He was Walking Alone

by P. D. Workman

  “Thanks,” Zachary told him, stepping over the gap into the corridor. He kept moving, showing the other tenant that he was able to manage on his own and didn’t need to be physically escorted to his door.

  The doors swooshed closed. Zachary stopped and stood still, one hand on the wall, waiting for the nausea the elevator had induced to calm back down. Then he walked slowly down the hallway to his door and let himself in. No lurching, no need to hold on to the wall, just a normal walk like it was any other day. He closed and locked the door and sat down in a chair in his kitchen, the closest piece of available furniture. He put his shoulder bag with his laptop and other items on the floor and took a few more breaths.

  His phone buzzed, and Zachary took it out to look at it. A text message from Kenzie.

  I just remembered how Christmas decorations bother you. Sorry. U ok?

  Zachary blew out his breath. He was fine. He’d made it on his own with no ill effects. Just like a normal person.

  Fine. Thanks for checking.

  He watched the screen for a few minutes, waiting for her response.

  Good. Call if you need to talk.

  He texted back a thumbs-up emoji and turned the screen off.

  The rest of the evening should have been fine. He was winding-up the file. Write out his conclusions. Put them together in a coherent report. Collect the rest of his fee.

  His mind kept going back to the Christmas decorations in the lobby. He was going to have to walk by them every time he went out and returned. Unless there was an alternate route out of the building. Freight elevator? Stairs? Loading dock or emergency door? He’d never explored the building; he just walked in and out the same way every day like anybody else. But surely there was another way out. There had to be emergency exits in the event of… any sort of emergency. He’d figure it out. Then he wouldn’t have to look like a fool every time he had to get through the lobby.

  But the decision to find another way in and out of the building didn’t help him to write his notes. He got hung up on the twins’ names. Noelle and Luke. They must have been Christmas babies, with Mrs. Creedy marking the occasion by giving them Christmas names.

  He was glad that Kenzie had agreed to take over the arrangements with Rhys and Vera. Zachary just couldn’t manage it on his own. One day, maybe. After all, he’d touched a Christmas tree without any ill effects. But he wasn’t ready for it yet.

  Around and around his brain went, like a hamster on a wheel. While he’d been aware that Christmas was getting closer and closer, he’d been avoiding focusing on the exact date. When Kenzie had said it was only a few days away, it had sent his brain into overdrive. It was all coming back. The blackness and despair that he had to swim through every year never seemed to get any easier. Knowing ahead of time that the depression would worsen was no help at all.

  He finally put his notes and unfinished report aside. If he couldn’t distract himself with work, then maybe it was time to just veg out in front of the TV. While the networks were full of seasonal offerings, he had a streaming account that was full of non-Christmas shows and movies. He could start on a new series and binge watch until he fell asleep or Christmas Eve was over, whichever came first.

  But he couldn’t settle on anything to watch. That hamster kept running and running around the wheel. Kenzie was going to talk to Vera and set something up. Rhys had already said he wanted to do Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, and what if Kenzie set that up instead? She said that Zachary had to go with whatever she set up. Or what if she set it up for Christmas Day and Zachary was no longer around? It wouldn’t be fair to put Rhys through something like that, especially on his first Christmas without his mother. If something happened to Zachary, it would be on Christmas Eve. Just like the fire.

  The previous year, he had been in the emergency room. Not for himself, but for Isabella, waiting to see if she would pull through after her own suicide attempt. It was ironic that her attempted suicide had pulled Zachary away from his own contemplations. Without knowing it, she had saved his life.

  Zachary went to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. While he tried to keep things in his life neat and orderly to combat his distractibility and anxiety, the medicine cabinet was one area that he could never seem to tame. Maybe because he was so often at the end of his rope when he finally decided to take something, the bottles never got put away in proper order.

  He started to turn each pill bottle around to read the prescription label and see how many pills he had left. His doctors thought it best not to dispense too many pills at one time, to try to discourage an overdose, but the different prescriptions could still be combined.

  Zachary’s hand brushed against something on the back of the mirrored door that hadn’t been there before. He opened it farther and looked at the index card taped to the inside of the door. At the top of the card was the stern instruction “Call somebody!” And on each line was a name and number. Emergency hotline. His therapist. Bridget, Kenzie, and Bowman. Mr. Peterson. Hospital.

  There was a lump in his throat. The printing, he knew, was Kenzie’s. She must have put it there the last time they had gotten together, and he hadn’t even noticed.

  He closed the medicine cabinet. It snicked softly into place against the magnetic latch. Zachary went back out to the living room and picked up his phone. He launched the phone app and tapped on Kenzie’s name.

  “Zachary.” Kenzie was mid-yawn as she said his name. “How’s it going?”

  “Can you come over?”

  Her yawn cut off in a tiny squeak. “What?”

  “Could you come over. Now.”

  “It’s kind of late.”

  “I know. If it’s too late for you… I can call someone else.”

  “Wait.” She no longer sounded sleepy. “Are you saying you need help? Are you having a bad night?”

  “I was just in the medicine cabinet… counting pills.”

  She swore. “You’re having suicidal thoughts?”

  “I just can’t… shut it all off.”

  “I’ll be right over. Do you need me to stay on the line with you?”

  “No. I’ll be okay for that long.”

  “Are you sure? Don’t play the macho card here. I’m not going to get there and find out that you couldn’t wait?”

  “I won’t do anything. I’m sitting on the couch. I’m going to stay here, right where I am, until you get here.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right over. Hang in there.”

  Zachary was true to his word and sat there on the couch, browsing again through the options on the TV, trying a game of solitaire on his phone, and staring out the window at the lights of the city, streetlights mixed with traffic lights and multicolored Christmas lights. No matter what he did, Christmas would keep coming every year, plunging him into the unwanted memories.

  Kenzie knocked at the door, calling out his name right away, as if afraid he wouldn’t be there anymore. But he had told her he would be. He got up and went to the door to unlock it. She looked at him, relief flooding her features. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled herself tightly against him. He squeezed her gently, but she didn’t release him. She kissed him urgently, and Zachary wriggled out of her grasp, overwhelmed.

  “I’m sorry,” Kenzie apologized. “I’m just so relieved to see… that you’re okay.”

  “I know. I don’t mind.” Zachary’s ears got hot. “I just… we’re in the doorway… and I can’t breathe…”

  Kenzie gave a flustered laugh. She stepped the rest of the way into the apartment and shut and locked the door behind her.

  “Yeah. Well. Let’s go sit down. Do you want to sit down? Or should we… go somewhere?”

  Zachary made a gesture toward the living room and the couch. “Yeah, come in.”

  Kenzie put her hand on his arm as they moved into the room, comforting him or reassuring herself that he was really there and was still okay. When they sat down, he noticed she sat closer to him than was usual.
r />   “Should we go somewhere?” she asked again. “Do you want me to take you to the emergency room? What can I do to help you?”

  “No. I don’t want to go out.” Especially not if he had to go past the Christmas display in the lobby. And whatever decorations they had at the hospital, though emergency room decorations were usually pretty sparse. Going to the emergency room would mean sitting and waiting for hours on end, just to have some young intern advise him that he should have his doctor do a thorough med review and send him home with a brochure on available services. Or if he wanted, he could admit himself for an evaluation, and he would be there for at least three days, taking him into the black hole of Christmas Eve.

  “You want to just talk?”

  “I don’t know.” Zachary rubbed his temples, his head pounding. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since had had slept more than a couple of hours.

  Kenzie studied him, her expression earnest and concerned. They were both turned toward each other on the couch. She put her hand on his knee. “Did you take anything before I came here?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t look good. If you did take something, you need to tell me, so we can deal with it.”

  “No. I was thinking about it… but I saw your note… and I called.”

  “I’m glad you did. And you haven’t hurt yourself?” her eyes searched his face. “When we were talking about Richard Harding cutting, I got the feeling…”

  “No.” Zachary shook his head. “I didn’t. I just called you.”

  “Do you want to talk about the case? You haven’t told me any details of what you discovered in New Hampshire.”

  Zachary’s thoughts were scattered. He gave her a disjointed account of the people he had interviewed. She was more interested in his description of what he had found on Ashley’s phone and computer.

  “So this stalker had been spying on them? Watching them, listening in on conversations?”

  “Looks like it. I passed the details on to Campbell. The more data they have, from Harding’s and my emails, the phone number that possibly sent the trojan to Ashley, and any numbers that repeat in the call and text logs… the better the chances that they’ll actually be able to find who did this.”

  Kenzie nodded slowly. Her brows were down and Zachary wondered if the words were coming out differently from what he had composed in his head. Sometimes they did.

  “Your emails?” Kenzie asked.

  “What?”

  “You had emails with this cyberstalker as well? Did he answer you, or…?”

  Zachary tried to sort through his memories. He had told Mr. Peterson about the emails when he’d been so shocked by the picture of his family. He had told Campbell about them in case they had been from Harding’s stalker instead of Tyrrell. He couldn’t remember whether he had told Bridget or whether she only knew about the initial letter. He apparently had not told Kenzie.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ve been getting emails like Harding was. I thought… that they were from my brother. Tyrrell. But it’s possible they came from Harding’s stalker.”

  Her eyes got wide. “Why didn’t you tell me about that before?”

  “I thought they were from Tyrrell… until recently.”

  “How would Harding’s stalker get your email address? How would he even know you were on the case?”

  Up until then, Zachary had been puzzled by that point. But knowing the stalker had the ability to monitor Ashley’s phone, the answer was obvious. He’d been able to hear their conversations. He knew that Ashley had hired Zachary. A two-second search on the internet was all it would take to find his email address.

  “He could hear anything that happened in earshot of Ashley’s phone. We don’t know when he was listening and when he wasn’t. From the arrival times of the emails he sends, he’s busy during the day, but when we initially met, it was for supper, in the evening.”

  “So what was in these emails? How bad are they?”

  Zachary swallowed. He couldn’t repeat out loud the things that the anonymous emailer had sent to him. He picked up his phone from the side table and went into his email app. He tapped a couple of times to find one of the more recent emails.

  Nobody wants you after the horrible things you’ve done. Why don’t you just kill yourself?

  Kenzie took it when he handed it to her and only took a couple of seconds to read it. She swore under her breath.

  “Oh, this is just what you need right now. Is that why you’re having such trouble tonight? Because of this pile of crap?”

  The corner of Zachary’s mouth twitched at her words. Even in the dark place he was in, she could still almost bring a smile to his face.

  “I probably would be anyway… but it doesn’t help. I can’t get his words out of my mind. And they keep coming…” He should have set up a filter like Devon had. Permanently delete the messages before he ever saw them. But even knowing they might have come from Harding’s stalker instead of Tyrrell, he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He needed to read them. He needed to be sure. If they were Tyrrell’s words, he couldn’t just discount them. He needed to hear them even if they hurt.

  Kenzie shook her head. “It’s horrible. You know it’s not true, don’t you? People do care about you. People would be hurt if something happened to you, especially if you harmed yourself. You haven’t been as efficient about avoiding complications as you would like to be.”

  I just like things to be uncomplicated. He had admitted to her that he tried to avoid letting anyone get too involved in his life because he didn’t want to leave anyone behind to mourn him if he did someday take the path from which he could never return. He had broken that rule with Bridget. He had tried to keep friends like Kenzie and Bowman from getting too close. But they had become a part of his life. Complications.

  “I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless thing to say.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “Poor impulse control gets the better of me…”

  “But it was the truth.”

  “Part of the truth.”

  “Do I want to hear the other part?”

  Zachary swallowed. He wasn’t able to look her in the eye, staring down at his hands instead. “Yeah… the other part is… I need you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  T

  here was only silence in return. Zachary shifted uncomfortably, looking around for something else to focus on or to keep his hands busy. Kenzie took his hands in hers.

  “Life is complicated.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “It definitely is.”

  She moved in closer, until she was snuggled up against him. Her body felt good against his. He tried to store that feeling away, to take a snapshot of it to remember during the lonely nights. She moved in and kissed him, not so desperate and insistent this time. He wasn’t sure how much time passed while they sat there on the couch, wrapped up in each other, exploring a new level of intimacy. But Zachary’s exhausted body and agitated brain couldn’t advance any further. Eventually, Kenzie withdrew. She gazed at him.

  “You look like a zombie.”

  “It’s been… a while since I’ve slept.”

  “Then let’s get you to bed.”

  She got to her feet. Zachary didn’t rise immediately. His arms and legs felt leaden. He knew he should jump at the suggestion, but he was incapable of jumping at anything, physically or emotionally. Kenzie reached down and took his hand, giving him a little tug. Zachary rose to his feet slowly and, at her insistence, he dragged himself to the bedroom. He looked at the bed, his stomach writhing with guilt and dread.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But some of the meds… and the way I feel… I don’t think I can…”

  “Shush.” She gave him a little push. “You need sleep. I promise I won’t take advantage of you.”

  Zachary felt removed from the situation, watching from a safe distance. Kenzie encouraged him to get comfortable and lie down. She kicked off her shoes and peeled off her socks. After shu
tting off the lights, she lay down behind him, wrapping her arms around him and holding him as he had held Tyrrell or one of the other children when they’d had a nightmare or were frightened by the yelling and fighting, helping them to calm down and feel safe enough to sleep. He could feel her warm breath on his neck. He tried to match his breath to hers, slow and deep instead of the quick, shallow breaths his anxiety-tightened diaphragm produced.

  “Do you need to take something?” Kenzie asked after a while, obviously able to tell that he was still awake, still too rigid and agitated to convince his brain it was time for sleep.

  “Yeah.” He tensed to get up to go to the medicine cabinet, but Kenzie pressed his shoulder down.

  “Stay put. Let me get it. What do you want?”

  “Xanax and Ambien.”

  “Both?”

  “If I’m going to get to sleep.”

  “Okay. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

  She brought him the pills and a glass of cold water. Zachary propped himself up on his elbow to wash them down, then lay down again in the warm pocket his body had created. Kenzie put the cup away and climbed into bed, again snuggling up behind him and putting comforting arms around him.

  “Just relax,” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter whether you really sleep. Just let your body and brain rest for a few hours.”

  He tried to do as he was told, and some time in the early hours of the morning, his consciousness released its hold and he dropped off to sleep.

  Zachary was groggy and disoriented on waking, conscious thoughts coming to him slowly as his brain sorted itself out. He was alive. He had been asleep and had awakened. He must have taken something to sleep or he wouldn’t have such a heavy, groggy feeling.

  He shifted his position and rubbed his eyes. It was light out. Not a filmy dawn light, but the full light of day, well into the morning. The movement he made was echoed by another body, and a hand landed on his shoulder, molding to it.