by Katrina Leno
Ruth jumped a little and looked up, her hand over her chest. “Jesus, I didn’t even hear you come in.” Her mother held out her arms and Jane walked into them. “I know, I didn’t expect to be bringing this much work home. There’s just so much to do. How was your day?”
“It was fine,” Jane replied.
“I totally lost track of time. How’s Chinese for dinner? I’ll go pick some up.”
“Sounds good, Mom. I’m going to go facetime Sal.”
“Tell her I said hi.”
Jane went upstairs and opened her laptop on the bed. It was four o’clock in California and Sal answered the phone red-faced and panting after a run. She was lying in the grass; Jane recognized the lemon tree that grew in her front yard. It was spotted with bright-yellow citruses. It made Jane’s heart ache for Los Angeles.
“Hi!” Sal said, breathing heavily, pushing her sweaty bangs off her forehead.
“You look hot,” Jane replied.
“Ugh, it’s terrible here. I thought I was going to die on my run.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Me too.”
“How far did you go?”
“Five miles. Hey, sorry I missed your call yesterday.”
“I didn’t call you yesterday, did I?” Jane asked, propping her pillows up behind her and settling back against them.
“Yeah, a bunch of times. I was sleeping. It was pretty late for you. Like, ten here. So one in the morning?”
Jane frowned. She’d gone to bed at nine thirty last night. She grabbed her phone and opened her recent calls. Sure enough, there were the FaceTimes to Sal. Four of them, all around one in the morning.
“Weird. Maybe my phone is broken,” Jane said.
“Well, we’re here now,” Sal replied. “How was your day?”
“It was fine.”
“Did you work?”
“Yup.”
“How’s Will?”
Jane shrugged. “Fine.”
“How’s your mom?”
“She’s fine.”
Sal made a face. “Did you call me just so you could answer all my questions with the word fine?”
Jane felt a twinge of something in her belly. Discomfort? Irritation? Anger? “No. I’m sorry. I guess I’m just a little tired. But I wanted to call. Tell me about your day.”
“It was fine,” Sal said, a smile spreading across her face.
“Jerk.”
“Love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I gotta go shower. Talk this weekend?”
“Yeah. Definitely.”
“Bye!”
Sal hung up first, after puckering her lips and kissing the air in front of the camera.
Jane went to kiss back, but the screen had already gone to black.
The conversation left her with a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
The house was quiet; Ruth hadn’t gotten back with the food. Jane went into her bathroom and turned the shower on as hot as she could stand it, even though Ruth always said cold showers were better for your skin. She took off her clothes and dropped them on the tiled floor, then stepped into the water.
She let the spray hit her on the chest, warming her up for what felt like the first time all day. When she turned off the water and wrapped a towel around her body, her skin was a dark shade of pink and she felt tired and hungry and happy. She squeezed her hair out over the tub, then wrapped it in another towel and walked back into her bedroom.
She pulled on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, then knelt on her bedroom floor and placed her new copy of The ABC Murders next to her other Agatha Christie books.
She pulled The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from her bookcase. Just holding it in her hands made her feel relaxed. Calm.
It was hard to explain.
It wasn’t even something she thought about that much, during the day.
But on the other hand, it was all she ever thought about.
This moment.
This ritual.
The tug of paper. The gentle rip. The yellowed pages.
And after today, after the confrontation with Melanie, Jane needed something to help her calm down.
So she ate the page.
She took what felt like her first deep breath all day.
When she was finished, she put the book away and stood up, stretching. She removed the towel from her hair and combed her curls out with her fingers. She threw the towel over her bathroom door and was about to peek out the window, to see if Ruth’s car was back, when she heard a little thump from down the hall. So Ruth was home. Good. She was hungry now, and on an empty stomach, the paper had left a dry feeling in the back of her throat. Not unpleasant. Just a little scratchy.
She slid on a pair of socks, turned off her bedroom light, and stepped into the hallway.
She’d left the foyer light on, and the hallway was bathed in the soft glow of it. Instinctively, she looked toward Ruth’s bedroom door, which was ajar. The light inside was off.
She felt tired. Fuzzy. Something else she couldn’t put a finger on.
Afraid?
Yes, she felt afraid.
But why did she feel afraid? Everything was fine.
The noise again.
It was a normal, human noise. The noise of someone walking through a space, bumping their hip against the side of a bed frame, rubbing their skin to ease the pain of it.
Jane’s palms itched.
She still stared at Ruth’s bedroom door, even though the thump had come from the other side of the hall. Toward the storage room.
Or… no.
Because it wasn’t a storage room.
She knew it wasn’t a storage room.
And she made herself look.
It was hard to turn her head.
It was like she was turning through air that had suddenly become too thick.
Like turning her head through molasses.
Like turning her head through a heavy current.
And when she finally managed…
The storage-room light was on.
Or no, no.
Because it wasn’t a storage room.
She knew it wasn’t a storage room.
And the light was on.
Underneath the door. She could see it. A line of warm yellow. Jane stared at it, and even as her heart pounded in her chest, even as all the saliva in her mouth suddenly leached away, leaving her tongue thick and swollen, she pretended it was Ruth.
“Mom,” she said, and her voice came out no louder than a whisper. “Mom, what are you doing in there? It’s time for dinner. Let’s find a movie to watch.”
And every single hair on her arms stood up as a shadow passed behind the door.
It was Ruth.
That’s what she told herself.
It was Ruth’s shadow.
“Mom,” she said, but this time her voice wasn’t a voice at all, but a scratchy, shaky thing that didn’t make it much farther than her own lips.
She took a step toward the door.
“Mom,” she said.
But no.
She didn’t say it at all. She didn’t even whisper it. She didn’t make even the tiniest sound.
And then someone put a key into the front-door dead bolt.
Jane heard it as clearly as if she were standing right next to it.
And the front door opened, and Jane heard her mother let out a sigh and dump her key ring in a little bowl they kept on the entrance table.
Such familiar noises. Jane had heard them so many times before.
She would know her mother’s sigh anywhere. She would know the jangle of the key ring, how Ruth released it just a little too early, how it clattered noisily against the glass bowl.
And then she couldn’t really pretend it was Ruth anymore, in the storage room.
But still—Jane couldn’t look away from the door.
She couldn’t even blink.
She heard Ruth call from down
stairs, “Janie, I’m home!”
But Jane kept watching the storage-room door.
She kept watching.
Kept
watching
Until the light flicked off.
And the doorknob started to turn…
Slowly, slowly, the door opened an inch.…
Jane could hear her blood in her ears, and she squeezed her eyes shut so firmly that stars danced across the black of her eyelids.
And then Ruth’s voice again and the sound of footsteps in the foyer.
“Honey, you ready for dinner?”
Jane’s eyes snapped open.
And her feet came unstuck.
And she ran.
She was very, very good
Jane launched herself down the stairs so quickly she almost tripped; she only just managed to grab the railing before plummeting forward, half falling down the last few steps. Ruth wasn’t in the foyer anymore, but Jane found her already in the kitchen, holding a plastic bag of Chinese food. Jane ran up behind her, skidding, slamming her hip into the side of a counter.
Ruth jumped. “Jesus, Jane, what’s the big rush?” Then she saw her daughter’s face, and her eyes narrowed. “Honey? What’s wrong?”
“There’s… somebody…” Jane couldn’t catch her breath; it felt like her lungs were broken, collapsing in on themselves, not holding any air.
“Sweetheart, calm down. Tell me what’s the matter,” Ruth said, her eyes big now, her expression scared.
“Upstairs,” Jane finished finally. “Mom, there’s somebody upstairs.”
Ruth blinked, unsure. “Honey, we’ve been through this—”
“Not like before,” Jane said, gulping for air. “Not like before. There’s someone here. I… I saw them.”
More accurately, she had seen their shadow, but she had to make Ruth believe her. And it worked—Ruth grabbed Jane’s arm with her free hand and dragged her deeper into the kitchen. She didn’t turn on the light. She walked calmly over to the fridge and set the food inside it, then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed 911.
That small gesture—Ruth putting the food into the fridge—made a manic laugh rise up in Jane’s chest. She clamped her hands over her mouth so it wouldn’t escape, so she wouldn’t end up hysterically laughing while her mother called the police and told them there was an intruder in the house.
But the laughter died away as quickly as it had come, replaced with ice-water terror, a wash of sickly cold that ran through Jane’s body like it was in her very veins. She removed her hands from her mouth and wrapped them around her stomach. She felt like she was going to throw up.
Ruth spoke quietly into the receiver, telling them there was a break-in, that someone was still in the house, giving them the address of North Manor in a clear, steady voice that did not shake or waver.
“The back door will be unlocked,” she whispered into the phone. “I am getting my daughter out of this house.”
And she pressed the End button, put the phone back into her pocket, and calmly grabbed a butcher knife from the knife block on the counter. Jane could not take her eyes off the blade of the knife, how the moonlight that found its way through the windows and into the kitchen glinted off the metal, how her mother’s hand tested the weight for one quick second before she whispered, harshly, “Shit.”
“What?” Jane asked frantically.
“Go to the mudroom,” Ruth said, her voice a low growl.
“Where are you going?”
“The car keys. They’re on the front table.”
“But you can’t—”
“The mudroom, Jane. Go wait for me in the mudroom.”
And Ruth picked up another knife, a smaller knife but one just as sharp and glinting, and put it into Jane’s hands. Jane felt another panicked laugh rising in her chest as Ruth turned away from her.
“Mom,” Jane started, but Ruth hissed “Shh” sharply, and Jane was silent.
And then Ruth was gone.
And Jane felt stuck to the floor, unable to move, and a dozen years passed and then a dozen more and then a hundred, and finally, she ripped her feet from the tile floor and ran out of the kitchen, ran into the mudroom, her heart beating a mile a minute, her stomach twisted into knots and her hands already hurting from how fiercely she held the knife.
Only a few seconds passed before Ruth reappeared, the car keys in the same hand as the one that held the knife. She unlocked the mudroom door and pushed it open and grabbed Jane’s arm with her other hand, and they slipped out into the night. Jane couldn’t help looking up to the second floor; there were no lights on up there but she swore she saw something move away from the storage-room window. She swore she saw a curtain falling back into place.
“Mom,” she tried again, but Ruth didn’t reply, only removed her grip on Jane’s arm, grabbing her hand, squeezing it as they took off at a run around the side of the house.
Jane saw the headlights flash as Ruth unlocked the car. They hurried to get inside. As soon as Jane’s door was closed, Ruth started the engine and threw the car into reverse, pulling out of the driveway so quickly the tires squealed.
“We’re safe,” she said. “We’re safe. We’re okay.”
She threw the butcher knife into the back seat. Jane did the same.
The car shot into the street, and Ruth threw it into drive and peeled away from the house. Jane looked back again—she couldn’t help herself—and this time the light in her bedroom was on.
And then it flicked off.
“Did you see that?” she choked. “That light?”
“We’re safe,” Ruth repeated.
They reached the main road, and Ruth took a left, barely slowing for the stop sign. “Where are you going?” Jane asked.
“The police station. Honey… what happened?”
“I took a shower. And I heard something. A person. Like a person, just walking, and sort of… bumping into something, maybe. I thought it was you, at first. But then I saw a light. In the storage room.”
“The storage room?”
“Except it’s not a storage room anymore,” Jane said. “Did you know that? It’s another bedroom. And I think… I think someone has been living in it.”
She remembered the lights she’d seen in the upstairs window when they first moved into the house, the hand pressed against the glass—that was the storage-room window! She hadn’t put it together before, but everything weird happening in the house seemed to center around that room.
“A bedroom?” Ruth repeated. “I don’t understand.”
“You haven’t been in there? Since we got here?”
“No,” Ruth said, after a moment’s pause. “I don’t know. It was always just a storage room.”
“Maybe when the house was empty for all these years… Do you think it’s possible that someone… moved in?” Jane asked, her words coming faster and faster, a panic rising in her voice, something clawing at her chest.
“I think I would have known if someone was living in our house, Jane,” Ruth said, her voice quiet, her hands clenching the steering wheel purposefully, her eyes staring straight ahead at the dark road in front of them.
Jane crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself to try to stop the shivers that didn’t go away, not even with heat blasting out of the vents. She couldn’t stop thinking of Ruth so calmly placing the Chinese food in the fridge. She couldn’t stop thinking of the kitchen knives, gently rattling against each other in the back seat.
“I almost went and opened the door,” she whispered after a minute.
“We’re safe,” Ruth said, for the fourth time, and Jane found that it lost meaning with every repetition. They were words. Just two words. Three words. Two and a half words. Did a contraction count as two separate words? She put her hands over her face and breathed in deeply.
“I thought it was you,” she continued. “I mean, I didn’t really think it was you, but it was like my brain was making it you. Because the alternative was too sc
ary. Does that make sense?”
Jane thought she would scream if Ruth said We’re safe again, and she was relieved when, instead, her mother removed her right hand from the steering wheel and set it firmly on Jane’s leg. She squeezed.
A flash to Greer driving. Ruth in the passenger seat. Jane in the back seat. Suitcases piled on the seat next to her. Where were they going? A road trip. One of Greer’s impossibly long arms stretching into the back seat, finding his daughter’s leg, squeezing it just above the knee, tickling her. Her laughter filling the car. Some nonfiction book on tape playing from the speakers. Ruth shushing everyone half-jokingly, turning it up.
Jane put her hand on top of Ruth’s hand and she was back, solidly, in the moment. And Greer was dead. And there would be no more family road trips. And it was freezing, and this wasn’t California, and someone had been in their house. And, and, and.
“I’m just glad I got home when I did,” Ruth said. But there was something different in her voice, something Jane didn’t understand. A hesitation that hadn’t been there before.
They arrived at the police station a few minutes later. Ruth let the engine idle for a moment, her hand hovering over the key in the ignition like she wasn’t quite ready to leave the safety of the car.
“I’m in my pajamas,” Jane said.
“I’m sure they’ve seen it all,” Ruth replied. She turned the car off and got out.
Jane followed her.
Ruth introduced herself to the person at the front desk, a young policewoman in uniform who, when they entered, had been taking a sip from a bright-blue travel mug. She had short, curly brown hair and brown skin and long eyelashes, and she listened intently as Ruth explained who they were, then tapped a few things into her computer and read something on the screen.
“It looks like the patrol cars have arrived at your house, Mrs. North. Please take a seat, and we’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.”
She gestured to a row of metal chairs to her right. Her badge said STEVENS. Ruth and Jane went and sat. Jane picked up a copy of National Geographic that was five months old. Ruth chose a Good Housekeeping but didn’t read it, just flicked through it wordlessly, one page after another after another, her eyes unfocused and unblinking. It made Jane nervous.
Every few minutes Ruth looked up from the magazine and over at her daughter—quick, fleeting glances that Jane tried to meet but kept missing.