by Nicole Baart
But she did. Jess noticed everything as she hurried around the house, fingers flying over shelves and her dining room table and the little desk in the kitchen where she kept her mail. The drawer that stuck open had come off its slider again, and it was wedged at an angle, the right side lifted like a cocked hip. Jess knew that drawer. She hadn’t left it askew in years.
For just a moment, Jess’s vision blurred. Her house swam out of focus and then just as quickly snapped back to hi-res. Everything was just a little bit wrong.
Someone had been in her house.
* * *
LaShonna Tate
RE: Hello
To: [email protected]
February 4, 2018
Dear Evan,
I know this email must come as a bit of a shock. I didn’t intend to write to you ever again, but circumstances both out of my control and fully my fault have landed me in an awful situation. I really don’t have anyone to talk to about this. I know it’s crazy that I’m contacting you, but if you’re open to meeting with me (in person) I have something to ask you.
You owe me nothing and I don’t expect you to respond. But it’s a shot I have to take. Thank you for loving Gabe so well. It means more to me than you will ever know.
Sincerely,
LaShonna
* * *
Evan Chamberlain
RE: Hello
To: [email protected]
February 5, 2018
Hello, LaShonna.
It’s so good to hear from you. I wasn’t sure that I ever would again. I’m sorry to hear that you’re in an awful situation. I’m not sure what I can do to help, but if you think that it would be beneficial to meet, I am open to the possibility. Should I contact Promise and make sure that a face-to-face meeting is not in breach of our contract?
Regards,
Evan
* * *
LaShonna Tate
RE: Hello
To: [email protected]
February 5, 2018
Please don’t contact Promise. There is nothing illegal about us talking, I swear. Would it work to meet halfway? Mankato is in between Auburn and the Twin Cities. I know it’s a bit of a drive for you. We could meet at the Starbucks near the campus of MSU. Wednesday morning? Ten?
LaShonna
* * *
Evan Chamberlain
RE: Hello
To: [email protected]
February 5, 2018
Yes. That works. See you then.
Evan
* * *
Susana L.
30, Caucasian, working on GED
Long, dark hair. Recently dyed. Nail biter.
Boyfriend consented.
H&R, MANSL, 51m, 1yr pp
CHAPTER 7
“JESS, SERIOUSLY. I need you to sit down.”
A beat of silence, and then the sound of a door closing harder than Jessica intended it to.
“You’re not sitting.”
“No,” Jess hissed into the phone. “I’m going through every square inch of my house. Wouldn’t you?”
Meredith sighed on the other end of the line. “Honey, I love you, but you really need to calm down for a minute.”
“I’m perfectly calm.”
“You’re a train wreck. You’re probably scaring the kids.”
“Max is in his room with the music turned up to deafening, and Gabe is sleeping on the couch. He’s sick.”
“Really?”
“Strep throat,” Jess confirmed as she riffled through the closet in the spare room. The Chamberlains’ winter coats were lined up on their hangers, looking innocent and maybe a little put out that she was disturbing their slumber. As far as she could tell, there was no evidence that someone had been in the spare closet. But then, it had been months since she had looked inside.
“I’m coming over,” Meredith said.
“No, don’t.” Jessica shut the bifold closet door, not bothering to muffle the bang. “I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly not fine. Do you really think someone was in your house?”
It was Jessica’s turn to sigh. She paused in the hallway with her hand on her hip. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes, I do. I can’t explain it, Mer, but everything is different. Little things, you know?”
“You’re going through a really difficult time,” Meredith said carefully. “Maybe things have slipped a bit and you just haven’t noticed.”
Jess was already shaking her head, even though Meredith couldn’t see it. “I’m not crazy.”
“Oh, honey. I never said you were. Stay put. I’m coming.”
The phone line went flat before Jessica could protest. She had said that she didn’t want Meredith to come, but now the thought of having her friend in the quiet house—bustling around, filling up space, helping her catalog the infinitesimal differences that she couldn’t quite put her finger on—was comforting.
Jess put her phone in the back pocket of her jeans and consulted the palm-sized notebook that she had been carrying around. The stub of a pencil was tucked in its spirals and she poked it out with her pinky, then flipped the notebook open. Evan had turned her into a fastidious note taker in the years that they had been married, and now she could hardly function without a detailed to-do list. She cataloged everything from recipes she wanted to try to home repairs that would require Evan’s attention. A honey-do list of sorts that she never presented to him because Evan was not much of a handyman. Now she never could.
Jess swallowed tears and shook her head to scatter unwanted thoughts. She turned her full attention to the notebook. On the very first page she had written a list that spanned just a few lines. She’d scrawled:
• pillow on floor
• curtain askew
• picture crooked
• junk drawer off its rollers
• bathroom cupboard ajar
• bed mussed
It was a ridiculous list, and as she stared at it she knew exactly why Meredith was so worried. Everything she had written down was circumstantial at best, paranoid at worst. Was she coming unhinged? Had her conversation with Deputy Mullen unsettled her more than she realized? Of course her bed was messy. She hadn’t made it in days. Longer? What in the world made her think that she could remember the exact way the comforter had fallen when she crawled out of bed that morning?
Jess threw the notebook on the dresser in the spare room and turned off the lights as she left. Meredith was right. No one had been in her house. There was no motive, no reason. Nothing was gone. They didn’t have a private bank account in the Cayman Islands or anything really of interest. And what little jewelry she had was exactly where it was supposed to be on the wire tree in her en suite. Most of her pieces were cheap, clothing-store necklaces that she had bought to match a specific outfit, but she had a real gold chain with a strand of three small pearls and a pair of diamond earrings that she wore on special occasions. They were all present and accounted for.
“You’re losing it,” she told herself. “Get it together.”
But as she descended the stairs to check on Gabe, Jessica couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Her blood hissed in her veins, a primal warning that everything was not as it should be.
Jess felt like someone was watching her.
“Hey, baby,” Jess forced herself to say as she came around the side of the couch. She wrapped the cardigan she had thrown on tight across her chest and knelt next to Gabe. As she laid her hand on his pink cheek, she asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” he croaked. His eyes were trained on the television, yet another episode of PAW Patrol. Jessica recorded them on the DVR and then played them back ad nauseam to Gabe’s never-ending delight. He sounded terrible, but it was obvious that the ibuprofen had done its job. His fever had broken, though Jess guessed it still hovered around one hundred degrees.
“How’s the throat?”
Gabe just shook his head. His eyes were dark po
ols, the pupils dilated wide in the dim light of the living room.
“How about a little drink?” Jess lifted the water bottle to his lips and he complied, taking a couple of tiny sips through the plastic straw before turning his head and looking past her pointedly. She got the message loud and clear.
Gabe was sick, but he was certainly going to be okay. He could still watch TV, and Jess guessed that if pressed, he could also rouse himself enough to play Mario Kart. She pulled the blanket up to his shoulders and dropped a kiss on the top of his head. His curls were damp with sweat and he smelled slightly medicinal, of VapoRub and fevered skin.
“I miss Dad,” Gabe mumbled.
Jess wasn’t sure that she had heard him right. His words were muffled and she was convinced his attention was on the TV. But when she pulled back to look at his face, there were tears leaking out of his glassy eyes. He sniffed a little and winced at the pain Jess knew it caused in his throat.
“Oh, honey.” Jess cupped his cheek, her tears coming just as quickly as his. She hadn’t realized they were still so close to the surface. “Me too. I miss him too.”
“When’s he coming back?”
The question was a splash of ice water. Chilling. Jess tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry as a desert. “Gabe, we talked about this, remember?”
But his attention was already gone. Eyes trained on the TV, expression slack. There were crooked trails on his cheeks, evidence that he had been crying only a moment ago, and Jess smoothed them away with her thumb.
“I love you, Gabriel,” she whispered.
In the kitchen, Jess blew her nose and ran her wrists under cold water. It was bracing, clarifying, and she could almost convince herself that her exchange with Gabe was wholly the result of his illness. But she knew that wasn’t true. They had a long road ahead of them, and they were only a few steps into their journey. Jess was already weary.
Max had been in his room since they arrived home over an hour earlier, but that wasn’t entirely unusual. Jess decided she would start on something for supper, maybe homemade biscuits and some chicken breasts from the freezer, and if she was lucky, the scent of cooking would lure him out.
With a start, Jess remembered the groceries in the trunk of her car. She had forgotten all about them in the fuss surrounding Gabe’s illness and their dramatic homecoming.
Jess gathered the plastic bags quickly, leaving the garage door up because her hands were full and she couldn’t reach the button. As she deposited two armloads on the kitchen counter, she heard the door click open.
“Hello?” Meredith called. She must have pulled up seconds after Jess left the garage.
“In the kitchen!”
But Meredith ignored her. “Oh, buddy . . .” Jess could hear her best friend huff as she bent to undo her shoes, then the steady pad of her feet across the living room floor.
“How are you doing, kiddo?”
Jess put away the groceries while Meredith loved on Gabe, tucking and retucking his blanket and making him laugh in spite of himself because he was swaddled tighter than a sausage in its casing.
“Auntie Meredith,” he barked, his throat clearly straining to form the words, “I can’t move!”
“Good,” she said. “You shouldn’t move. Too much moving is bad for your health.”
“But you and mom go on walks.”
“That’s different. We’re old. You’re young and vulnerable. You need to stay safe and protected and warm. Your mom and I are going to talk about making a sling for you so she can carry you around on her back.”
“No!” Jess smiled at the horror in Gabe’s cry.
“Oh yes. Complete with Bubble Wrap and a helmet. No head injuries on our watch.”
“Auntie Meredith . . .”
“You heard me.”
Jess could just make out the smack of a quick kiss, and then Meredith was coming into the kitchen, arms outstretched. Putting down the box of Little Debbie Nutty Bars she was holding, Jess walked right into her friend’s embrace.
“You’re going to give him nightmares,” Jess scolded. “The poor kid is borderline claustrophobic to begin with.”
“He needed to laugh.” Meredith gave Jess an extra-hard squeeze and then pulled back and held her at arm’s length. “Hey, you don’t look as bad as I thought you would.”
“I showered today, I’ll have you know.”
“Good for you.” Meredith’s eyes softened. “But what’s this about someone breaking into your house?”
Jess shrugged off Meredith’s hands and grabbed the box of snacks. Sticking it into a random cupboard she said, “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You were really upset when you called.” Meredith leaned against the counter with her palms hooked over the edge. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“I do.”
Jess sighed and turned to face her friend. Meredith was still wearing her work clothes, a pair of brocade pants that hugged her curves in all the right places and a blouse in lipstick red. She looked so pretty, so professional and put together and sane, Jess could have cried. “I’m a little stressed,” she managed.
“You don’t say.” Meredith gave her a long look, then took her by the wrist and led her to the breakfast nook. They sat on opposite sides of the painted plank table, their hands between them as if they needed the physical proximity. “You have every right in the world to be coming apart, Jess. I would be. But I don’t want you to start blurring the lines of reality. Know what I mean?”
Jess felt a stab of irritation. Whether the evidence she uncovered was real or not, the truth was that something felt off. Evan was all about cold, hard facts, but he had also taught her that intuition was an incredibly powerful tool. Once, when Max was a baby, Evan woke in the middle of the night and sat straight up in bed. “Something’s wrong,” he said, and threw back the covers. Before Jess had a chance to rub the sleep from her eyes, Evan was back with Max cradled in his arms. Even at a distance Jess knew something wasn’t right. Her bright, happy nine-month-old was limp in his dad’s embrace, one fat hand open to the ceiling, fingers curled as if he were reaching for something but didn’t have the strength to grasp it.
“What?” Jess croaked, lacking the ability to form a coherent thought.
“Influenza?” Evan guessed. “Quick onset, high fever. He’s burning up.”
“I didn’t hear him crying.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Then . . .”
“Sixth sense,” Evan said, pressing his lips to Max’s hot forehead. His kiss left a white crescent on the pink flush of his son’s damp skin.
Jess’s sixth sense was clamoring for attention now.
“Nobody would have to break into my house,” Jess said. “I don’t lock the doors when I’m gone during the day. Neither do you.”
“Okay, but you thought someone came in while you were gone? Why?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? “I don’t know, Mer. That’s what I’d like to find out.”
Meredith pulled her glasses off and delicately rubbed the bridge of her nose. Jess could picture her friend doing exactly that in difficult interviews, or while she was facilitating a meeting between birth mothers and adoptive parents. It was exactly the same move she used on the Chamberlains when they were in the process of bringing Gabe home, and Jess knew that it meant one thing: Meredith’s patience was thin. “What evidence do you have, Jess? What makes you think that someone has been in your home?”
Jessica thought of the list she had made and left on the dresser in the spare room. “I don’t have any evidence. Just a hunch.”
“Sweetie, you’re not a private detective.”
She had never claimed to be one. All at once Jessica wished that Meredith had never come at all. Her friend could be so calculating sometimes, almost masculine in her need to fix everything. Jess had just wanted someone to listen, but she realized now that Meredith was not going to be that person.
She drew her hands into her lap, where she wrung her fingers.
“I’d like to talk about something else.”
Meredith narrowed her eyes, assessing. “You sure you’re okay with this? You don’t think anyone has been in your house?”
“What in the world would they be looking for?”
Meredith smiled a little. “It’s good to see you up and about,” she said, abruptly changing the conversation. Then, “You’ve lost weight. Let me make you supper.”
“I’ve got chicken thawing,” Jess said, but it was a lie. She had intended to take some out of the freezer but she hadn’t gotten around to it. “In fact, I’d better get started.”
“I’ll help. Pour you a glass of wine?”
“I shouldn’t,” Jess said. She had just started taking antianxiety meds and Meredith knew that. She was less than two weeks in and feeling worse instead of better. All Jess had to do was give her friend a pointed look and nod her head in the direction of the sink where the little amber bottle of pills sat in wait on the windowsill.
“Oh.”
Meredith seemed sad, like she knew she had said or done something wrong, so Jess got up and gave her a one-armed hug. It was a conciliatory gesture, but her heart wasn’t really in it. “Thank you for putting up with me. I know that I haven’t exactly been myself lately.”
“How did you end up comforting me?” Meredith laughed a little. “I came here to comfort you.”
“Maybe this is exactly what I need.”
“What?”
“For people to stop treating me with kid gloves.”
After Meredith left, Jessica did take chicken out of the freezer. Deciding soup was the way to go, she threw the breasts in a stockpot with a few cans of chicken broth and some thyme. Normally she would finely chop carrots, celery, and onion, then sauté them in butter with a couple of healthy pinches of sea salt. But she couldn’t be bothered today. She dumped a bag of frozen vegetables into the pot and decided to call it good. Jess was starting to feel fuzzy around the edges, tired and heavy limbed, as if her outing had been a marathon instead of a handful of errands that she could have done in her sleep only weeks ago.