George with a prominent widow’s peak that she found attractive. After several study sessions, he nervously asked Kate if she’d like to go to dinner sometime; he suggested an Italian place that he’d heard was very good.

  She said yes, intrigued about what it would be like to go on such an old-fashioned date instead of just meeting up with some boy at the student union pub. And it had felt like an old-fashioned date. George even wore a tie under one of his sweater vests. It should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. George and Kate had lots in common; both were secret poetry fans, and both were obsessed with Twin Peaks. That weekend they spent all of Saturday and part of Sunday in George’s room watching the entire first season on George’s laptop in his bed. By Monday they had each lost their virginity, and Kate was certain that she was in love. George, she knew, felt the same way.

  They were together for a year, safe in the bubble of their relationship. Kate felt safe, anyway. Her whole life had been colored by her conviction that tragedy was always about to strike. The therapist her parents had brought her to when she was eight had asked her to name the three things she was most frightened of, and Kate had burst into tears, overwhelmed by having to reduce a world of strangers, spiders, gas leaks, bullies, invisible germs, and violent weather into just three simple fears. She was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder—to the surprise of no one—but also with fantasy-prone disorder. She was simply too imaginative.

  What was comforting about George was that he planned everything, down to the little details. Kate still worried—her mind one of those rattling filmstrips that only showed lurid safety films from health class—but her worries would never change George’s mind, and it took some pressure off her. For summer holiday after that first year of university, he booked a trip around the Greek islands. They were to fly from London to Athens, then take ferries to Santorini, Crete, and, finally, Rhodes. Kate had only flown once, as a thirteen-year-old, to the Azores, and her parents had promised her afterward that they’d never make her do it again. She remembered the feeling well, the plane taking off and her conviction that death was swallowing her whole. The feeling had gone beyond panic and into the cold vacuum of pure terror. Kate told George about it, told him she didn’t think she could fly to Athens, but he’d looked at her calmly and told her he’d already planned it. “It’s all booked, Kate,” he’d said, his voice telling her that there wasn’t going to be a conversation.

  In a way, it made things easier. The days leading up to the flight Kate felt like she was moving through air that had solidified into something without oxygen. Her chest ached, and she’d begun chewing the insides of her cheeks again, her mouth constantly tainted by the taste of blood. But she knew she couldn’t cancel, simply because it had been booked, and George had booked it, and when he made a plan he stuck with it. And in the end, she took the flight, helped along by several gin and tonics. It was bad, but she survived, and once the plane had safely landed and she had been disgorged into the chaos of Athens International, a giddy sense of possibility came over her. That sense carried over into the entirety of the trip. She thought she’d hate the ferries, but she was okay with them, the open sky and long vistas helping her to relax. It was a happy trip for the first few days, and then George’s jealousy and paranoia kicked in.

  He’d always been possessive, ever since that first weekend they’d spent together. He’d quiz her regularly on whether she found any of her fellow students attractive. She quickly learned to say no. If they went to a party together—a rare occurrence—Kate learned to talk only to other women, or George would sulk for days. She even learned that if they went to a movie together—something with Brad Pitt, say—that she shouldn’t even mention that she found him attractive. She learned that the hard way. “He’s Brad Pitt. I’d never in a million years meet him, you know.”

  “And I suppose if you did meet him, you’d just up and fuck him?” George answered.

  “Of course not.”

  “But you find him attractive. Obviously, you want to fuck him, so why wouldn’t you if he offered?”

  “God, George. I wouldn’t be with him because I only want to be with you.”

  “Then why would you be attracted to him?”

  It went on like that for several days, and Kate learned to never mention any man’s name—famous or not famous—again.

  It got worse in Greece. Maybe it was the beaches, and all that tawny flesh on display. Kate kept her eyes on her book, or off into the blinding distance, but it was impossible to not occasionally glance at the parade of bodies, the men in briefs and the women mostly topless. Kate was self-conscious in her sea-green one-piece, and her pale skin that reddened instead of tanned. One afternoon she found herself watching a teenage girl dart in and out of the Mediterranean. Her bikini bottoms were the color of light brown skin, so that she seemed entirely naked. Even though she was past puberty, she still acted like a young girl, running in and out of the foaming surf. Kate wondered if she’d ever felt that giddy or free, even when she was very young.

  That night, at dinner, George, after ten minutes of silence, asked Kate if she was a lesbian. She tried to laugh it off, but George wouldn’t let it go, and Kate, for the rest of the trip, tried not to look at anyone.

  But the worst incident happened on their last night, in Heraklion, Crete. On the other side of the road from the beach was a long line of competing cafés and restaurants. By late afternoon the restaurants would each send one of their waiters out toward the sidewalk to try to lure the tourists. “Look at the menu,” they’d say. “Freshest fish in Heraklion.” On the bad night, George and Kate had been coerced into looking at the menu of a pizza place, and then agreed to take a seat outside on the patio. Seating them, the handsome waiter had said: “We’ll put the beautiful English lady facing the street so all the men will want to come here.” Kate laughed, and to her horror, felt a blush suffuse her cheeks. George got quiet. They ordered a carafe of the terrible Greek wine and a seafood pizza. Halfway through the meal Kate said, “You’re not upset about what that waiter said, are you? You know he says that to every woman he seats?”

  “So is that why you keep looking at him?” George replied.

  “I haven’t looked at him once since we sat down, George.”

  They were silent for the rest of the meal, but continued the conversation later in their inexpensive hotel room three blocks away.

  “I would never have brought you to Greece if I’d known what it would do to you,” George said. He was so angry that flecks of spit flew from his lips.

  “It’s not doing anything to me, George. It’s doing something to you.”

  “You’re honestly telling me that you’re not going to lay in bed tonight dreaming of what it would be like to fuck that Greek waiter. I saw the way you looked at him. Why don’t you just go back, go be with him . . .”

  “Maybe I will,” Kate said, and knew immediately she shouldn’t have.

  George grabbed her by the shoulders and started to push her toward the door. “Go, then,” he shouted, his fingers digging into her sunburned flesh. Not knowing what else to do, Kate stopped resisting and dropped to the uncarpeted floor. She began to sob as George repeatedly punched the wall until a crack appeared and his knuckles were bloody.

  “Does Daddy get jealous?” Kate asked her mother the first time she saw her after returning from Greece.

  “Jealous of what?”

  “Of you, and other men?”


  “God, no. Why?”

  “What about when you were first together? When you were dating?”

  “Maybe a little, but only because when I started dating your father I was still stepping out with Robert Christie.” She took a sip of her wine. Rain slashed against the glass of the conservatory.

  “That must have driven him mad?”

  “I don’t know about it driving him mad, exactly, but it spurred him to action. He asked me to marry him a lot sooner than I think he would have done otherwise. Not that Robert Christie ever would have asked me to marry him.”

  “And since then?”

  “We’re married, darling, and your father’s not the jealous type. Why are you asking all these questions?”

  Kate told her mother about George’s jealous streak. She told her pretty much everything, only omitting the night in Heraklion that ended with him cracking the hotel wall with his fist.

  “That doesn’t sound good, darling.”

  “It isn’t. I love George, but I feel like I’m walking on eggshells all the time, making sure I don’t slip up and mention another man’s name.”

  “That’s ludicrous, dear. What does he think, that just because you’re together you’re not going to find other men attractive?”

  “That’s exactly what he thinks.”

  “Good lord, Kate.”

  “I know, I know. I think I need to end it.” It was the first time she’d said these words out loud, and saying them made tears start to roll down her face.

  “I think you do, too,” her mother said.

  It wasn’t easy. Kate decided to write a long letter to George, explaining her reasons in detail, and trying her hardest to ensure him about how much he had meant to her. She left the letter under his residence door before leaving for summer vacation. A week later she tried to call him and he didn’t pick up. She worried, but knew it was for the best. By August she still hadn’t heard a word, and that was when she made her mistake. She posted to Facebook that she was spending a week at her uncle’s cottage in Windermere. She simply wrote: “Walking holiday. Lake District. Bliss.”