by Gian Sardar
As she dials, she looks to the second floor of Edith’s house, watching as Edith answers.
“She’s outside.”
31
Now
OUTSIDE, A WIND has picked up. Young trees bent, leaves gathering in a shifting pile by the station’s front door. Within the last two hours the media presence all but disappeared, a train derailment in the corner of the state too enticing, and only one news van is left, its doors shut tight against the wind. Though they’ve wished for the glare of spotlights to be shut off and the microscope to be removed, there’s also something disconcerting about it, as if with the shift is a recognition that they were getting no closer to catching their man, that there was no reason for the media to stay.
“You rested?” Schultz asks, emerging from his office. “Harris said you might not be rested.” A wink.
Harris, the last person you tell anything to. “All good, Sarge.”
“Great. These came in for you.”
Notes from the handwriting examiner, for the forgery case. “Right, thanks.”
“Just spoke to Lila McCale’s neighbors. The ones across the street, good view to her room. They found cigarette butts the week before the rape.”
“He was casing.”
“Or it wasn’t him. Unrelated. Could’ve been a gardener, a kid from down the street trying to not get caught.”
“They remember brand?”
“Yep, because the neighbor used to smoke them. Reds.”
Aidan pictures where Brittany stood, holding the cigarette butt—Abby’s window directly across. No money to pitch in, but apparently she can spend nine bucks on a pack of Reds. Brittany’s sister accepted blame, but for the location, for the assumption they were hers or her friends’. She could’ve been wrong. “They toss ’em?”
“Sure did. Didn’t know to keep them, no reason then. Might not have gotten DNA off ’em anyhow if the guy doesn’t get the butt wet. And again, might’ve been unrelated.”
“The woman I’m seeing, her neighbor found Reds earlier this week. Perfect vantage point. But the sister smokes, could’ve been her. Or her friends.”
Schultz takes this in. “Okay. I’m assuming you did already, but if not, get patrol on her street. And try not to worry—I get trash in my yard from kids driving by. I’m constantly picking it up. It happens. A good chance it’s nothing.”
“Thanks.”
A good chance. But the detail clings to the edge of justification, refusing to let go.
When the night shift is in full swing he remembers the handwriting examiner’s notes. “The ‘a’ of the questioned signature [Q1] does not exhibit the stinger formation consistent in the provided exemplars [K1, K2, K3]. Would request samples closer in date to the Last Will & Testament.” A stinger—that’s a new one for Aidan. He looks at the samples of Rick Sullivan’s writing, and sure enough, a hook shoots off inside the circle of the a, reared back like a bee’s stinger. Even this makes him think of Abby and the dream she’d told him about, and once again the replay of last night and this morning starts up. Her head on his chest while she slept. Rewind, play. Eyes shut tight, mouth open, a shiver below her skin.
Time to end things with Ashley. He knows it won’t be a surprise to her, but as the phone rings, he thinks of the best way to say it—he doesn’t have time, it’s not fair to her. You deserve someone better, he pictures himself saying. But when she answers he’s saying something else entirely: I met someone. Straight to the point, he’s actually smiling as he says the words. I know, she responds. A little too straight to the point, perhaps. The phone goes dead.
Not even a minute later, it rings. Haakstad.
“One thing I just heard,” he says, the second Aidan answers. “The mother of our last girl? She had this pillow crocheted with Now I lay me down to sleep, that saying? Kept it on her rocking chair by her bed. She said it was squashed, you know, not fluffed, even though she kept it fluffed all the time.”
“He sat there. Watching her.”
“That’s what she thought.”
“The daughter, that was the one who was in a book club with her mom, right? Real close?”
“No, that was our first victim.”
“Her mom was home, too?”
“Dad as well. The rooms were spread out, sound was not a factor. She only noticed it a few days after the rape. Anyone could’ve sat there. But she thought it was something.”
Schultz walks by and points to the coffee machine. “Used espresso.”
Aidan looks at the clock and tells Haakstad he’s got to go. A quick call to Abby. Through the station windows he sees the wind continues, the one remaining news van’s satellite sitting in the sky like a moon, low and full.
“I hate this wind,” Abby says when she answers. “I don’t want to sleep.”
“You can’t say that to a man who’s working till six AM.”
“Sorry. I know. I’m thinking I’ll try to stay awake myself. Coffee, whatever. Make it through the night and sleep when the sun rises, wake up for Lake of the Isles when you wake up.”
He looks behind him to make sure no one’s around. “Maybe I’ll stop by later, we can keep each other awake.”
She laughs. “I wish. My mom will be home. She’s been a bit weird.”
“Weird because of me?”
“She was home when you dropped me off. One glance out the window would’ve done it. By the way, I see a cop driving down the street. He was here earlier, too. Thank you.”
The night continues. Red Bulls and strong coffee. Then, around two AM, they get a call. A young woman heard a noise, like someone trying to get in her window. The second Aidan gets there, she bursts into tears: There was no noise, her dog ran out the front door and the wind was loud and she was scared. Even when Aidan takes the leash from the hook on the wall, Come on, let’s get him, she’s crying.
“I just want this to be over,” she says.
“Soon,” he tells her, “we’re almost there.”
A white lie. The dog is found two blocks over. After he’s dropped them back off, he decides to swing by Abby’s, to finish filling out the report in front of her house. An excuse to keep watch.
A branch is down on her street and his headlights catch the leaves. When he looks up he sees two red lights and at first thinks they’re a patrol’s brake lights, but then he realizes what’s odd—no other lights. The street is dark. A car whose driver thought keeping the headlights off would make him invisible, forgetting entirely about the brakes.
He speeds up and is at the corner in seconds—but the road’s empty. Three streets branch off within about fifty feet. The driver could’ve gone down any of them. He picks one, spots no one, flips around and tries another. Pointless. The car’s gone. He makes another U-turn and heads back, trying to remember the exact distance he’d seen the red lights emerge in the dark. It would’ve been right around here, he thinks, as he pulls to the curb before Abby’s house. He stares at her glass door. Then he puts the car in park.
At first the wind kept her awake. The world rustling outside her window like a persistent tide on a burning shore. Then a strong cup of coffee lent assistance. Pacing. A midnight snack, her face washed a few times. The branches in the yard moved steadily as the minutes crawled by and the sky deepened in the bend of night. Maybe she sat down on the bed for a minute, maybe it was longer.
Now it’s dark. Darker than it usually is in the dreams, the storm about to break loose. Wind pushes against the oak tree, its branches somehow fluid, moving like snakes in the night, and the chandelier whips with every gust, clanking prisms that sound like a shower of glass. In the midst of the black meadow there is a clearing, the soil upended, clumps of grass tossed aside, twists of tiny roots left exposed. Abby sits on the ground, the palms of her hands pressed firm against the dirt as a worm brushes against her hand. At first just a touch, but then firmer a
s it weaves its way between her fingers, threading one by one, pinning her to the earth. Too late, she realizes she can’t move.
A parrot shrieks alarm into the sky.
Then something works its way up her throat. Rising, shoving forth, forcing her to gag. Choking. Whatever it is, is stuck, and with her hand she reaches into her own mouth and grabs at it, gets ahold and pulls. The oak tree begins to quiver. It’s a root, gnarled and bloody, never-ending. Coiled at her feet and yet still there’s more; still she pulls and pulls until suddenly it snags, caught on something deep within her, a stabbing, searing pain in her side. Then she’s sinking and there’s nothing to do but hold her breath as the ground gives way and pushes into her mouth, filling her nose.
Too late she realizes she should’ve closed her eyes, as now they’re fixed in place, open and filling with dirt.
32
Then
WILLIAM’S ABOUT TO TURN into the driveway but has already noted that there’s no light between the trees. He takes his foot off the gas and the beginnings of disappointment bring him to a stop. But then he reaches for a dangling, frayed end: She could still be inside. She could be sleeping.
Inside he flicks on the light. The living room’s empty. He takes the stairs two at a time. The bed is made, the room silent, save for the faint tick of the pocket watch. He sits on the bed, feeling foolish.
What did he think? He’d ended it. She listened. He gave her no reason to keep hoping, to try again. Downstairs he turns on the faucet to rinse a glass and the absence of human presence pours through the rusted pipes in a reddish spill. He lets the water run, swirls it from the glass and reaches for the brandy. Beside it is the bottle of ginger ale, bought for her. There are two glasses in the dish rack. Two. He’d forgotten to put them away, from the last time they were together. The last time? Though he was the one who said the words, who made the choice, the simplicity of these two glasses pulls at something deep within him. He made a mistake. He knows it. But how can he undo what’s been done? He just needs to be strong. Stay on course. Wanting something doesn’t mean he should have it. Willpower, that’s what he needs. Life will go on. He’ll have a son or a daughter. His Rochester days will be forgotten, sanded down by new memories. He thinks of his child’s children, and their children, all of them, a whole future, no one realizing how close they’d come to not existing, how much he had longed to take the other path.
There’s a rap on the glass and Claire startles.
“You didn’t hear me at first,” Edith says once inside. She’s wearing a black mink coat on top of her silk pajamas, a black beaded evening bag in her hand. “Like my getup? It was the first black thing I could find.”
“Did she see?”
“No. I’m like a prowler. And I went through the side gate, here in a jiff.”
“Now what?”
Edith laughs. “I thought you had the plan.”
Claire sits at the kitchen table. “The plan was not to be alone.”
They say nothing for a bit, and in the silence are the faint, sparkling musical beginnings of “Marie.” Edith taps her finger on the table. “Sounds like you got company. I didn’t know the Great Dane was a Dorsey fan.”
“I needed someone I can talk to.”
“So let’s talk.” She nods toward the street. “A little conversation is in order.”
Eva hears the front door shut. There, charging down the steps, are Claire and the neighbor, the woman William called Edith. Quickly Eva stands, grabs her towel, and hides behind the tree. Do they know she’s here? They must. A creak of the gate. The swishing of a dress gets louder.
“All right,” a voice says. “We know you’re there.”
Eva steps out from behind the tree and is about to play dumb, but there’s Claire, up close, taller than Eva had realized, with pale skin and shiny, almost colorless hair.
The neighbor wears a black mink coat, holding what looks to be an evening bag.
She speaks again. “Let’s be civilized. There’s no sense in standing out here when right across the street is a very nice place to sit and a bottle of brandy, which I’m sure we could all well use. Especially with the sky about to open up. I’m Edith, by the way. You know Claire. Obviously.”
Eva looks from Edith to Claire. Both are tall, intimidating. Yet the fact of their friendship softens them. They go to lunch together. They shop, they call each other when upset. Eva feels a tug of the impossible—if only things were different. Claire and Eva could slip aside and share what they love about William. Trade secrets. Laugh about his inability to make even a sandwich, his perfect handwriting, or the way he makes such a mess of the bed while sleeping that he must get up once or even twice to drag the sheets up off the floor.
Edith sighs. “It’s almost eleven o’clock, and two residents”—she motions to herself and to Claire—“have seen you prowling around. As you can imagine, this area is taken quite seriously, especially when so many are vacationing, whole stretches of houses empty. All it takes is a call.”
Claire’s eyes shine with either the moonlight or tears. Without warning she turns back to the house, while Edith waits till Eva gathers her things and then walks so closely that Eva feels the brush of her fur-clad arm and smells the jasmine of her perfume.
33
Now
THE DREAM WAS the worst one yet. When she woke at three AM, the house was silent, terrifyingly so, the wind gone as if an intensity had been reached and it could do no more. A quick check on her mother, who was sleeping the sleep of the dead, one leg hooked outside the blanket, and then Abby was hopelessly awake, watching the window for the touch of brightness that signaled safety. She can’t go on like this. Waiting for daylight to close her eyes, each night worse than the last. The house on Lake of the Isles—it has to help. How, she’s not sure, but there’s a feeling that something is there, waiting.
Could guilt be why the dream was worse? She’s never cheated before. Never even close, dutiful as she is. Was. Though it didn’t feel like cheating. Her night with Aidan felt like a moment in time completely separate from her world with Robert. And that’s what worries her. Perhaps that’s how all cheaters feel, clinging to some justification that makes them not like all cheaters. The common thread is that they feel they are not common.
Now she sits at the kitchen table. Earlier Aidan sent a text: Any noises last night? All quiet? She sees the message and replies: All good except my dream. Then he’s responding, and even that, those silly dots that mean he’s typing, makes her feel jittery. An extension of him, him who she wants. She sees his hands, his fingers. His response appears. Want to hear when I pick you up.
While she waits, she calls the nursing home where Eleanor Hadley lives and is told she can visit whenever she’d like. Another option, another chance. Even that, another possibility lined up, makes her feel better. But Robert. Yesterday she sent him a text. I was sleeping. The dreams have been bad. Amazing news. You did it. Some part of her knows this will be best for him, a burn that allows for new growth. With someone better suited, perhaps. Maybe this producer—Sophia—late-night note sessions, a bottle of wine, the assistant told he can go home. She would know the film world, conversations stretching hours about names that mean nothing to Abby. They’d see movies on the big screen—and not just comedies—and go to premieres, captioned together in pictures in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, those magazines Abby uses as coasters. He deserves to be with someone like that. Justification, Abby knows. An excuse as she’s caught holding a match to their lives.
As though her thoughts summoned him, Robert is calling. She stares at the phone, letting the call go to voicemail, then hits Play and pinches the bridge of her nose in order not to cry. The sight of his name makes her feel an internal collapse, but his voice is too much. On my way to another meeting with the producers, he says. At Warners this time, they want to talk casting. A pause. Call me when you’re ready. I love you
.
He knows. Not exactly, but enough. Abby sees him pulling onto the studio lot today, referring to a map the guard would give him, thin strips of sun between giant stages. He’d put the map away, his steps slow compared to those around him, eyes searching out building names, hoping he looks like he belongs. The granola bar is in his briefcase, she put it there before she left but never told him, and in her mind she pictures him hungry, back in the car, the door shut as he looks through his briefcase for something, anything, only to find it at the bottom, ruined, crushed. The thought of him hungry breaks something within her because she loves him, she does—just not enough.
Dorothy shoots Pledge onto the wood table, chasing it with a towel that’s seen better days. A newspaper hits the front walk.
“Mom, you’re getting it everywhere.” She picks up her coffee, no doubt doused with chemicals.
Her mother stops, towel in hand, hands on her hips. “Abby, don’t you remember what it was like, being left?”
Thrown. She doesn’t understand at first—did someone not pick her mother up? Someone left her somewhere? But when she realizes what her mother means, the anger swells inside her. How dare Dorothy anchor Abby’s situation to her own—Abby’s father had a family, responsibilities, an actual marriage. “Mom, don’t you remember what it was like, being with the wrong person?”
“Who, then? Who is the wrong person? The one who called me yesterday morning, asking for the ring so he could propose?”
Abby feels a tightening in her jaw. The timing, of course, lined up with the deal with Warners, but would he have asked for the ring if he didn’t feel a distance? If he didn’t think he was about to lose her?