Fade to Black

by Wendy Corsi Staub

She’s alone.

  She gets up and locks the door behind him, then begins to move through the rooms, surveying the damage.

  Mostly, things are just moved around on tables and countertops, with drawers and doors and cupboards left open as though someone went through everything, looking for something.

  Her bedding is tossed on the floor in the bedroom, and the contents of the bathroom hamper have been dumped into the tub. She checks all the windows to ensure that the intruder didn’t unlock one for easy entry later, after dark.

  They’re fine.

  And the plain white envelope in the drawer of her desk in the spare bedroom—the envelope containing the expired Illinois license for Elizabeth Baxter—is still there.

  Still sealed.

  Thank God.

  The only thing is …

  Is it her imagination, or does the flap seem slightly damp, as though it were recently sealed?

  Is this the same envelope she sealed herself so long ago?

  Or did someone rip that one open, steal the license, and replace the envelope with a new one from the supply in the bottom drawer?

  Is someone out there somewhere, looking into the real Elizabeth Baxter?

  Is someone going to connect her to …

  You’re just paranoid, she tells herself, inhaling deeply, then exhaling, trying to calm down. The flap feels damp because it’s August, and it’s humid. Everything in the house feels damp.

  She runs her fingers over the rectangular bump inside the envelope. Anyway, here’s the license, right here.

  But she rips the envelope open just to be sure it isn’t just a dupe, a square of plain old cardboard the thief left in a dummy envelope to fool her....

  No, the license is there.

  Elizabeth Baxter’s face stares back at her.

  She hasn’t seen it in a while, that face. It’s eerie how much it looks like her own. Eerie, in a way, that so many of the vital statistics match her own.

  Hair: Brown.

  Eyes: Brown.

  Height: 5’9”.

  Only the weight is different.

  Elizabeth Baxter had been a scrawny hundred and fifteen pounds.

  And, of course, a few years younger, though her expression in the picture reveals a woman who has seen a lifetime’s worth of trouble.

  So the license is still here.

  She takes another plain white envelope from the bottom drawer of the desk and seals the license into it, thinking she really should destroy it. It expired years ago; it’s dangerous keeping it around for anyone to find. It’s the only thing in the house that, if stolen, would be a serious problem.

  She puts it back into the drawer, telling herself she’ll deal with it later.

  Then, suddenly, she remembers.

  There’s one other thing that would be dangerous if someone got their hands on them.

  Her keys.

  The spare set, to the house and the car and the safe deposit box.

  She keeps the ring on a nail high inside the kitchen cupboard where she keeps her cups and plates.

  Frowning, she hurries back to the kitchen and opens the cupboard door, which had been left ajar and which she had closed on her last pass through the room.

  She stands on tiptoe and reaches up to feel for the key ring.

  For a second she can’t find the nail.

  Then her hand brushes across the tip of it, and she moves her fingers along it, knowing, with chilling certainty before she reaches the spot where it meets the cupboard wall, that it’s empty.

  The woman in the dirty T-shirt scurries along State Street in the blazing summer sun, muttering to herself.

  About the child she’d abandoned.

  The child who has never been far from her mind, especially lately.

  No matter how she tries to push the image away, it comes back to haunt her as soon as her guard is down.

  She sees the child’s enormous, frightened eyes....

  Hears the small voice whimpering …

  Please, Mommy, please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.

  “Shut up! I never meant to hurt you!” she yells aloud to quiet the voice.

  Then she realizes that she’s startled a passing middle-aged couple who are walking a perfectly groomed, ridiculously small black dog.

  “What are you looking at?” she yells at them. “Can’t I talk to my kid without everyone trying to listen in?”

  She sees that the lady, a tall and impeccably dressed redhead, is casting a furtive glance over her shoulder as they retreat, as though fearing an attack.

  “Don’t worry about her, Felice,” the man is saying, his voice carried back despite the noise from the traffic. “She won’t hurt us. She’s just a crazy street person.”

  Just a crazy street person.

  The woman in the dirty T-shirt sighs and keeps walking.

  Keeps thinking bitterly about the child she abandoned.

  The child who later abandoned her.

  “What were you doing next door?” Pamela asks Frank as he comes walking back across the lawn, hands casually thrust in the front pockets of his khaki shorts.

  She tries not to allow suspicion to creep onto her face as she waits for him to come near enough to answer her. He’s not the type to yell across the yard.

  “Somebody broke into Elizabeth’s place,” he says, coming to a stop a few feet away.

  “You’re kidding.” She does her best not to reveal her relief that it’s not some lame excuse. He wouldn’t lie about something like a break-in. “When?”

  “This morning, I guess, while she was out.”

  Pamela switches the baby to her other hip and calls to Hannah, who’s wandered over to the green turtle-shaped plastic sandbox, “Hannah! Look! Daddy’s here!”

  Hannah ignores her, picking up a shovel and poking it into the sand.

  To Frank, Pamela says, “So who broke into her place?”

  He shrugs. “Must have been kids.”

  “What was stolen?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  He shakes his head. “She must have come home when they were in the act, scared ’em away before they could take anything.”

  “Did she see anyone?”

  “Nope.”

  “Huh. That’s too bad. Did you water the lawn?”

  “I didn’t get a chance.” He reaches out and tickles the baby’s belly. “And anyway—”

  “Here, take him,” Pamela says, starting to hand Jason over.

  “I can’t. I’m filthy from working in the basement. I’m going to take a shower.”

  “The grass looks like it’s really dry.”

  “Well, there’s a ban on outdoor water use in the East Bay. Didn’t you hear?”

  “Then why’d you say you would water the lawn when I asked you this morning?” she asks, annoyed.

  “I forgot about the ban.”

  “Well, the grass is dying.”

  “It’s not dying, Pam. It’ll be fine. Maybe it’ll rain tonight or tomorrow.”

  She looks up at the cloudless blue sky. “I doubt it. It hasn’t rained in weeks.”

  “Well, that’s why there’s a ban on water use. The reservoir levels are dangerously low.”

  “Running one garden hose for ten minutes won’t put the whole East Bay in jeopardy, Frank.”

  “It’s against the law, Pam. And I can’t go around breaking the law. I’m a cop, remember?”

  He brushes past her, going into the house and letting the screen door bang shut behind him.

  “Hannah, come on,” Pamela calls, turning just in time to see her daughter lying sprawled on her back in the sandbox, dumping shovels full of sand over her blond head. “Oh, God, Hannah, cut that out!”

  “Sand,” Hannah says gleefully, dumping another scoop of it over her head. “Sand.”

  Pamela goes over to her and bends to grab her daughter, careful not to jostle Jason too much.

  Hannah, still holding the shovel, reaches down,
scoops up some sand, and flings it all over Pamela and the baby.

  “You little—” Pamela breaks off and tries to control her temper. “Hannah, that’s bad! You’re going to sit in time-out.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  She reaches down and grabs her daughter, somehow managing to get hold of her squirming little body while still balancing the baby on her other hip. She lugs both children into the house, then deposits Hannah on the kitchen floor.

  “Go over to that chair,” Pamela says angrily, “and sit in time-out.”

  “No!”

  “What’s going on?”

  Pamela looks up to see Frank standing in the doorway, naked from the waist up.

  She feels a pang at the sight of his familiar, tanned, hairy chest, remembering how she used to run her fingers over it as they lay in bed after making love....

  “Daddy!” Hannah calls, running toward her father.

  “Get back over to that chair, Hannah!” Pamela orders.

  “Why? What ‘d she do?” Frank wants to know.

  “She threw sand at me and Jason,” she tells him, wishing the kids were both asleep, so she could go over to him and put her arms around him and stroke his naked skin the way she had so long ago.

  “Hannah, did you throw sand at Mommy and your baby brother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you mean to do it?”

  “No. It was a accident,” Hannah announces, casting a smug glance in Pamela’s direction.

  “It wasn’t an accident,” Pamela says firmly as Jason starts to fuss.

  “How do you know?” Frank asks.

  Pamela frowns at him. “Because I’m thirty and she’s two.”

  Jason cries out. She bounces him up and down to soothe him and says, “It’s okay, Jason-boy. Mommy will feed you in a minute.”

  “If it was an accident, you don’t have to sit in time-out,” Frank tells Hannah. “As long as you tell Mommy you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” the little girl says promptly.

  “Now go play,” Frank says, and Hannah makes a beeline for the toy box in the living room.

  “Frank, why did you do that?” Pamela asks, patting Jason’s little head and bouncing him on her hip as he wails again. “I was trying to teach her right from wrong.”

  “She said it was an accident.”

  “Well, it wasn’t. Trust me. She was being a b-r-a-t.” She didn’t like to use words like that in front of Hannah, who had a way of picking things up and adding them to her vocabulary.

  “Is that any way to talk about your own child?”

  “Frank, come on. She’s two. She’s going to be a b-r-a-t now and then. Every kid is. I’m just being truthful. And anyway, you can’t just go around and undo my discipline.”

  “I can’t do anything right these days, can I?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind.” He turns and walks away, down the hall toward the bathroom.

  “Come back here and talk to me!” Pamela calls after him.

  He shakes his head and says, with his usual, maddening calm, “You’re too unreasonable to talk to these days.”

  “Unreasonable?” she practically shrieks, causing Jason to burst into tears in her arms.

  She follows Frank down the hall. “How dare you call me unreasonable! I’m exhausted from single-handedly taking care of two kids and this house morning, noon, and night. I don’t get more than two hours of sleep at a stretch, and I don’t get a minute to myself, and my own husband isn’t interested in talking to me or looking at me or touching me!”

  “For Christ’s sake, keep it down, Pam. The whole neighborhood will hear you” is all he says before disappearing into the bathroom and closing the door behind him.

  A moment later she hears the shower water running.

  “Be quiet!” she yells at Jason, who’s sobbing loudly in her arms. “Be quiet!”

  “Mommy, why are you yelling at everyone?”

  It’s Hannah, in the doorway of the living room, looking upset.

  Pamela takes a deep breath, feeling like she’s going to lose it. She really is.

  She counts to ten.

  Then she tells Hannah, “I’m not yelling anymore. See? Go back and play now.”

  And she takes Jason into the living room, sits in the rocking chair, and unbuttons her blouse.

  She stares at the wall, her jaw clenched painfully in fury as she nurses her baby son.

  “Are you Elizabeth Baxter?”

  She clears her throat. “Yes. Come on in.”

  She steps aside and holds the door open wider to allow the stranger to enter her house.

  It’s dusk, and she doesn’t get a good look at his face until he’s standing in the brightly lit kitchen.

  Her first thought is that he’s gorgeous, with the kind of rugged features that are usually reserved for leading men in adventure films. He has a strong, square jaw, high cheekbones, and wide-set green eyes beneath full, dark brows. His skin is tanned and somewhat weathered-looking, and his wavy brown hair touches the collar of his jean jacket. He’s big and broad-shouldered, and the scent of the chilly salt air seems to cling to him as she closes the door behind him.

  Her next thought, as she steals another look at his handsome face, is that she’s seen him someplace before.

  The thought jars her.

  “I’m Harper Smith,” he’s saying, shaking her hand. His fingers are cold and his grasp is sturdy.

  “Thanks for coming,” she murmurs, her thoughts spinning.

  Why does he look so familiar? How does she know him?

  She wouldn’t forget meeting someone like him....

  “So your house keys were stolen?” he’s asking, his hands hooked on the back belt loops of his jeans now that he’s set his toolbox down.

  She nods. “I want you to change all the dead bolts on the front and back doors, and put one on the basement door—the lock on that one is broken. Can you do that?”

  “I sure can.” He grins. “That’s why they call me a locksmith.”

  She almost forgets to smile in response, so caught up is she in trying to place him.

  She must have simply seen him around Windmere Cove. After all, his locksmith shop is right on Center Street, though she never heard of it until she found him in the yellow pages.

  “Have we met?” he suddenly asks, peering at her more closely.

  “Have we …? Oh. No. No, I don’t think we have,” she says stupidly.

  “You look sort of familiar.”

  “Oh …”

  Of course he thinks you look familiar. You’re Mallory Eden.

  But why does he look familiar to you?

  “People say that to me all the time. I guess I have one of those faces,” she tells him, moving away toward the doorway to the hall. “You can start on the back door, there. If you need anything just holler. I’ll be in there.” She gestures down the hall, toward the master bedroom.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  She must have seen him on the street in town, she decides, walking down the hall and into the bedroom. Although she’s surprised she doesn’t remember exactly when and where. A man that good-looking would be hard to forget.

  Especially when you’re a woman who hasn’t been touched even casually by someone of the opposite sex in almost half a dozen years.

  She can’t help wondering what it would be like to be held in Harper Smith’s strong-looking arms, then breaks off her fantasy in disgust with herself.

  He’s the locksmith, she reminds herself. You called him here to change your locks, not to feed your sexual fantasies.

  She busies herself putting fresh sheets and blankets on the bed, but still, she is filled with an acute awareness of the man in her kitchen.

  She hears the clanking and banging of tools as he works, and the faint sound of him whistling some nameless tune.

  She finds herself trying to think of some excuse to go back to the kitchen
, though she knows it’s pathetic and nothing can come of her attraction to him, even if he were interested.

  She can’t get involved with a man—especially now, when she’s making plans to leave this town just as soon as she’s taken care of Manny.

  But that doesn’t mean she can’t catch an up-close glimpse of the good-looking locksmith at work, and maybe see him flash that wide, white smile at her again.

  Finally, just as she’s about to give in and go and fetch herself a glass of water, she hears him calling her name.

  Not “Ms. Baxter,” as one might expect …

  But “Elizabeth.”

  And she finds herself admiring the sound of her name on his lips....

  Even though it’s not her name at all.

  “Yes?” she responds, stepping into the hall and seeing him in the kitchen doorway. “Do you need something?”

  “I don’t suppose I could bother you for a glass of water?”

  “Sure … that’s fine. Help yourself. The glasses are above the sink....”

  But if he helps himself, you can’t go into the kitchen and talk to him.

  “Or,” she continues, “there’s some iced tea made, if you’d like some of that.”

  “Iced tea would be great,” he says, and there’s that grin again, with a dimple popping up at each side of his generous mouth.

  “Okay,” she says, and walks toward him. “It’s in a pitcher in the fridge.”

  As she passes the doorway to the living room, she glimpses the disarray and remembers, all at once, why Harper Smith is there.

  He’s there to change her locks because someone broke into her house while she wasn’t home.

  Someone who stole her keys and obviously had intended to come back later.

  It might have been a bunch of harmless kids, as Frank Minelli had suggested, planning to rob her when she isn’t home.

  Or it might have been someone who schemes to come back when she is at home, to catch her unaware, in her bed, asleep, the way he had last time....

  “How are the locks coming along?” she asks Harper Smith tersely as she joins him in the kitchen.

  “So far, so good. The back door’s done and so is the basement. I had a bit of trouble removing one of the cylinders on that broken lock, but now you’re all set. I can work on the front door as soon as I finish my iced tea.”

  She nods, taking down two glasses, then changes her mind and puts one back. If she pours some tea for herself, it’ll seem too chummy, like she’s planning to sit and visit with him while he drinks his.