Tildy’s stilettos wobble a bit as she steps farther into the entry hall, her hand fumbling for a light switch along the wall.
At precisely the same second she locates the switch and flips it, she realizes something strange: the alarm never went off.
But she never told Ed the code.
Albert.
She never told Albert the code.
Why didn’t it go off?
And why…
Why isn’t the light going on?
The bulb must be burned out.
Tildy feels her way forward unsteadily, then realizes that it’s getting easier to see.
That’s because of the candles.
Candles?
Yes, that’s definitely flickering candlelight coming from the dining room.
“Hello?” she calls, realizing she’s not alone.
Only one person could have let himself into the town house. He has the key; he knows the code.
So the roses were from him after all, she realizes. This is what he meant by “See You Tonight.”
He’s waiting for her with candlelight and, undoubtedly, champagne and gifts, to celebrate her birthday privately.
“You are too much,” she calls, giggling, pausing to prop herself against the wall with one hand and pull off her shoes with the other.
Still nauseated, she dangles the shoes from one hand by their straps and proceeds, barefoot, into the dining room.
The first thing she notices is that the swinging door that leads to the kitchen is closed, for some reason…
Then she stops short.
“What the…?”
Tildy looks around in wonder at the pink streamers, balloons, party favors, the large cake in the center of the table. Thirty candles flicker amid the icing roses and Happy Birthday elegantly scrolled in pastel pink. Beneath those words, somebody has awkwardly written DEAR TILDY in gooey block letters using a gaudy shade of red.
Red? Why not pink? The red looks almost like fresh blood oozing over the cake…
No, don’t think that. Not when you feel so queasy.
Why didn’t he just have the bakery write in the Dear Tildy? she finds herself wondering as her stomach churns.
And where the heck is he, anyway?
“Honey? I’m home!” Oops, she’s slurring.
She concentrates, trying hard to keep her words coherent as she calls, “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” a voice answers softly from directly behind her, just inches from her ear.
The house is quiet.
Too quiet, Brynn thinks, lying on the couch and wondering whether she should turn on the television again.
She just clicked it off a few minutes ago in the midst of a cable movie’s opening credits, realizing she was starting to doze at last.
Now that the living room is dark and silent, she’s suddenly wide-awake again…and a little spooked.
Is it any wonder? Earlier, she channel-surfed until she found a Johnny Depp movie she’d never seen—a scary, bloody thriller. But, of course, she couldn’t stop watching until the whopping final twist, which she never saw coming.
With a creaking of old springs beneath her weight, she turns onto her side so that her back is pressed against the lumpy couch pillows.
There. Now sleep.
Startled, Matilda Harrington opens her mouth, but a firm open palm clamps down over it before she can make a sound.
“Don’t scream. Don’t move. Just listen, okay? Okay?”
Tildy nods, her momentary panic subsiding as she realizes that this must be some kind of birthday surprise. The voice is vaguely familiar, but in her inebriated confusion, she’s unable to place it.
For a moment, the only sound is her muffled breathing behind the stifling hand pressed over her lips. She wants to protest that this is uncomfortable, but, suddenly, an eerily singsong voice fills the room.
“Happy Birthday to you…”
I was right. Somebody’s planned a party for me. A post-party party! Any second now, everyone will jump out and shout, “Surprise!”
She wriggles, trying to turn to see who’s there, but she’s held fast. She tries to speak, but the hand presses harder, the thumb jamming against her nostrils, cutting off her air.
Panic begins to steal over her again. She struggles to breathe in as her unexpected guest continues to sing to her.
Why isn’t anyone yelling “Surprise” yet?
Where are all the other guests?
Why aren’t they singing along with whoever is holding her?
And why is that damn hand covering her mouth so damn tightly that she can’t inhale?
Somewhere in her drunken daze, Tildy is struck by the irony that somebody went to all this trouble to surprise her on her birthday, and she’s going to pass out right here, right now, because they don’t realize she can’t breathe.
Hysterical, bibulous laughter bubbles up inside her to commingle with irrational fear as her body reflexively fights for oxygen, squirming, trying to break free.
Surely the other guests see what’s happening here.
Surely someone will put a stop to this.
But nobody comes forward, and the singing continues, and her alcohol-induced haze is beginning to lift.
Is this a surprise party?
Or some kind of prank?
Or…
Dear God, I’m not actually in danger…am I?
Between the uncomfortable couch, her nerves, and the eerie silence, Brynn’s entire body is tense.
Just go to sleep.
She has to be up extra early to get both Caleb and Ashley to school.
Ashley.
She was a tremendous help with the boys, reading them countless bedtime stories and promising she’d play with them in the morning. After Brynn gave the boys a final tuck-in and closed their doors, she found Ashley with a wistful look on her face.
“I wish I wasn’t an only child,” she confided.
Brynn wasn’t sure what to say to that. So, of course, she said the wrong thing.
“Maybe your mom or dad will get remarried someday and have more children.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back.
Her own father remarried. Look how she herself still felt about that, and Dad and Sue didn’t even have more children together, thank God.
Ashley’s smile was sad. “I don’t think they will. And anyway, my mom doesn’t really like kids.”
“Oh, Ashley, of course she does,” Brynn assured her, but it sounded, and felt, like a lie. “You know she loves you, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know she does, but…She’s not really into being a mom, you know?”
What could Brynn say to that?
She opted for silence and just let Ashley talk, sensing she needed an ear. She talked for a long time, mostly about her mother and how busy she was, and how she wished Fiona didn’t have to work so hard all the time.
“It takes a lot of energy to run a successful business, and I bet you’re proud that your mom has done very well for herself,” Brynn heard herself point out, though what she really wanted to say to Ashley was, “You poor thing, let me hug you.”
“I’m really proud of her. I just wish she was around more. And I wish I didn’t have to go home by myself some days.”
“You’re home by yourself?”
Ashley backpedaled furiously, seeing the look on Brynn’s face. “Only for a few minutes, until my babysitter gets there. It’s fine.”
No, it wasn’t. And Brynn made a mental note to talk to Fiona about it.
If Fiona can’t get her sitter there earlier, Brynn decided, she’d just offer to have Ashley come here instead.
Finally, catching Ashley trying to stifle a tremendous yawn, Brynn told her it was time for bed. Ashley protested her offer of the master bedroom, but finally relented when Brynn said she was going to wait up late for Garth.
“Where will you guys sleep, though?” Ashley wanted to know.
The thing is…
He isn’t home yet.
The whole time she was watching the movie, she kept lowering the television volume, thinking she heard him coming in. It must have been her imagination.
Where is he?
But, of course, she knows the answer to that question.
He’s on campus, in the library, working on his book.
But it’s getting really late, and…
And I’m getting really freaked out for no reason, Brynn realizes, rolling onto her back once again.
Everything is fine. There’s nothing to worry about.
Right, you can think that’s true from now until next year, but you aren’t going to get rid of this feeling that something is just…wrong.
She doesn’t even know what it is.
She only knows that she’d feel a whole lot better if Garth was here with her…
And if she had never gotten that damn birthday card for Rachel—from Rachel?—last month.
“…dear Tildy, Happy Birthday to yoooooouuuuuuu.”
Matilda Harrington is really struggling now. It’s becoming more difficult to hold on to her.
“Stop squirming around, would you?”
She reacts with a monumental spasm teamed with an excruciating abdominal kick.
“Owwww…you little bitch!”
In that doubling-over, pain-blinding instant, she has broken free.
“Get back here!”
She scrambles out of reach, hurtling herself toward the dining room. Dancing candlelight grotesquely distorts her shadow as it darts along the wall toward the closed kitchen door.
Moments later, another shadow looms, and begins to furtively creep after her.
Lying on sagging cushions with a stray couch spring poking into her ribs, Brynn is increasingly uneasy.
She pulls the blanket more snugly over her shoulders and tries again to relax.
It’s long past midnight. She should be sleeping.
Right, and Garth should be home.
She turns onto her left side, the way she usually sleeps, pulling the blanket with her. It’s an old one, with squeaky layers of acrylic that send chills down her back. She should throw it away after tonight. Go shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond, buy some new blankets, new pillows. Maybe a new slipcover for this worn old couch…
She doesn’t like having her face just inches from the back cushion this way. It makes her feel uneasy, as though she’s going to tip forward in her sleep and smother.
Smother? That’s a crazy thought.
Her head has been filled with crazy thoughts all night, though. Troubling thoughts.
She flips onto her back again and stares into the darkness, listens for the crunch of tires in the driveway or a key turning in the lock, and she worries.
About Garth. About her boys. About Ashley. Even about Fiona.
“Do you think my mom is going to be okay? Ashley asked after Fee left—and again a little while ago, just before bed. ”What if something bad happens to her?”
Outwardly, Brynn reassured her. Inwardly, she cringed.
Fiona drives much too fast, much too recklessly. She works too hard. She doesn’t eat well, when she bothers to eat at all. She smokes too much.
She does all the things maternal instinct should guard against…
If she possessed a blessed ounce of it.
Yet, so far, Fee has always managed to land on her feet. It seems unfair.
Especially when Brynn’s mother did everything right.
Marie swam at the Y five mornings a week. She never ate red meat; she bought organic produce back when it was next-to-impossible to find. She didn’t smoke, she rarely drank caffeine or liquor, she took vitamins every day…
She should have lived to be ninety.
It isn’t fair.
Even after all these years, an ache rises in Brynn’s throat: heavy, hard, and hollow as Sue’s damn bowling ball.
But she’s starting to realize that it isn’t just grief. Not tonight.
Tonight, it’s something more, a nagging feeling that’s settled over her more snugly than this horrible squeaky blanket that smells vaguely of mildew.
Something bad is going to happen.
Yes, that’s it, she realizes. That’s what’s been bothering me all night.
She takes a deep breath, telling herself she’s being ridiculous.
But she can’t seem to shake the inexplicable feeling of trepidation.
Matilda Harrington is on her hands and knees, crawling like an animal across the cold slate floor of her beautifully remodeled kitchen.
She’s alone in here for the moment, having allowed the door to swing closed after her, but she knows it won’t stay that way for long. Any second now, it’s going to open and—
No, don’t think about it.
She pushes away the shocking image of the face she glimpsed back there—or thought she glimpsed, in the instant before she bolted.
It can’t be…can it?
And if it is…why?
Why are you here?
Why are you doing this to me?
Even now, remembering the weird party setup in her dining room, she wants to believe it’s some kind of warped birthday joke.
But it isn’t, her gut tells her. You have to get out of here.
She hugs the darkness against the wall, glancing longingly at the back door across the room.
The liquor’s numbing effects have been obliterated by adrenalin, making way for full-blown panic. Yes, maybe the numbness was preferable to this constricting ache of terror in her chest, but at least Tildy now has the presence of mind to stop herself from making a run for the back door.
That escape path is well illuminated in a pool of light that spills from beneath the massive stove hood; if the kitchen door opens before she gets out, she’ll be in plain sight, and easily caught.
Anyway, even if she made it out the door to the backyard, she’d be trapped there by the tall privacy fence. Impossible to climb, the installer assured her not so long ago; neighborhood kids and would-be burglars wouldn’t be trespassing in her backyard. There’s no way anyone can get in…
Or out.
No, desperate as she is to flee, she’s better off going full circle through the pantry to the back hall that leads through a windowed alcove into the foyer again. From there, she can run out the front door onto the street. Even at this time of night, there has to be somebody around to see her, help her. If by chance there isn’t, there are still plenty of people within earshot; all she has to do is run screaming down the avenue and somebody will call the cops.
Fire, she thinks somewhere in the back of her frenzied mind as she crawls across the newly refinished wooden floor of the pantry, which still smells faintly of polyurethane.
If you’re in trouble, you’re supposed to yell fire, not help.
Isn’t that true? That people don’t respond to strangers screaming help anymore?
She thought she heard that somewhere. Never in her wildest imagination did she think she, Matilda Harrington, might find herself in that kind of trouble.
This kind of trouble.
God, please help me.
Fighting to keep from erupting into a scream, she rounds the corner into the pitch-black hall.
Don’t scream.
If you scream, you’re giving off a Here I Am signal.
Don’t make a sound.
She feels her way into the alcove, where faint light spills through the bare windowpanes. She glances up, sees tree branches silhouetted against the night sky.
Maybe I can use something to break the window and climb right out from here.
Yes, and that would trigger the alarm system—
No, she remembers. Somehow, the alarm system isn’t working.
And her attacker would be upon her at the sound of breaking glass, before she could get out
through the window.
Her only escape is the front door.
She’s almost there, and still not a sound behind her.
She makes it to the threshold of the foyer, where she struggled so fiercely, frantically, just moments ago…
Why? Why are you doing this to me?
What did I ever do to deserve this?
Fragmented thoughts flicker in her brain; okay, so she’s no saint.
Hot tears slide from her eyes, landing on her hands splayed on the floor.
She’s no saint, but she doesn’t deserve to die for her sins.
Die? Oh, my God, is she about to die? Is that what’s actually going to—
No! Stop it!
She isn’t going to die. Not like this, crawling like an animal. Not here, now, on her birthday.
She’ll be fine; she just has to stay calm.
And, look, there’s the front door. Less than three yards away. Salvation.
The front hall is silent, dark, aside from the faint flickering from the next room, and seemingly deserted.
She inches her way forward, forcing herself to stay low, quiet, calm.
Still no sign of her tormentor.
Tildy is just a couple of inches from the door now.
Almost free.
Almost safe.
She stealthily kneels, reaching up, feeling around blindly.
There.
Thank God.
Thank God.
Her hand closes around the knob and turns…
Just as she hears a rustling whisper of sound behind her and feels the air stir with movement.
No.
Please, no–
Shattering pain explodes in the back of her head.
No!
She topples forward, her face landing on the nubby rug in front of the door.
Rough hands grab her and roll her over. Her eyes are open, but she can’t see.
Oh, God.
Oh, no.
Her eyes…
She’s been blinded.
What am I going to do? How am I going to live my life if I can’t see?
A bizarre image strikes her: she sees herself, Matilda Harrington, tapping along Commonwealth Avenue with a white cane and dark glasses, like Mrs. Stallsman next door.
I can’t do that. I can’t live that way.
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