She Loves Me Not

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  The envelope has been slit open.

  What the hell . . . ?

  David examines the top fold. The edges are sliced so precisely that the cut is barely visible just by looking at it.

  Somebody undoubtedly used his missing letter opener to do it.

  Who would do something like that?

  He flips the envelope over to look at the front, as though he expects to find some kind of clue there.

  It merely says Donor Family, with a case number and the donor agency’s address.

  There’s a return address label: I. Van Nuys, 20 Colonial Drive, Woodbury Hills, NY 10534.

  No canceled stamp, though. This envelope, like both of the others, was forwarded in a larger one from the donor agency, along with a letter stating that it was from one of the organ recipients. He distinctly remembers discarding both the outer envelope and the agency’s letter, and filing this one away, still sealed.

  Frowning, David picks up the other two letters. He’s positive he did the same with them.

  Yet both are now open, their top edges sliced as neatly as the first.

  One bears a Staten Island return address; the other is from a place called Laurel Bay, NY. That’s on Long Island, he recalls vaguely. The agency woman told him.

  David stares numbly at the three envelopes, turning them over and over in his hands.

  Somebody opened his private mail.

  Who?

  One of the maids?

  But why?

  Maintaining his privacy among the household staff has never been a problem before. He always finds his mail unopened in a basket in the hall. True, he keeps his desk drawers unlocked, but there’s never been evidence of anyone snooping among his private papers . . . let alone outright stealing something. But the letter opener is definitely missing, and these envelopes have been slit open.

  He taps the tampered envelopes thoughtfully against his chin, astounded that somebody has apparently read these letters before he ever had a chance to. Somebody knows more about the three women who received Angela’s organs than he does.

  As he ponders the blatant invasion of his personal property, curiosity seeps in to merge with his fury.

  The first order of the day, he decides, will be to fire the entire household staff. A snoop and a thief lurks among them, and he hasn’t the time or the patience to find out who it is.

  No.

  That will be the second order of the day.

  The first is to read the three letters at last.

  “Open it, Mommy!” Jenna says again, as Rose stares at the box on Sam’s pillow.

  “It’s a va-wentime,” Leo observes solemnly, having stopped his bouncing.

  Rose looks sharply at her son. “How do you know?”

  “I just know. Maybe it’s fwum Daddy. You cwied because Daddy didn’t give you a va-wentime this year.”

  A fresh wave of grief melds with Rose’s trepidation.

  “It’s not from Daddy, Leo. Daddy is in heaven,” she reminds him gently.

  “Well, he’s an anjo. Maybe anjos can leave va-wentimes. Aunt Wes-wee says—”

  “Well, it’s not a valentine,” Jenna says in big-sister exasperation. “It’s from the tooth fairy.”

  “No. See? Howts.” Leo points at the red-and-white heart-dotted paper.

  “Mommy, tell him—”

  “Jenna, stop!” Rose blurts out, burying her face in her hands. She rubs her forehead, hoping that when she looks up again, the box will be gone and the kids will be back in their beds, asleep, and this will all part of some bizarre nightmare.

  But she can hear a wounded Jenna sniffling pitifully, and Leo is bouncing on the bed again, and when she opens her eyes, the goddamned box is still there.

  “I have a great idea,” Leslie says, lazily running her fingertips down Peter’s bare chest.

  “Uh-oh.” He groans. “I don’t think I have the energy for another one of your great ideas, Les.”

  She grins. “Not that kind of idea. I was thinking we could play hooky today. We could stay right here—right in bed, even—all warm and cozy. What do you say?”

  “I’d love to, but I’ve got to get to work.”

  Disappointed, she says, “Come on, Peter. You’re already late for the job. Why don’t you call Arty and tell him you’re sick?”

  “Because I’m not sick.”

  “You said your stomach was bothering you.”

  “It was heartburn, and it’s fine now.” He stretches and gently pushes her off his chest, sitting up. “I’ve got to get ready to go, Les.”

  She turns away from him, toward the window. Her instinct is to pout.

  But you’re not a little girl anymore, and Peter isn’t your big brother, there at your beck and call.

  “I guess you’re right,” she says. “I’ve got a double training session first thing this morning with two new members, anyway.”

  “And I’ve got to finish Sheetrocking the kitchen on the job because the cabinets are already in.”

  “Did you remember to charge the battery on your cell phone?”

  He slaps his temple. “Damn. I knew I forgot something last night.”

  “Maybe you can find a place to plug it in on the job,” Leslie suggests. “I don’t like feeling like I can’t get a hold of you if I need to.”

  “I’ll try,” he says. “But the electrician was there yesterday, and he had the power turned off for most of the afternoon.”

  He’s out of bed, now, walking naked across the bedroom carpet to open the blinds. Sunlight splashes into the room.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Peter says, looking out, and then over his shoulder at her. “Good to see the sun again, especially after all that rain and wind yesterday, you know?”

  Leslie nods, thinking, the calm after the storm.

  Only when Peter is in the bathroom, whistling and turning on the water for his shower, does she remember that she got the old saying backward.

  It’s the calm before the storm, she recalls, and pushes aside an inexplicable little twinge of apprehension.

  Christine is still seated at the kitchen table, numbly clutching the cordless phone in her hand, when it rings.

  Ben. It has to be.

  She would give anything to have caller ID, just to be sure. But he vetoed that, along with call-waiting, cable television, and just about everything else that might make her life a little bit more pleasant.

  It rings again.

  It has to be Ben, calling back to apologize for hanging up on her . . .

  Or to blame that on his cell phone’s weak signal.

  Her finger poised on the Talk button, about to push it down, Christine realizes that she doesn’t want to hear what he has to say.

  When she called him a few minutes ago, there was nothing she wanted more than to speak to her husband.

  Now, he’s the last person she wants to talk—or listen—to.

  She removes her finger from the button and looks down at the phone as it rings again.

  And again.

  “Go to hell,” she mutters, tossing the phone onto the kitchen table so ferociously that the plastic battery cover pops off.

  She grabs her coat, her keys, her purse and heads out the door without the faintest idea where she’s going.

  Olivia.

  Her name is Olivia McGlinchie, and she was born blind, suffering from a genetic condition called ocular albinism. When she started kindergarten, children made fun of her, so her parents scraped together enough money to send her away to a special school for blind children. She grew up surrounded by others who shared her disability, but longing for some kind of miracle cure.

  Hope built when, in her twenties, she found herself on the transplant waiting list. It waned when a potential donor’s family changed their minds at the last minute.

  At last, her prayers were answered . . .

  Just as mine were being ignored, David thinks bleakly, putting aside the letter and leaning back in his chair.

  He’
s read it through so many times he practically knows it by heart.

  Because of Angela’s death, a young woman named Olivia McGlinchie is able to see. She looked into her parents’ eyes for the first time; she experienced her first glorious sunrise over the Atlantic; her first art gallery; her first movie. She was able to move out of her parents’ house and into an apartment of her own at last.

  She was even learning to drive, back when she wrote the letter that spring, and said she hoped to have her driver’s license by summer.

  For all David knows, he’s passed her tooling along on the West Side Highway, never sensing her presence . . . or Angela’s.

  What would it be like to look into her eyes again . . . in somebody else’s face?

  He shudders.

  It’s too soon.

  Too soon to even consider meeting one of the recipients. Too soon, even, to read the other two letters. They can wait, he decides, tucking them back into the folder, then returning it to his desk drawer.

  He stands and looks at his watch. He really should get to the office. But first, he has to fire the staff, and call the employment agency for temporary and permanent replacements.

  It’s going to be a long day, David concludes, walking briskly toward the door.

  Only as an afterthought does he return to the desk. Fishing a keyring from his pocket, he makes several attempts to fit a key into the slot in the bottom drawer lot.

  Finally, he finds the right one and gives it a satisfied turn.

  There.

  Locked.

  Just in case.

  “Leo,” Rose says, her eyes still glued to the gift box on the pillow, “did you put that present there for Mommy?”

  “Nope.” He shakes his head vehemently.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nods.

  Then who could have done it?”

  “My daddy. He’s an anjo.”

  Jenna is exasperated. “It wasn’t an angel. It was the tooth fairy. Why won’t anyone lis—”

  “Jenna, why don’t you and Leo go downstairs and decide which cereal you want for breakfast?” Rose cuts in, her nerves rapidly fraying. She’s obviously not going to get a straight answer out of her son about the box.

  Her thoughts are racing, and so is her heart.

  Leo had to be the one who put it there. He probably thought it would make her feel better about not getting a valentine from Sam this year. He must have stolen it from somewhere.

  “I don’t want ce-wee-al,” Leo protests. “I want choco-wat toast.”

  “Do you have Aunt Leslie’s recipe for chocolate toast?” Jenna asks.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. I’ll ask her when I see her,” Rose says absently. “Go downstairs. You can turn on the television. Just . . . go.”

  Thrilled at the prospect of forbidden weekday morning cartoons, Jenna bolts from the room, with Leo trailing along behind her.

  “Leo?” Rose calls after him.

  He pauses. “What?”

  “I know you put the box here. And it was very sweet of you to try to make Mommy happy. But stealing is wrong.”

  “I didn’t stee-o, Mommy!”

  “Lying is wrong, too.”

  “I’m not wying!” He sounds on the verge of tears.

  “We’ll talk about this later.”

  Left alone in her bed, Rose exhales shakily.

  Could Leo be telling the truth? But if he didn’t leave the box . . .

  Then somebody else was here, in her room, while she was asleep.

  Could it possibly have been Hitch? Is this his twisted idea of a romantic surprise? The notion doesn’t seem quite as far-fetched as it might have before their stilted conversation yesterday in the kitchen.

  Ire builds within her as she reaches for the box and tears at the wrapping paper, thinking that it’s far easier to assume it was harmless Hitch—or even Leo—than to consider the alternative and address the fear that accompanies it.

  What about the other day? The sound machine, and the dog being locked into the side room?

  It wasn’t a break-in. Even the police officer didn’t think so. You’re letting your imagination run away with you again, just like it did yesterday when you thought Christine had kidnapped the kids.

  Tossing the crumpled wad of paper aside, Rose finds herself holding a black velvet jeweler’s box with a curved top.

  Her fear begins to evaporate, and with it, her anger.

  Okay. So if it was Hitch, he was just trying to be sweet.

  And if it wasn’t Hitch, it was Leo.

  And if it wasn’t Leo . . .

  No. It was one or the other.

  Her mind sprints ahead with the Hitch theory. Knowing Sam, he gave Hitch keys to the house and neither of them ever remembered to mention it to Rose.

  But wouldn’t Hitch realize it would scare the hell out of her to think that someone was in her room while she was sleeping?

  And what about the phone calls?

  Maybe they’re not related to the gifts, she decides. Maybe it’s just kids, fooling around, thinking it’s funny to call strangers in the middle of the night . . .

  “Cupid! Where are you!” she hears Leo’s voice calling downstairs. “Time for bweakfast!”

  “No! Don’t feed him, Leo,” she calls, hurriedly running her nails along the crack beneath the lid of the box to pry it open. “I’ll be down in a minute to do it.”

  Last time Leo tried to feed the puppy on his own, he cut his finger on the sharp edge of the dog food can.

  Rose snaps the box open. Her jaw drops.

  Inside the box is an exquisite heart-shaped, diamond-encrusted gold pendant.

  “Mommy!” Leo calls.

  “Hang on! I’m coming!”

  Careful not to tangle the delicate chain, Rose examines the pendant, then flips it over. Something is engraved on the back.

  The necklace trembles in her hands. Her suddenly rapid breathing seems to thunder through the quiet room.

  Now, at last, perhaps she’ll know if Hitch—

  Running footsteps pound across the hardwood floor below.

  “Mom!”Jenna bellows as Rose holds the pendant up and angles it toward the window, tilting it so that the sun catches the small, scrolled lettering etched in the glinting gold surface.

  “Mommy!” Leo shrieks.

  He’s crying. They both are, hysterically, Rose realizes with an incredulous jolt, in the split second before she makes out the single word engraved on the back of the locket.

  Angela.

  The shovel makes a dull, scraping sound as he plunges it into the sandy soil one last time.

  There.

  That’s deep enough.

  After tossing the shovel aside, he walks the few yards across a spongy bed of dead leaves to his car, parked in the limited seclusion offered by a stand of trees. It isn’t likely that anybody will venture to this deserted, remote corner of the seaside park just past dawn on a cold winter morning. But you never know.

  He wearily rubs the aching spot between his shoulder blades as he walks. It always burns there when he’s exhausted. He’d like nothing more than to go home after he takes care of this, and sleep for hours. Days, maybe.

  He can’t.

  With a sigh, he thinks about the day ahead, and Isabel.

  At least there’s still snow on the ground up in northern Westchester.

  But he wanted it to be different, with her.

  He wanted to take his time, to play with her as he had the others.

  He wanted her to be his grand finale—though not for any reason other than the timing.

  With Rose, Valentine’s Day worked so beautifully. Even the pendant—the one he could never bring himself to throw into the river after all—fit his carefully planned theme.

  His plan was to take care of Rose, then move on to Isabel.

  Then Isabel made him angry, lying about looking in his bag.

  She knows too much already. She’s too suspicious. You’ll never be able to slip in
to her day-to-day life and toy with her the way you have the others.

  It would have been such a pleasure, though . . .

  No. It’s too late to go back to the original plan. Just accelerate everything. Do what you have to do.

  Isabel will be next; Rose, his grand finale.

  Then he’ll go back to his real life, to his original appearance, to . . .

  To what?

  There are times when he can’t even remember what his life was like before Angela. But one thing is certain: it was lonely.

  Well, maybe you’ll meet somebody once you’ve settled in back home, he tells himself. Somebody who won’t betray you, the way Angela did.

  After unlocking the car trunk, he casts a furtive glance over both shoulders to be absolutely certain he’s alone.

  Yes. Good.

  This will only take a moment. After he’s finished, he’ll drive over to the mall to get everything he’ll need: more duct tape, a pillow, and something to use as a tarp. A couple of vinyl shower curtains, he thinks, his lips curling into a grin. Maybe he can find something lavender and pretty for her. Lavender was Angela’s favorite color.

  When he used her house keys to sneak into David Brookman’s brownstone last winter in search of the organ recipients’ names, he detoured into her walk-in closet. Her wardrobe was still intact, and he helped himself to her favorite lavender sweater and a filmy lavender-sprigged scarf. Souvenirs, along with the monogrammed letter opener.

  He reaches into the trunk and removes a small bundle wrapped in the navy wool pea coat he was wearing a few hours ago, when he left Rose’s bedroom. Now, unfortunately, it’s soaked in blood.

  He didn’t like the coat much when he bought it last fall—it really isn’t his style. But it’s grown on him.

  Oh, well. You wouldn’t have been taking it with you when you move on, anyway, he reminds himself. And if the weather cooperates, he’ll be leaving in a matter of days.

  The forecasters are promising snow on the island before the week is out.

  With a grimace, he holds the stiff bundle at arm’s length and carries it back to the waiting hole.

  He bends to drop it in.

  “Sorry, little guy. I let you go once, but this time, you got in my way.”

  It’s a shame. A real shame. He’s always liked dogs.