Right Next Door

by Leah Montgomery

  QuiltQuiltQuilt.

  My quilts were stored in the hope chest Mom and Dad got me for my sixteen birthday. They probably smelled like grass clippings and gasoline, like everything else in the garage. That’s where my hope chest was—buried in the garage somewhere, waiting to be refinished.

  Refinished or refurbished?

  Was refurbished a word?

  Or was it part of that Disney show, Phineas and Ferb?

  Was it spelled the same? Or spelled like fur plus verb?

  Verb is action.

  But what was a dangling participle, again?

  I drifted.

  I lolled.

  And some time later, I jolted awake. Seconds, minutes, hours later. I had no idea. My head was throbbing again. Nausea sloshed in my stomach.

  I’d fallen asleep.

  But for how long?

  I was so tired. So damned tired.

  My eyelids fluttered. My eyes prickled like they were full of sand.

  I slapped myself in the face once. Then again, harder.

  It roused me for a few seconds, but waves of thought, disjointed and calming, pulled me. Tugged me. This way, this way. And the watery voice was relentless.

  I bit into my lip.

  I tasted blood.

  My mind cleared for a few more seconds.

  I sat up.

  Dug my nails into my palms.

  Shook my head. Screamed as loud as I could.

  Pumped my arms. Kicked my legs.

  I fought.

  I took my mind back to the last thing I could remember before waking up in a wired and padded room. I went back through the day, rifled through the minutia, searched for anything that meant something.

  The last day I remembered was a Tuesday. Gabe took my suitcase down to the car for me so I could have breakfast with Dalton. We had Cheerios and strawberries. I ate with a spoon. He ate mostly with his fingers. I smiled the whole time. I hated leaving him, but until I could train Cassandra well enough to take over some of the interim meetings, I had no choice.

  Cassandra. My new assistant. She didn’t mind all the traveling. That’s why I hired her. She was a great event planner, and I thought I could trust her. I wanted to pare down my schedule to include only initial consultations and the events themselves. I thought I could trust Cassandra to fill in all the gaps, do most of the traveling in between. I’d thought a lot about her that morning, about whether it was going to work out.

  Then Gabe again. I kissed him goodbye. He slapped me on the ass before I stepped out the door. That made me want to stay even more. I missed my son when I traveled, but I missed Gabe, too.

  I drove to the airport, like I’d done a hundred times before. I parked in the long-term deck, like I’d done a hundred times before. I got my luggage from the trunk, like I’d done a hundred times before.

  But then…then, a blank.

  A long, fuzzy blank that ended with me waking up in the dark. The thick, oppressive, haunted dark.

  So the airport. That must’ve been when I was attacked.

  I focused on the moments surrounding me getting my suitcase out. I combed back through sights and sounds, what I’d been thinking about, anything I might’ve noticed out of the ordinary. Everything was the same. Every last detail.

  Except…

  Except a hissing sound. Where had that come from? Was someone’s tire going flat? Had I even looked?

  And then, pine.

  I remembered smelling pine.

  That was all.

  One thought brought a tiny ray of light into my situation. I always checked in with Gabe when I landed. We made it a point to check in with each other at least one time within every twenty-four hour period. I hadn’t checked in. Surely he’d alerted the authorities, reported me missing.

  Unless the guy who took me used my phone to check in for me. He could tell Gabe anything, make up any number of lies to stall him calling the cops. He just had to hold him off long enough for…for…

  A heavy, cold sensation settled into the pit of my stomach.

  He just had to hold him off long enough for me to die in here.

  Chapter Ten

  Marcy is walking through the living room carrying a basket of folded laundry when she sees the mail carrier’s car pull away from the curb. She detours and stops at the bottom of the stairs, calling up, “Caroline, would you like to go outside and swing?”

  She gets no answer, which sets her teeth on edge. Marcy didn’t slept well last night, and her patience is running a little low today.

  Giving in to the urge to be a little childish and punish Caroline for ignoring her, Marcy sets the basket on the couch and stomps to the front door. “Fine. Stay inside. I’m going to the mail box.”

  She opens the door and slams it shut behind her, feeling minimally better with the small act of petulance. She mutters to herself as she walks down the driveway. “I’m going to the mail box and I might never come back. How would you like that?”

  Marcy is still stewing as she flings open the box, snatches the short stack from inside, and then roughly flings it shut again. She continues mumbling as her fingers slip under flaps, haphazardly opening envelopes. She’s not even paying attention to addresses until one single-page letter brings her up short.

  I know it was you. You’re going to pay for what you did. 7-2

  Marcy feels a chill slither from her neck to her tailbone like a cold, clammy snake. She stops in the middle of the driveway and re-reads the page. She turns it over to look for something else, anything else. More words, a name, anything other than that single bone-chilling sentence.

  There is nothing.

  Alarm sets in and Marcy’s mind races with the possible meanings of the message. Only after a half dozen nightmarish scenarios have drifted through her head does she check the envelope in which the letter arrived. She scans the address.

  6250 Larkspur Way, their address.

  Her heart pounds painfully. Marcy’s palms are damp, and the envelope twitches in her trembling fingers as she brings it in for closer inspection. She stares at the numbers in disbelief. It’s only after another few terrifying seconds have passed that the name above the address penetrates the fog of her panic.

  Relief melts through Marcy when she sees that neither her nor her husband’s name is listed as the intended recipient.

  Mark Halpern is.

  The warm breeze ruffles the pale tips of Marcy’s bob and she smiles as she glances around. I’m just out to get the mail, enjoying a few minutes in the sun. That’s all. Nothing wrong with that. People look around at their neighbors’ places all the time.

  She swallows the cotton in her mouth as her eyes make their way to Jill and Mark’s black mailbox. The gold numbers on the side read 6260. Her pulse jumps and she yanks her eyes away, resuming her walk back to the house.

  Someone sent a threatening letter to her address by mistake. She’s never been more grateful to be the recipient of an incorrect delivery.

  But her relief is short lived.

  Someone sent a threatening letter to her neighbor. Mark Halpern. The man who lives next door to her. To her husband. To her daughter. Someone is accusing him of…something. Something worth retribution.

  And 7-2. Is that a date? Or a code?

  If it’s a date, it’s not even two months away. Is that just a reminder, or is it a threat? A deadline?

  Marcy steps inside and closes her front door, turning the knob lock and the dead bolt before leaning back against it. Her brows draw into a frown when she hears the echo of her husband’s voice as he teases her about her big imagination. This time, she ignores it. Big imagination has nothing to do with this. Something is fishy about the neighbor. And Marcy is going to make it her mission in life to find out what it is before someone gets hurt.

  Chapter Eleven

  A steady drip woke me. At first, I thought I was dreaming. It had this surreal quality to it—drippp, drippp, drippp. Slow, exaggerated. Like I could see each drop splashing against
the concrete. Wet kisses, each one creating a tiny spray of smaller drops that made smaller kisses. On and on, to the infinity of a water molecule.

  Something prodded me toward consciousness. Not the sound really, but a bone-deep gnawing.

  I climbed up, up, up and out of the fog enough to remember where I was—not that I really knew. My initial thought was that I was grateful for a new sound. Any sound. My second thought, one that triggered a burst of adrenaline that shot energy straight into my muscles, was water.

  That drip meant water.

  I sat up so fast the room would’ve spun had I been able to see a single damn thing. But I didn’t need vision to feel the concrete sway under me. That didn’t stop me, though. I rolled onto all fours and hurled my body across the concrete, toward the sound. It was unforgiving against my skin, that concrete. In the back of my mind, I felt the burn of it grating and pulling, giving me floor burns on tender places like my nipples, my belly, and the tops of my thighs. But I didn’t care. I could smell dampness and I was going to make my way to it come hell or high water.

  Preferably the high water.

  The sound and the scent drove my thirst to fever pitch. It was all about need. An animal with one focus. Drink.

  I reached out with my hands, fingertips dancing along the slab until I touched moisture. I sucked in a breath and followed it until my palms made contact with what only a true optimist would call a puddle. I licked the fingers of one hand as I waved the other one around to locate the source of the drops. They were dripping from the ceiling. A pipe or opening somewhere above me. At the moment, I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. I had one mission—slake the thirst. Survive. I would revisit the idea of the opening later. When I wasn’t dying.

  When I felt the steady drip hit the side of my hand, I adjusted until my palm was cupped directly under the flow. If it could even be called a flow. More like a trickle. I wanted so much to hold my mouth under it, but in the dark, it was much harder to aim my mouth than my hand. Waiting for palm to fill, though…excruciating. The instant it was full, I swapped hands and slurped out of the one while the other was filling.

  I could’ve cried when the dribbling stopped. There was probably less than a tablespoon in my other palm. Greedily, I lapped it up. It wasn’t enough, of course. Just enough to make me wish for more. But I suspected more wasn’t coming.

  I only hesitated for a fraction of a second before I hunched down on all fours and started licking the moisture from the floor. Desperation—it didn’t really look good on anybody.

  I licked until my tongue felt raw from the concrete. I licked until there was not a single droplet of moisture left. I tried not to think about how long I could survive on such a small amount of water. I tried not to think about what kind of satisfaction a sick person would get from putting me in a hot, dark, padded room and letting me die of thirst. Slowly, slowly, slowly. And probably painfully when organs started shutting down. You’d think the psycho would at least want to watch me suffer.

  A chill shot through me.

  What if he was watching?

  There could be a camera.

  Or he could be in the room, just out of my reach, wearing night vision goggles. Watching.

  Or there could be a window behind part of the wall I couldn’t get to. My chains kept me confined to one specific area.

  But why?

  I didn’t know anything for sure, except that there was at least a hole in the ceiling. And there might be more than that up there.

  The idea that that someone might be watching shook me. I tried not to show it, but it did.

  I played it calm. Sat back on my haunches, rested my hands on my thighs. Thought. Speculated.

  My eyes were open and they scanned the area like I could see. Didn’t seem to matter that I couldn’t. It was as much an instinct, a need, as my thirst.

  I made myself stay perfectly still as I considered. Then, with an impulsivity I hoped any onlooker wouldn’t be able to predict or react to in time to stop, I hopped up onto my feet and ran toward the wall. I ran in the direction I thought I had enough chain to get to. Prayed my shoulders wouldn’t get snapped out of place again.

  I hit the wire wall with enough force to bloody my nose, but I didn’t even pause. I stuck three fingers of both hands and two toes of my right foot into one of the metal squares and hauled myself up. The wire bit into the flesh at the base of my toes, but I didn’t stop. If there was something up higher, something that could help me, I’d suffer through the pain to get to it. Animals chewed off their own feet to get out of traps.

  They wanted to treat me like an animal, I’d damn well act like one.

  I didn’t get more than a couple of feet off the ground when I heard a hissing sound. Seconds later, a chemical odor stung the inside of my nostrils. By the time I put two and two together, it was too late to hold my breath.

  I felt my head getting light, light, lighter, my fingers getting soft, soft, softer, and then I was falling backward. My last thought, before I even hit the concrete, was that I hoped I was landing somewhere near the water source.

  Chapter Twelve

  Marcy runs her fingers along the crease of the folded piece of paper. It’s so worn from her repeating the action that the page looks twenty years old, not twenty hours old.

  Since retrieving and accidentally opening the letter addressed to Mark Halpern, Marcy has thought of little else. Her mind has spun in ten different directions and created a hundred different scenarios. Everything from a vicious concealed crime to a frat brother prank, she’d run the gamut. And, in truth, it could pertain to either of those and a thousand things in between. But Marcy didn’t know, and she’d quickly realized she wants to. Desperately. Something in her needs to know. She needs to know if the man next door is the nice guy husband of the wonderful (if a bit mousey) Jill, or if the “something odd” she’s sensed is more than just odd. Maybe he’s dangerous. And if he is, she needs to know.

  But how?

  That’s the question that has plagued Marcy’s mind for the last many hours. She hardly slept because her thoughts wouldn’t stop racing. Now, nearly a full day later, she’s tired and frustrated and not one bit closer to figuring out her neighbor’s secret. She knows it’s not going to be an easy thing to accomplish, but she’s more than up to the task. She isn’t able to fix her daughter—yet—so a project is just what Marcy needs to occupy her overactive brain. As terrifying as it is to think Mark might be some sort of criminal, the amateur sleuth in Marcy is drooling over the opportunity to unravel a real-life mystery.

  She hasn’t yet formed a plan, but she knows she must, absolutely must, spend more time at the Halpern house. If she’s to uncover secrets, that’s where she’ll find clues.

  Marcy has just the idea. She unplugs her phone from the charger at the kitchen island and pulls up the text thread between Jill and her, and she types out a new entry.

  Marcy: Hey, I was thinking we could do a wine night tonight. Are you free?

  Marcy slips the phone into her pocket, only to have to take it out again when it dings right away. She smiles when she sees Jill’s response.

  Jill: The day I’ve had…ugh! Your timing is perfect. Count me in.

  She thinks carefully about the best time to suggest, considering dinner and bath time, and anything else she can imagine that might influence Jill’s plans, but also the Halpern household.

  Marcy: Great! 7:00?

  Jill responds quickly.

  Jill: I’ll be there.

  Marcy sends her a thumb’s up emoji, and smiles as she tucks her phone away. Now, she waits.

  As Marcy goes on about her day, she finds herself stopping to stare at the neighbor’s house each time she passes a window that faces their place. She knows she’s probably spent an inordinate amount of time conjuring crazy stories about Mark, stories that are likely as farfetched as they are inaccurate, but it has certainly made the day fly by. It’s after five o’clock before Marcy knows it.

  She taps out
another text to Jill, step two of her plan, and waits for the bubbles that indicate Jill is replying.

  Marcy: Caroline wanted to help cook dinner and we burned something on the stove. It smells terrible in here. Would it be okay to get together at your place tonight?

  Jill: I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel. I was just getting ready to text you. Can I get a rain check? Maybe tomorrow evening, same time?

  Damn it! That isn’t the response Marcy was hoping for. Although she’s disappointed, she has no choice but to graciously accept the change and think up some other way to get into their house.

  Marcy: Of course. It’s a date.

  The next morning, Marcy texts Jill again to confirm plans for wine that evening.

  Marcy: We still on for tonight?

  Jill: Yes, please!!!!!!

  Marcy: Another bad day?

  Jill: Not bad, just frustrating.

  Marcy can relate.

  Now it’s time to try a different tactic with the neighbor. There are many ways Marcy can think of to get inside their house. Surely one of them will work.

  Marcy: There’s a new bistro across from the entrance to the Coves. Have you been?

  Jill: No, but I’ve wanted to.

  Marcy: Well, if you were serious about your nanny watching Caroline, we could go tonight instead of just having wine.

  Jill: I’d love to, but I need to check with Mark and with Sabrina. Can I get back to you?

  Marcy smiles.

  Marcy: Of course. Take your time.

  Jill: What time do you want us over there? It’s probably better for Sabrina to come there since it will be Caroline’s first time meeting her.

  Marcy grits her teeth. She feels outwitted, outsmarted. Thwarted.

  It’s as though Jill realizes what she’s up to and is purposely throwing a wrench into Marcy’s plan. But that isn’t possible. Jill doesn’t know that Marcy’s sole intent is to be invited in. Therefore, she can’t be purposely sidestepping her. It’s just an unfortunate—and very frustrating—coincidence. Marcy won’t give up, though. All she needs is just a few minutes in their house, just to get a feel for the place, for the layout. For Mark. It seems, however, that she will need another plan since this one didn’t work out the way she’d hoped either.