The Stranger Next Door

by Joy Fielding

  “Well, if anybody else calls, just tell him . . . I don’t know. Use your imagination.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.”

  I heard her laughing as I walked down the hall, no clear idea where I was headed until I found myself in front of Sheena O’Connor’s door. I peeked inside, saw her sitting up and talking animatedly on the phone. I was about to withdraw when her voice stopped me.

  “No, wait.” She waved me inside the room. “Come in. I’ll just be another minute.”

  While she finished her conversation, I checked on the many flower arrangements and poinsettias that filled the room, watering several that were in dire need, and silently counting the others, stopping at fifteen. We love you, Mom and Dad. Merry Christmas, Munchkin, from Aunt Kathy and Uncle Steve. Way to go, Love Annie. I paused the longest at the two dozen long-stemmed yellow roses, recalling the roses Josh had sent me for Thanksgiving, wondering if there’d be a surprise bouquet waiting for me when I got home.

  “Smells like a funeral parlor in here.” Sheena laughed as she replaced the receiver.

  She looks beautiful, I thought, brown eyes as soft as sable against the whiteness of her skin. Her face was still swollen from the beating she’d received and her subsequent corrective surgery, but the deep scratches around her mouth had faded into fine lines, and the only sign her nose had been broken was a slight curvature to the left, an imperfection I rather liked, but one she probably wouldn’t.

  “I think it smells nice,” I said truthfully.

  “I guess.” She nodded toward the phone. “That was my parents. They’re on their way over with a truckful of presents.”

  “I bet they are.”

  “I just wish I could go home.”

  “I would think you’ll be going home very soon. You’ve made remarkable progress.”

  “Why don’t you sit down,” Sheena suggested. “Talk to me for a while. Unless you’re busy . . .”

  I pulled up a nearby chair, plopped down into it. “I’m not busy.”

  “How come you’re working today? Doesn’t your family mind?”

  “They don’t mind,” I said, deciding Sheena wasn’t really interested in the details of my life story. She was just making pleasant conversation as a way of passing the time before her own family arrived.

  “Are you married?” she asked unexpectedly, glancing at my bare ring finger.

  I pictured Josh, his warm eyes and warmer lips. I felt his mouth graze mine as his eyelids fluttered against my cheek. “Yes,” I told her. “I am.”

  “Do you have any kids? I bet you have lots of kids.”

  “I have a daughter,” I heard myself say, and almost gasped at my audacity. What was I doing? I tried picturing Alison as she must have looked as a little girl. “She’s older than you are.”

  “Just the one child?”

  “Just the one.”

  “I’m surprised. I would have thought you’d have at least three.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Just ‘cause I think you’d be a really good mother.” She smiled shyly. “I remember the way you sang to me. How did that song go?”

  “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra,” I sang softly. “Too-ra-loo-ra-lie . . .”

  “That’s it. It was so beautiful. It was calling to me.”

  I stopped singing. “What was it like?”

  “Being in a coma?”

  I nodded.

  She shook her head. “I guess it was like being asleep. I don’t really remember anything specific. Mostly voices off in the distance, like if I was dreaming, except there were no pictures. And then the sound of someone singing. You,” she said, and smiled. “You brought me back.”

  “Do you remember anything about the attack?”

  A shiver swept the smile from Sheena’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized immediately. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, that’s all right,” Sheena said quickly. “The police have asked me about it a hundred times. I wish I had something to tell them. But the truth is, I don’t remember a thing about the attack itself. I just remember that I was lying in my backyard, working on my tan. My parents were out and my sister was at the beach. I was waiting for a phone call—this guy I liked at school—so I didn’t want to leave the house. I stretched a blanket across the grass and lay down on my stomach. I remember undoing the back of my bikini top. It’s pretty secluded in my backyard. I didn’t think anyone could see me. I was almost dozing off when I heard it.” She stopped, her eyes coming to rest on a large red poinsettia behind my head.

  “Heard what?”

  “There was this sound. The leaves were rustling. No,” she corrected immediately. “It wasn’t as strong as that. It was quieter.”

  “They were whispering,” I said, my own voice hushed.

  “Yes! That’s exactly what it was.” Her eyes fastened on mine. “I remember thinking it was so strange that the leaves would be moving when there was no wind at all. And then I felt someone standing over me, and it was too late.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “My instincts were trying to warn me, but I didn’t listen.”

  I nodded. How often we ignore our instincts, I was thinking. How often we ignore the whispering of the leaves.

  “Will you sing to me again?” Sheena asked, lying back against her pillow and closing her eyes.

  “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra,” I began softly.

  “Too-ra-loo-ra-lie,” Sheena sang with me.

  “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra,” we sang together, our voices steadily gaining strength. And I was able, for a few fleeting minutes, to pretend that the leaves had stopped whispering, and all was right with the world.

  SEVENTEEN

  He called again,” Beverley said as I returned to the nurses’ station at the end of my shift.

  I didn’t have to ask whom she meant. “When?”

  Beverley glanced at the large, round clock on the wall. “About forty minutes ago. I told him you were dead.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “What did he say?”

  “Said he’d catch you later.” She shrugged, as if to ask, What can you do? “Holiday season brings out all the crazies, I guess.”

  “I guess,” I repeated, moving like an automaton toward the elevators, pressing the button repeatedly until the doors opened. Was that all it was?

  My instincts were trying to warn me, I heard Sheena O’Connor repeat, but I didn’t listen.

  The elevator was already pretty full, and I had to squeeze in between two middle-aged men, one of whom smelled of liquor, the other of poor personal hygiene. I watched the doors drag to a close and steadied my feet as the elevator lurched into its slow, almost painful descent. “Merry Christmas,” one of the men said, the smell of whiskey overwhelming the small space, like fumes of poisonous gas.

  I held my breath, nodded, and prayed the elevator wouldn’t stop at every floor. Of course it did, and even more people crowded inside. “Merry Christmas,” the man beside me greeted each new occupant, at one point even attempting a courtly bow. He promptly lost his balance and fell against me, his hand brushing against my breast as he tried to right himself. “Sorry about that,” he said with a stupid grin as I fought back the urge to throw up all over him. Unlike Alison, I had no phobias in that department.

  The elevator finally reached the lobby, bouncing several times on its arrival, as if it were surprised it had landed in one piece, and its doors yawned open. Everyone folded together as one, pouring from the elevator like water from a glass. I felt a hand on my rear end and initially dismissed the intrusion as an unavoidable consequence of so many people being squished together like sardines, until I felt stray fingers trying to worm their way between my legs. I angrily swatted the hand away and glared at the drunk beside me, whose stupid grin had now settled across his entire face. “Jerk,” I muttered. I stepped into the lobby, releasing the trapped air from my lungs and brushing another phantom hand from my backside, feeling its
illusion linger, invisible fingers continuing to probe.

  “Terry,” a voice said from somewhere behind me, and I found myself staring at an attractive, olive-skinned woman about five years younger than I, whose name stubbornly refused to materialize. “Luisa,” she said, as if sensing my predicament. “From Admitting. I thought I recognized you when you got in the elevator, but it was so crowded . . .”

  “And smelly.”

  She laughed. “Wasn’t that awful? Were you working today?”

  I nodded. “You?”

  She shook her head. Several black curls fell across her wide forehead. “No. I was visiting my grandmother. She tripped on a tiny crack in the sidewalk last week and broke her hip. Can you believe it?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “This getting older is for the birds.”

  I thought of my mother, of Myra Wylie, of all the sick and helpless men and women who’d exceeded their “best before” dates.

  “Well, have a merry Christmas,” Luisa said. “And if I don’t see you before, have a healthy and happy New Year.”

  “The same to you.” I watched her turn and walk away. “Luisa,” I called out suddenly, the unexpected urgency in my voice stopping us both dead in our tracks. Luisa eyed me quizzically as I ran to catch up to her. “Sorry, I just remembered something I need to ask you about.”

  Luisa said nothing, waited for me to continue.

  “A friend of mine is trying to locate a woman who used to work here. Rita Bishop.” Why was I bringing this up now? I wondered. Hadn’t Alison herself told me not to bother?

  Luisa raised thick, black eyebrows, furrowed her wide brow. “Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “She left about six, seven months ago.”

  “Do you know what department she worked in?”

  “I think she was a secretary or something.”

  “Well, I’ve been here for three years and I’ve never heard of any Rita Bishop, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Would you like me to check the files?”

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “It’ll only take a minute.”

  I followed Luisa to the main office, waited while she unlocked the door. This is silly, I told myself, watching while she flipped on the lights and quickly activated the computer on her desk.

  But my conversation with Sheena O’Connor had left me a little unsettled. My instincts were trying to warn me, she’d said, and I’d nodded understanding, realizing how successfully I’d buried my own instincts, feeling them stubbornly reasserting themselves now, refusing to be ignored any longer.

  “I’m pulling up the personnel files,” Luisa explained, her eyes on the screen. “I don’t see anyone by that name. You said she left about six or seven months ago?”

  “Maybe eight,” I qualified.

  “Well, I can’t find anyone by that name at all.” Luisa paused, typed in some further information. “You said Rita Bishop, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I show a Sally Pope.”

  I laughed. “Close, but no cigar.”

  “Let me check something else.” She pressed a few more keys. “I’ll enter her name, let the computer run a search.”

  I nodded, although I already knew what the outcome of that search would be. Mission Care would have no record of Rita Bishop ever having worked here. In fact, it was highly doubtful that anyone named Rita Bishop worked anywhere, that she existed at all. Alison hadn’t shown up at Mission Care looking for an old friend named Rita Bishop. She’d shown up at Mission Care looking for me.

  There was no other plausible explanation.

  The only remaining question was why.

  “No.” Luisa shook her head. “There’s nothing. I’m not sure where else to look.”

  “That’s okay. Don’t bother.”

  “Sorry.” Luisa shut off the computer. “There’s an assisted-living community not far from here called Manor Care. Maybe your friend got the name confused.”

  “Maybe,” I said hopefully, grasping at proverbial straws, still trying to ignore my instincts, to silence the whispering of the leaves by convincing myself that Alison was exactly whom she claimed to be, that she hadn’t lied to me, that she wasn’t lying to me still. “Thanks for trying,” I told Luisa, offering her a lift home. But she had her own car, and we wished each other a final merry Christmas in the parking lot. Ten minutes later, I was still sitting in my car, trying to figure out what it all meant, and more importantly, what I was going to do next.

  *

  IT WAS ALREADY DARK when I pulled my car into my driveway. Lance’s white Lincoln Town Car was parked on the street, and I debated whether to knock on the cottage door and confront Alison and her brother with my latest discovery. Except that I was confused and exhausted and vulnerable, and Alison always had a plausible explanation for everything. Besides, what exactly was I so upset about? That I was being played for a fool? Or that I still hadn’t figured out what the game was?

  One thing was clear: I wasn’t some random victim. I’d obviously been researched carefully, chosen for a specific purpose, although the reason I’d been selected continued to elude me. A lot of time and money—I thought of the expensive painting Alison had presented me with at midnight—had gone into whatever plan she and her brother had concocted. But why? What could they possibly want with me? What could they possibly expect from me? And what, if anything, did Erica Hollander have to do with any of it?

  I got out of the car, fished in my purse for my keys, reconsidered calling the police. And saying what exactly? That I’d rented out the small cottage behind my house to a young woman I now suspected of being a con artist? Or worse.

  And what has this young woman done to arouse your suspicions? I could hear them ask. Has she asked you for money? Is she behind in her rent?

  Well, no. She pays her rent exactly on time, and she’s never asked me for a thing. In fact, she’s bought me expensive presents and gone out of her way to be nice to me.

  Well, that’s certainly suspicious. No wonder you called us.

  You don’t understand. I’m afraid.

  Afraid of what exactly?

  I don’t know.

  Listen, lady, it’s your house. If you don’t like her, ask her to leave.

  Exactly. So simple. Ask her to leave. That’s all I had to do. So, why didn’t I? What was stopping me? Was I trying to persuade myself that, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, there was a simple and perfectly reasonable answer for each and every deception, that nothing had happened that couldn’t be neatly explained away? Was I still trying to convince myself that there were no ulterior motives, no grand conspiracy, no risk to my safety and well-being?

  I can’t ask her to leave.

  Why not?

  Because I don’t want her to go, I acknowledged silently.

  It was her brother I wanted gone, and in another week, he would be. Happy New Year indeed! Then we could go back to the way it had been in the beginning. We could go back to pretending that Alison wasn’t pretending, that she was everything she had initially represented herself to be.

  At that moment, I tripped across the image of Sheena O’Connor, who appeared before me, stretched out on a blanket across my front lawn. I watched her reach behind her back to untie the top of her bikini, then turn her profile lazily toward the indifferent moon overhead. I heard the cool breeze rustling through the trees, listened to the subtle whispers warning her of danger, saw her wave them away with a careless toss of her hand, as if brushing off a pesky mosquito.

  Could I really afford to be so cavalier?

  The only solution was to talk to Alison. If she could provide me with a plausible explanation for what was going on, I would consider the matter settled. If not, I’d have to insist she leave.

  Before I could change my mind, I marched around the side of the house and stepped up to the cottage door, knocking forcefully. Immediately, I thought better of it. I was being too hasty, too foolhardy, too na
ive. At the very least, I should tell someone of my concerns. If not the police, then maybe Josh or someone at work. Except that Josh was out of town and my coworkers had their own problems to deal with. Besides, it was Christmas. I thought of all the lovely gifts Alison had given me, the beautiful painting, the china head vase. Christmas Day was hardly the time to question her sincerity, to accuse her of sinister plans and nefarious motives.

  Nefarious, I could hear her say. Good word.

  There was plenty of time to confront her, I decided, turning to leave.

  “Door’s open,” Lance called from inside the cottage.

  Reluctantly, I pushed open the door. What other choice did I have? I stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind me, glancing past the empty living room toward the rumpled bed in the next room. You made your bed, I heard my mother say.

  “What’s the matter? You forget your key?” Lance asked, emerging from the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel around his slender waist. His hair was wet. Beads of water glistened from his sculpted chest.

  “Oh.”

  “Oh yourself,” he said with a mischievous smile.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize . . .”

  “Didn’t realize what? That I was naked?” He took two steps toward me.

  I took two steps back. “I’ve obviously interrupted you.”

  “Shower’s all finished.” Lance lifted muscular arms into the air. “See? Clean all over.” He turned, the towel lifting slightly as he spun around, exposing a flash of inner thigh.

  I pretended not to notice. “Is Alison here?” Silly question, I thought, biting down on my tongue. Obviously, she wasn’t.

  “She went for a walk.”

  “A walk?”

  “Said she needed some air.”

  “Is she feeling all right?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “No migraine?”

  He laughed. “She’s fine.” He took another step toward me. “Is there anything I can do for you? Keep you entertained until Alison gets back?”

  I backed up until I felt the door handle press against the small of my back. “No. I just wanted to thank her again for the beautiful painting.”