by Mary Kubica
I react, moving quickly. I refold the note and jam it back into the sweatshirt pocket, tousling the clothes into place. I pull the string light and slide the door closed, hurrying from the room, remembering at the last minute to turn the bedroom light off, to pull the door closed just so, as it was when I found it, open a smidge.
I don’t have time to double-check that everything is as I found it. I pray that it is.
Our paths cross in the stairwell and I offer a tight smile but say nothing.
MOUSE
Once upon a time there was an old house. Everything about the house was old: the windows, the appliances, and especially the steps in the house were old. Because anytime anyone walked on them, they groaned like old people sometimes groan.
Mouse wasn’t sure why the steps did that. She knew a lot of things, but she didn’t know anything about how treads and risers rubbed together, grinding against nails and screws on the other side, somewhere below the steps where she couldn’t see. All she knew was that the steps made a noise, all of them did, but especially the last step, which made the most noise of all.
Mouse thought she knew something about those steps that no one else did. She thought it hurt for them to be stepped on, and that was the reason they groaned and pulled back from underfoot whenever she did—though Mouse only weighed forty-six pounds and couldn’t hurt a fly if she tried.
It made Mouse think of the old people across the street, the ones who moved like everything hurt, who groaned just like the stairs sometimes groaned.
Mouse was sensitive in a way other people weren’t. It worried her to walk on that last stair. And so, just as she was careful not to step on caterpillars and roly-polies when she walked down the street, Mouse took extra care to step over that last tread, though she was a little girl and her stride was not wide.
Her father tried to fix the stairs. He was always getting worked up about them, swearing under his breath about the incessant, infuriating squeak.
Then why don’t you just step over it? the girl asked her father because Mouse’s father was a tall man, his stride much wider than hers. He could have easily walked right over that last stair without putting weight on it. But he was also an impatient man, the kind who always wanted things just so.
Her father wasn’t cut out for doing chores around the house. He was much better suited for sitting behind a desk, drinking coffee, jabbering into the phone. Mouse would sit on the other side of the door when he did that and listen. She wasn’t allowed to interrupt, but if she stayed real quiet, she could hear what he had to say, the way his voice changed when he was on that phone with a customer.
Mouse’s father was a handsome man. He had hair that was a dark chestnut brown. His eyes were big, round, always watching. He was quiet most of the time, except for when he walked, because he was a big man and his footsteps were heavy. Mouse could hear him coming from a mile away.
He was a good father. He took Mouse outside and played catch with her. He taught her things about bird nests and how the rabbits hid their babies in holes in the ground. Mouse’s father always knew where they were, and he’d go to the holes, lift up the clumps of grass and fur on top, and let Mouse take a peek.
One day, when he’d had enough of that squeaky stair, Mouse’s father gathered his toolbox from the garage and climbed the steps. With a hammer, he drove nails into the tread, clamping it down to the wood on the other side. Then he grabbed a handful of finishing nails. He tapped them into the tread, reattaching it to the riser beneath.
He stood back proudly to examine his handiwork.
But Mouse’s father had never been much of a handyman.
He should have known that no matter what he did, he would never be able to fix the step. Because even after all his hard work, the stair continued to make noise.
In time, Mouse came to depend on that sound. She would lie in bed, staring up at the light that hung from her ceiling, heart beating hard, unable to sleep.
There she would listen for that last step to bellow out a warning for her, letting her know someone was coming up the stairs for her room, giving her a head start to hide.
SADIE
I watch from bed as Will changes out of his clothes and into a pair of pajama pants, dropping his clothes into the hamper on the floor. He stands for a second at the window, looking out onto the street beneath.
“What is it?” I ask, sitting upright in bed. Something has caught Will’s eye and drawn him there, to the window. He stands, contemplatively.
The boys are both asleep, the house remarkably quiet.
“There’s a light on,” Will tells me, and I ask, “Where?”
He says, “Morgan’s house.”
This doesn’t surprise me. As far as I know, the house is still a crime scene. I’d have to imagine it takes days for forensics to process things before some bioremediation service gets called in to scrub blood and other bodily fluids from inside the home. Soon Will and I will watch on as people in yellow splash suits with some sort of breathing apparatus affixed to their heads move in and out, taking bloodstained items away.
I wonder again about the violence that happened there that night, about the bloodshed.
How many bloodstained items will they have to take away?
“There’s a car in the drive,” Will tells me. But before I have a chance to reply, he says, “Jeffrey’s car. He must be home from Tokyo.”
He stands motionless before the window for another minute or two. I rise from bed, leaving the warmth of the blankets. The house is cold tonight. I go to the window and stand beside Will, our elbows touching. I look out, see the same thing he sees. A shadowy SUV parked in the driveway beside a police cruiser, both of them illuminated by a porch light.
As we watch on, the front door of the home opens. An officer steps out first, then ushers Jeffrey through the door. Jeffrey must be a foot taller than the policeman. He pauses in the open doorway for a last look inside. In his hands, he carries luggage. He steps from the home, passing the officer by. The officer closes the door and locks it behind them. The officer has met him here, I think, and kept an eye on the crime scene while Mr. Baines packed up a few personal things.
Under his breath Will murmurs, “This is all so surreal.”
I lay a hand on his arm, the closest I come to consoling him. “It’s awful,” I say because it is. No one, but especially not a young woman, should have to die like this.
“You heard about the memorial service?” Will asks me, though his eyes don’t stray from the window.
“What memorial service?” I ask, because I didn’t hear about a memorial service.
“There’s a memorial service,” Will tells me. “Tomorrow. For Morgan. At the Methodist church.” There are two churches on the island. The other one is Catholic. “I overheard people talking about it at school pickup. I checked and found the obituary online, the notice of the memorial service. I assume there will be a funeral eventually but...” he says, leaving that there, and I easily deduce that the body is still being held by the morgue and will be until the investigation is through. Formalities like a funeral and a wake will have to wait until the murderer is caught. In the interim, a memorial service will have to do.
Tomorrow I work. But depending on what time the memorial service is, I can go with Will after. I know he’ll want to go. Will and Morgan were friends, after all, and, though our relationship has been rocky of late, it would be lonely for him, I think, walking into that memorial service all alone. I can do this for him. And besides, selfishly I’d like to get a good look at Jeffrey Baines up close.
“I work until six tomorrow,” I say. “We’ll go together. As soon as I finish up. Maybe Otto can keep an eye on Tate,” I say. It would be a quick trip. I can’t imagine us staying long. We’d pay our respects and then leave.
“We’re not going to the memorial service,” Will says. His words are conclusive.
I’m taken aback, because this isn’t what I expect him to say. “Why not?” I ask.
“It feels presumptuous to go. You didn’t know her at all, and I didn’t know her that well.” I start to explain that a memorial service isn’t exactly the type of thing that one needs an invitation to attend, but I stop because I can see Will has already made up his mind.
I ask instead, “Do you think he did it?” I keep my eyes trained to Jeffrey Baines on the other side of the window. I have to crane my neck a bit to see, as the Baineses’ house isn’t directly across the street. I watch as Jeffrey and the officer exchange words in the driveway, before parting ways and heading for their own cars.
When Will doesn’t answer my question, I hear myself mutter, “It’s always the husband.”
This time, his reply is quick. “He was out of the country, Sadie. Why would you think he had anything to do with this?”
I tell him, “Just because he was out of the country doesn’t mean he couldn’t have paid someone else to kill his wife.” Because, on the contrary, being out of the country at the time of his wife’s murder provided him with the perfect alibi.
Will must see the logic in this. There’s a small, almost imperceptible nod of the head before he asks, backtracking, “What’s that supposed to mean anyway, about it always being the husband?”
I shrug and tell him I don’t know. “It’s just, if you watch the news long enough, that’s the way it seems to be. Unhappy husbands kill their wives.”
My gaze stays on the window, watching as, on the other side of the street, Jeffrey Baines pops the trunk of his SUV and tosses the luggage in. His posture is vertical. There’s something supercilious about the way he stands.
He doesn’t sag at the shoulders, he doesn’t convulse and sob like men who have lost their wives are supposed to do.
As far as I can tell, he doesn’t shed a single tear.
CAMILLE
I was addicted. I couldn’t get enough of him. I watched him, I mirrored him. I followed his routine. I knew where his boys went to school, which coffee shops he patronized, what he ate for lunch. I’d go there, get the same thing. Sit at the same table after he’d left. Forge conversations with him in my mind. Pretend we were together when we weren’t.
I thought of him all day, I thought of him all night. If I’d have had my way, he’d be with me all the time. But I couldn’t be that woman. That obsessed, hung-up woman. I had to keep my cool.
I worked hard to make sure our run-ins seemed more like chance encounters than what they were. Take, for example, the time we crossed paths in Old Town. I stepped from a building to find him on the other side of it, surrounded by pedestrian traffic. Another cog in the machine.
I called to him. He took a look, smiled. He came to me.
What are you doing here? What’s this place? he asked of the building behind me. His embrace was swift. Blink and you might miss it.
I looked at the building behind me, read the sign. I told him, Buddhist meditation.
Buddhist meditation? he asked. His laugh was light. I learn something new about you every day. He said, I never took you for the meditation type.
I wasn’t. I’m not. I hadn’t come for Buddhist meditation, but for him. Days before, I’d gotten a peek at his calendar, saw a reservation for lunch at a restaurant three doors down. I chose any old building nearby, waited in the foyer for him to pass by. I stepped from the building when I saw him, called to him and he came.
A chance encounter that was anything but.
Some days I found myself standing outside his home. I’d be there when he left for work, hidden by the chaos of the city. Just another face in the crowd. I’d watch as he pushed his way through the building’s glass door, as he blended in with the rush of commuters on the street.
From his building, Will would walk three blocks. There, he’d slip down the subway steps, catch the Red Line north to Howard, where he’d transfer to the Purple Line—as would I, twenty paces behind.
If only he’d have turned and looked, he would have seen me there.
The college campus where Will worked was ostentatious. White brick buildings sat covered with ivy, beside glitzy archways. It was thick with people, students with backpacks on, racing to class.
One morning I followed Will down a sidewalk. I kept just the right distance, close but not too close. I didn’t want to lose him, but I couldn’t risk being seen. Most people aren’t patient enough for this kind of pursuit. The trick is to fit in, to look like everyone else. And so that was what I did.
All at once, a voice called for him. Hey, Professor Foust!
I looked up. It was a girl, a woman, who stood nearly as tall as him, her coat fitted and tight. There was a beanie on her head, flashy, red. Strands of unnatural blond fell from beneath the hat, draped across her shoulders and back. Her jeans were tight, too, hugging her curves before meeting with the shaft of a tall brown boot.
Will and she stood closely. In the center, their bodies nearly touched.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But the tones of their voices, the body language said it all. Her hand brushed against his arm. He said something to her and they both doubled over in laughter. She had her hand on his arm. I heard her then. She said to him, Stop it, Professor. You’re killing me. She couldn’t stop laughing. He watched her laugh. It wasn’t the hideous way most people laugh, mouths wide, nostrils flaring. There was something delicate about it. Something graceful and lovely.
He leaned in close, whispered into her ear. As he did, the green-eyed monster grabbed ahold of me.
There’s a saying. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Which is why I took the time to get to know her. Her name was Carrie Laemmer, a second-year pre-law student with aspirations of becoming an environmental lawyer. She was in Will’s class, that one in the front row whose hand shot up every time he asked a question. The one who lingered after class, who bantered about poaching and human encroachment as if they were something worth discussing. The one who stood too close when they thought they were alone, who leaned in, who confessed, Such a damn tragedy about the mountain gorilla, wanting him to console her.
One afternoon I caught her as she was making her way out of the lecture hall.
I brushed up beside her, said, That class. It’s killing me.
I carried the class textbook in my hands, the one I spent forty bucks on just to make believe I was in the same class as her, just another student in Professor Foust’s global public health course.
I’m in over my head, I told her. I can’t keep up. But you, I said, praising her to high heaven. I told her how smart she was. How there was nothing she didn’t know.
How do you do it? I asked. You must study all the time.
Not really, she said, beaming. She shrugged, told me, I don’t know. This stuff just comes easily for me. Some people say I must have a photographic memory.
You’re Carrie, aren’t you? Carrie Laemmer? I asked, letting it go to her head, this idea that she was somebody special, that she was known.
She reached out a hand. I took it, told her I could really use some help if she had time. Carrie agreed to tutor me, for a fee. We met twice. There, in some little tea shop just off campus where we drank herbal tea, I learned that she was from the suburbs of Boston. She described it for me, this place where she grew up: the narrow streets, the ocean views, the charming buildings. She told me about her family, her older brothers, both collegiate swimmers for some top-ranked college, though she, oddly enough, couldn’t swim. But there were many things she could do, all of which she listed for me. She was a runner, a mountain climber, a downhill skier. She spoke three languages and had an uncanny ability to touch her tongue to her nose. She showed me.
She spoke with a classic Boston accent. People loved to hear it. Just the sound of her voice drew people to her. It lured them in. It didn’t
matter what she had to say. It was the accent they liked.
She let that go to her head, as she let many things go to her head.
Carrie’s favorite color was red. She knit the beanie herself. She painted landscapes, wrote poetry. Wished her name was something like Wren or Meadow or Clover. She was your quintessential right-brain type, an idealist, a wishful thinker.
I saw Will and her together many times after that. The odds of running into someone on a campus that size are small. Which is how I knew that she sought him out, that she knew where he’d be and when. She put herself there, made him think it was kismet that made them keep running into each other instead of what it really was. A trap.
I’m not insecure. I don’t have an inferiority complex. She was no prettier than me, no better. This was plain and simple jealousy.
Everyone gets jealous. Babies get jealous, dogs do, too. Dogs are territorial, the way they stand guard on their toys, their beds, their owners. They don’t let anyone touch what’s theirs. They get angry and aggressive when you do. They snarl, they bite. They maul people in their sleep. Anything to protect their belongings.
I didn’t have a choice about what happened next. I had to protect what was mine.
SADIE
Later that night, I awaken from a dream. I come slowly to, and find Will sitting in the slipcovered chair in the corner of the room, hiding among the shadows. I just barely make out the outline of him, the blackened curve of his silhouette and the faint glow off the whites of his eyes as he sits there, watching me. I lie in bed awhile, too drowsy and disoriented to ask him what he’s doing, to suggest that he come back to bed with me.
I stretch in bed. I roll over, onto my other side, dragging the blanket with me, turning my back toward Will in the chair. He’ll come to bed when he’s ready.
I fold myself into the fetal position. I pull my knees into me, press them into my abdomen. I brush against something in the bed. Will’s dense memory foam pillow, I assume, but soon feel the swell of a vertebrae, the convexity of a shoulder blade instead. Beside me, Will is shirtless, his skin clammy and warm to the touch. His hair falls sideways, down his neck, pooling on the mattress.