“Well, who are they from?” Alex said as he shuffled around the kitchen, pulling out all the egg-cooking paraphernalia.
“I don’t know,” she said, realizing she had forgotten to check. She raised her phone and turned on the screen, then paused.
“Okay,” she said, “my phone really is going crazy.”
Alex had his back turned now, and was cracking eggs into a frying pan. “Hmm?”
Kat was flipping through her phone messages, baffled. “It deleted them—my phone did. The scrambled messages are gone. I got four last night, and one yesterday, and they’re all gone.”
“Well, I hope they weren’t that important.”
“They were all screwed up anyways, so it isn’t like I could read them. But still, that’s really weird. Have you ever heard of a phone doing that—just deleting messages on its own?”
Alex shrugged. “I dunno. Phones do weird things sometimes. Maybe yours is getting too old and is starting to glitch.”
“Maybe....” Kat sat down at the kitchen table, still perusing her messages, wondering if perhaps the garbled messages would appear farther down the list.
“We’re out of ketchup,” Alex said. “Could you add it to the shopping list?”
“Sure,” Kat said, still looking down. Then she shut off the phone screen and looked up. “Actually, no. I’ll just go get some after you leave. Geegee and I will do it for her walk. We don’t really have anything else to do, and I’m sure the fresh air would do me good.”
“Well, as fresh of air as you can find in Peascombe, anyhow.”
She chuckled and looked back down to her phone screen. “Right.”
6
“Just the ketchup?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, that’ll be two twenty-three.”
Kat already had two ones and a quarter ready. She slapped them on the counter, then waited for the two pennies. When the white-haired cashier slid them onto the counter, she snatched them up and then grabbed the bagged ketchup and headed out the door, chiming the little corner-store’s bell as she left.
We’re literal penny pinchers now, she realized. The thought made her sigh.
Geegee waited outside where she’d left her, lying down beneath a small oak tree. The morning sun sneaking between the leaves accentuated the black and white of Geegee’s coat. She raised her head as Kat stepped down from the store’s stretch of sidewalk.
“C’mon Geegee.”
The dog rose and trotted to her, then they began the walk home.
The corner store was one of the few things that Kat liked about Peascombe. It was nice to have a place they could go to for small things like the odd bottle of ketchup, even if the price was usually marked up an extra quarter or two. It was at least a good enough reason to get them outside.
The sidewalk buckled and listed beneath her. Where summer storms hadn’t washed away its foundations, tree roots had raised them, making for a veritable obstacle course. Her little smile at the outdoor walk faded as she traversed the sidewalk’s slopes. It worked okay for walking, but what about when there was a baby? How would a stroller do?
Another thing to worry about, another reason to leave Peascombe.
Across the street from her, two locals gossiped in front of the post office. It was exactly the small-town scene that she had imagined before they’d moved here. Back then, she’d thought it would be nice—familiar faces wherever you went. A place you could really know. She hadn’t anticipated the nearly impenetrable coat of local-or-leave mentality. She’d figured that within a year of living in Peascombe, they’d be a part of the community. It had been far longer than that already, and she felt no more a part of the town than she had on the day they’d pulled up to the curb in their U-Haul.
In those days, she’d seen the charm of Peascombe and wanted to be a part of it. But after getting the same stares and scowls from the same people for so long, Kat only noticed the small town’s decay now. Maybe the natives were just tired of other people showing up and then shipping off a few years later, and so they never bothered welcoming the new people, since, from their perspective, the newcomers were all just going to be leaving sooner or later anyway.
But the locals would live and die here.
And, Kat realized, that was a major difference between them and her—she wouldn’t die here. The thought of dying someday was awful enough, but to spend her last days in a place like Peascombe, Illinois, would be unacceptable. And with those kinds of thoughts in her mind, she could never be accepted in Peascombe, and now simply wanted to leave. It was just a matter of getting the money and opportunity.
The shade of neighborhood trees broke as she crossed in front of Peascombe Elementary School. The redbrick building sat low to the ground, as if sinking daily into the soft Illinois soil. Just before they’d moved to the town, a boy scout troop had put in a new play structure, since the old one had apparently been made of nothing but splinters and lead-based paint. The new structure already looked worn and tired, and had begun to tilt slightly, further suggesting to Kat that the property the school rested upon was unstable.
The kids were good, though. One of those windows looked in on a classroom that had been hers. Hers and twenty-odd sixth graders. No, the school had been fine. The kids had been good. It had been interacting with other teachers and parents that had been the real headache.
“Hey.”
Kat stopped on the sidewalk and looked around.
“Over here.”
She found the speaker. A gray van with the words “Trout Handy’s Fixup Services” decaled across the side sat on the opposite side of the road, its engine off. A thin, balding man was squinting through the open window at her. He waved lazily to make sure he had her attention.
“You from ‘round here?”
She was deliberating over whether or not to answer him when he said, “My phone’s dead and I’m trying to find Two-two-seventy-one Gormich Street. Can you help me?”
Gormich Street. She knew where that was. The guy was almost there—if he’d just driven a little bit further, he would’ve found it. Good grief, it wasn’t like Peascombe was that big or anything.
“It’s just a couple blocks further,” she said.
“What?”
“I said it’s—”
“You’re gonna have to step a little closer, Sweetie. My ears ain’t great.”
Kat clamped her mouth shut and tightened her grip on the plastic bag. Instead of yelling or stepping closer to the van, she just raised her hand and pointed in the direction of Gormich Street.
“That ways?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Okay. Thanks. I guess I’ll be able to find it now.”
Kat wasn’t going to wait around to see if he did or not. She started walking, but much more quickly than before, forcing Geegee to trot to stay by her side.
“Come on, Geegee, let’s get home.”
She didn’t usually talk to the dog. But she didn’t usually—
She jumped as the van coughed life into itself and began a long, whistling and wheezy breath. She glanced over her shoulder where, half a block distant now, the van started rolling forwards and onto the road, ostensibly headed towards Gormich Street.
Seeing it drive off didn’t make her feel much better. She didn’t want to be paranoid, but some creepy, thin, middle-aged white guy trying to lure her towards his big van? It might as well have said “Sammy’s Serial Killing Service” on the side.
No, she chided herself. She was being ridiculous.
Then she shivered and started walking even faster.
Unable to stop herself, she glanced behind her again. The van was gone, but far too soon for it to have driven all the way down to Gormich Street. As she swiveled her head back forwards, she thought she caught a glimpse of a gray van moving behind the rundown houses to her left, rolling along parallel to her.
She did a double take, just in time to see, through a chain-link fence, the tail-end of a gray van slither
out of view.
Her house sat only a block further. She broke into a run.
7
The deadbolt clicked solidly into place, and Kat let herself slide down to the kitchen floor, panting. Geegee stood watching her for a moment, then stepped up beside her and poked her nose into Kat’s arm, the dog’s eyebrows raised in sympathetic worry.
Kat had no idea whether the van had been following her or not, but it didn’t make sense for it to be creeping along just one street over. But even if it had been following her, the driver couldn’t have seen her go into this house. A high, wooden wall would’ve screened his view. He wouldn’t have known.
Just the same, she went into the bedroom. Locking the front and side doors was good. Making sure that all the blinds were closed as well was better. But she wouldn’t feel all right until she saw it.
She pulled out the drawer on Alex’s nightstand. The handgun lay in the back of it, loaded, with the safety on.
Kat jumped as Geegee pressed her wet nose into her palm. She laughed nervously and pat the dog on the head. “Good girl, Geegee. Mom’s just a bit nervous. That’s all.”
8
Kat jerked awake, sending something crashing to the floor at her side. Her whole body felt tense, and her eyes had flown open so wide they hurt. She took in a deep breath before letting her eyes close, trying to blink and think her way through the thick fog of drowsiness that had settled over her.
She leaned over the side of the couch and looked down. Her book had fallen to the ground. Just her book. She jammed her palms into her eyes and rubbed at them. Had she been dreaming? She couldn’t recall. She just knew that she’d been deeply asleep a moment ago, and then thrown into a confused but alert wakefulness, like a caged animal after the bars are rattled.
Her heart leapt into her mouth as the raucous cry of the doorbell rang through the house. The fear dissipated almost instantly, once she’d registered that it had only been the doorbell. In its place an angry grogginess rose. Her deep sleep, her much-needed nap, had been cracked wide open by the doorbell. Grumbling, Kat pushed herself up from the couch and shuffled around the armchair to the door.
It wasn’t until her hand had closed around the cold doorknob that Kat remembered the van. She yanked her hand back as suddenly as if the metal had burned her fingers, then stood there, staring at the door.
The bell rang again, loud and forceful. It seemed to echo for a moment in her mind, lingering.
Kat swallowed, forcing down her fears and drawing up her courage. Then she took a small step towards the door, gently lay her hand against it, and leaned towards the peephole.
She’d expected to see the man from “Sammy’s Serial Killing Service” or whatever it had been; she’d hoped to see someone peddling pest-control or even religion. But instead, she saw nothing. Just the empty, weed-lined street, and the neighbor’s house beyond.
Something scratched on the floor behind her. Kat wheeled, barely containing a shriek, and saw Geegee, standing at the edge of the kitchen linoleum, watching her with her head slightly cocked.
“Oh! Geegee,” Kat said. Her voice came out thin through a dry mouth, and she felt her hands still trembling from fright and adrenaline. “Good dog, Geegee. Did you hear the doorbell, and you came to look? It was nothing. Just....”
What? Her imagination? Faulty wiring in the doorknob? One of her sixth-grade students doorbell ditching her? In broad daylight?
And why not? It was their summer break, they were bored, it wasn’t a busy street.
Sure. It was one of her former students, just trying to get a thrill with his buddies at her expense.
Sure.
Kat turned back to the door and re-checked the deadbolt, then went back to the couch and picked up her phone. She’d call her mom.
She hesitated, the phone in her hand. She was an adult now. Was she really going to run to her mom like she had as a scared little girl? Kat was a grown woman now. A grown woman, whose husband was probably out of the state already, in a small town full of small-town crazies, where she was just an unwelcome outsider. A grown woman, pregnant, alone, in a small old house in a half-empty, out-of-the-way neighborhood. A young woman, really. Barefoot. Pregnant. Helpless. A scared little girl.
She called her mom. It had been a while since they’d spoken, anyway.
Her mother picked up on the third ring.
“Katherine, how are you?”
“I’m good,” she lied. “Just thought I’d call. See how things are going. How are you?”
“Well, I can’t complain. The weather’s hot, and you know I don’t care for that. But we’re doing fine. Have you heard from Jennifer lately?”
Kat hadn’t heard from Jennifer in years—not really since high school. The friendship hadn’t ended well, a fact of which her mother was perfectly aware. “No.”
“Well, I saw her mother just the other day, while I was out doing my shopping. It was so nice to see her again. She’s looking great. Anyways, she said that Jennifer’s little startup is doing really well. I guess it’s been growing so fast, they’re having a hard time finding enough people to work there.”
“That’s great, Mom,” Kat cut in. “How’s dad?”
“He’s alright. They’ve cut back on his hours at work again. They say it’s to give him a break, but he’s worried that they’re getting ready to let him go.”
Kat hummed in response, and started walking around the house a bit, moving this way and that along with their wandering conversation. After a few minutes of pacing down across the front room and down the hall, she turned and went into the kitchen, stepping onto the cold and sticky linoleum. She paused there, not really listening to her mother’s prattling anymore. She just stared at Geegee’s doggy door. Geegee could fit through it easily. Perhaps, a person could too, if they wanted to. Certainly one could.
She slid the door’s little lock into place, snapping it tightly down.
“Mom,” she said, “are you ever scared? When you’re alone?”
“Maybe,” her mom said. Then it seemed to dawn on her that the question wasn’t merely academic. “Have you been feeling scared lately? Is something the matter?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’ve just felt jittery lately, I guess. Especially when Alex is gone.”
“Is he gone now?”
“Yeah.”
“Kat, why don’t you go with him? That poor man can’t enjoy being on the road so long by himself. Then neither of you would be alone.”
“I couldn’t,” Kat said. “There was a meeting I had to be here for.”
It was a lie, of course. She was done with meetings. Appointments she still had, and those even more plentifully than before, but she was definitely done with meetings. The truth, that sitting in the truck really set off her pregnancy nausea, was still a secret. Her mother apparently didn’t bat an eye at the deception—and why should she?
“Ah, those meetings,” she said. “Well, I suppose you can call me if you’re scared. Or, if there’s a reason for you being scared, call the police first. There’s not much I can do for you here in Florida. Are you sure there’s not a reason you’re scared? Is something the matter?”
“No,” Kat said, still staring at the doggy door. The thin plastic cover seemed woefully insufficient. “No, I’m fine. Just jittery is all.”
“Well, you will call the police if something is the matter, won’t you? That’s what they’re there for, you know.”
“Yeah, I will.”
“Promise? It makes me scared to think of you in that place all by yourself.”
“I promise. If something is actually wrong, I’ll call the police right away.”
“Good,” her mother said. “I think lots of folks don’t, and that makes for big problems. I think they feel silly calling the police, if it isn’t a real emergency. But you know what? I think that if they would just call the police in the first place, then maybe there wouldn’t have to be a big emergency later.”
They talked for a wh
ile longer. Kat’s fears seemed to dim, but not disappear. When the call finally ended, Kat realized that she had been standing and staring at the doggy door ever since noticing it.
A few minutes later, she had pushed the living-room armchair into the kitchen and jammed it up against the door. Then braced the kitchen table between the armchair and the wall, jamming the armchair tightly in place against the door. After that was done, Kat went back into the living room, sat on the couch, and cracked open What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
9
Kat climbed out of bed, finally giving up on her attempted nap. It seemed that no matter how she positioned herself, she could not feel comfortable. There would always be some part of her that felt as if it were bending too far, or that the mattress was pressing back against her or something. She wondered about the efficacy of those large, U-shaped pregnancy pillows and scoffed to herself. Those were for women who were really pregnant, weren’t they? The women who had rounded-out tummies and swollen ankles and breasts. Not for her. Not this early.
But maybe one would help her to sleep?
She slumped onto the living-room couch. She’d managed to get a few cat naps there earlier. They hadn’t left her feeling refreshed the way she would have liked, but at least they were better than a half hour of rolling from side to side on the bed.
Her head fell to the armrest, and she curled up atop the old cushions, aware of the front door beside her, the window behind her, the kitchen with its barricaded entrance at the far end of the room, and the hallway towards the bedroom and nursery in front of her. It made her feel as if she sat at the convergence of the home—its epicenter, the choke point. Nothing would come through without passing right before her.
She grabbed a blanket and pulled it up to her throat, trying to smother the goosebumps that had just risen across her skin. Then she snatched up the TV remote and turned on the small set across from her, flipping through the channels for a minute before settling on a news station. She set the remote aside, shut her eyes, and let the sound of another person’s voice bring her closer to sleep.
Cleaving Souls Page 3