I bolt to my feet. The chair topples behind me.
Jane has sent a photograph of me asleep. The idea downloads slowly in my brain, the way that picture did, stuttering line by line.
Jane has been in my house at night.
Jane has been in my bedroom.
Jane has watched me sleep.
I stand there, stunned, in deafening silence. And then I see the ghostly figures in the lower-right corner. A time stamp—today’s date, 02:02 a.m.
This morning. Two o’clock. How is it possible? I look at the email address bracketed beside the sender’s name:
[email protected]
69
So not Jane, then. Someone hiding behind her name. Someone mocking me.
My thoughts aim like an arrow straight downstairs. David, behind that door.
I clutch myself through my robe. Think. Don’t panic. Stay calm.
Has he forced the door? No—I found the stepladder as I’d left it.
So—my hands are shivering against my body; I lean forward, splay them on the desk—so did he make a copy of my key? I heard sounds on the landing that night I led him to bed; had he roamed the house, stolen the key from the kitchen?
Except I saw it on its hook just an hour ago, and I barred the basement door shortly after he left—there was no way back in.
Unless—but of course, of course there was a way back in: He could have just entered the house whenever he liked, using a copied key. Replaced the original.
But he left yesterday. For Connecticut.
At least that’s what he told me.
I look at myself on the screen, at the half-moon of my eyelashes, at the line of teeth peeking from behind my upper lip: utterly oblivious, utterly unarmed. I shudder. Acid roils somewhere in my throat.
guesswhoanna. Who, if not David? And why tell me? Not only has someone trespassed in my house, entered my bedroom, recorded me sleeping—but someone wants me to know it.
Someone who knows about Jane.
I reach for my glass with both hands. Drink it, drink deep. Set it down and pick up my phone.
Little’s voice is crinkly and soft, like a pillowcase. Maybe he was sleeping. Doesn’t matter.
“Someone’s been in my house,” I tell him. I’m in the kitchen now, phone in one hand, glass in the other, staring at the basement door; as I say them out loud, those impossible words, they sound flat, unconvincing. Unreal.
“Dr. Fox,” he says, jolly. “That you?”
“Someone came into my house at two o’clock this morning.”
“Hold on.” I hear him pass the phone across his face. “Someone was in your house?”
“At two this morning.”
“Why didn’t you report it earlier?”
“Because I was asleep at the time.”
His voice warms. He thinks he’s got me. “Then how do you know someone was in your house?”
“Because he took a picture and emailed it to me.”
A pause. “A picture of what?”
“A picture of me. Sleeping.”
When he speaks again, he sounds closer. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes.”
“And—now, I don’t want to scare you . . .”
“I’m already scared.”
“Are you sure the house is empty now?”
I go still. This hadn’t occurred to me.
“Dr. Fox? Anna?”
“Yes.” Surely there’s no one here. Surely I would know by now.
“Can you—are you able to go outside?”
I nearly laugh. Instead I just breathe “No.”
“Okay. Just—stay there. Don’t—just stay there. Do you want me to stay on the line with you?”
“I want you to come here.”
“We’re coming.” We’re. So Norelli will be with him. Good—I want her here for this. Because this is real. This is undeniable.
Little is still talking, his breath billowing into the phone. “What I’d like for you to do, Anna? Is get to the front door. In case you need to leave. We can be there real soon, just a few minutes, but in case you need to leave . . .”
I look at the hall door, move toward it.
“We’re in the car now. There real soon.”
I nod, slowly, watching the door draw closer.
“You seen any movies lately, Dr. Fox?”
I can’t bring myself to open it. Can’t set foot in that twilight zone. I shake my head. My hair brushes against my cheeks.
“Any of your old thrillers?”
I shake my head again, start to tell him no, when I realize I’m still cradling the wineglass in my fingers. Intruder or not—and I don’t think there is—I won’t answer the door like this. I need to get rid of it.
But my hand is shaking, and now wine slops onto the front of my robe, staining it blood-red, right above the heart. It looks like a wound.
Little is still chattering in my ear—“Anna? You okay there?”—as I return to the kitchen, phone pressed to my temple, and place the glass in the sink.
“. . . everything okay?” Little asks.
“Fine,” I tell him. I flip the tap, shed my robe, push it under running water as I stand there in my T-shirt and sweatpants. The wine stain boils beneath the flow, bleeding, thinning, going a soft pink. I squeeze it, my fingers blanching in the cold.
“You able to get to the front door?”
“Yes.”
Off with the tap. I pull the robe from the sink and wring it.
“Okay. Stay there.”
Shaking the robe dry, I see that I’m out of paper towels—the spindle stands naked. I reach for the linen drawer, slide it open. And inside, atop a stack of folded napkins, I see myself again.
Not deep asleep in close-up, not half-baked into a pillow, but upright, beaming, my hair swept back, my eyes bright and keen—a likeness in paper and ink.
A nifty trick, I’d said.
A Jane Russell original, she’d said.
And then she’d signed it.
70
The paper twitches in my hand. I look at the signature slashed in the corner.
I’d almost doubted it. I’d almost doubted her. Yet here it is, a souvenir from that vanished night. A memento. Memento mori. Remember that you have to die.
Remember.
And I do: I remember the chess and the chocolate; I remember the cigarettes, the wine, the tour of the house. Most of all, I remember Jane, braying and boozing, in living color; her silver fillings; the way she leaned into the window as she took in her house—Quite a place, she’d murmured.
She was here.
“We’re almost with you,” Little is saying.
“I’ve got—” I clear my throat. “I’ve got—”
He interrupts me. “We’re turning onto . . .”
But I don’t hear where they are, because through the window I’m watching Ethan exit his front door. He must have been inside the whole time. I’d thrown skipping-stone glances at his house for an hour, my eyes leaping from kitchen to parlor to bedroom; I don’t know how I missed him.
“Anna?” Little’s voice sounds tiny, shrunken. I look down, see the phone in my hand, by my hip; see the robe pooled at my feet. Then I clap the phone onto the counter and set the picture next to the sink. I rap on the glass, hard.
“Anna?” Little calls again. I ignore him.
I rap harder still. Ethan has swerved onto the sidewalk now, heading toward my house. Yes.
I know what I have to do.
My fingers grip the window sash. I tense them, drum them, flex them. Screw my eyes shut. And lift.
Frigid air seizes my body, so raw that my heart feels faint; storms my clothes, sets them trembling around me. My ears brim with the sound of wind. I’m filling up with cold, running over with cold.
But I scream his name all the same, a single roar, two syllables, springing from my tongue, cannonballing into the outside world: E-than!
I can hear the silence splinter. I imagine flocks of birds mounting, passersby stopping in their tracks.
And then, with my next breath, last breath:
I know.
I know your mother was the woman I said she was; I know she was here; I know you’re lying.
I slam the window shut, lean my forehead against the glass. Open my eyes.
He’s there on the sidewalk, frozen, wearing a too-big down coat and not-big-enough jeans, his flap of hair fanning in the breeze. He looks at me, breath clouding before his face. I look back, my chest heaving, my heart going ninety miles an hour.
He shakes his head. He keeps walking.
71