I’m losing conscious—
He releases my neck. I slide to the floor, gasping.
Now he towers above me. He drags his foot back sharply, sends the box cutter skidding into a corner.
“Remember this,” he says, panting, his voice ragged. I can’t look up at him.
But I hear him say one more word, small, breakably soft: “Please.”
Silence. I watch his booted feet turn, step away.
As he passes the island, he sweeps his arm across it. A wave of glass crashes to the floor, splintering, smashing. I try to scream. My throat whistles.
He walks to the hall door, rips it open. I hear the front door unlatch, slam shut.
I hold myself, one hand touching my neck, the other clutching my body. I’m sobbing.
And when Punch limps through the doorway and gingerly licks my hand, I only sob harder.
Sunday, November 14
89
I inspect my throat in the bathroom mirror. Five bruises, jewel-blue, a dark clasp around my neck.
I glance down at Punch, curled on the tile floor, nursing his lame paw. What a pair.
I won’t report last night to the police. Won’t and can’t. There’s proof, of course, actual fingerprints on my skin, but they’ll want to know why Alistair was here in the first place, and the truth is . . . well. I invited a teenager whose family I stalked and harassed to hang out in my basement. You know, as a replacement for my dead child and my dead husband. It wouldn’t look good.
“Wouldn’t look good,” I say, testing my voice. It sounds weak, withered.
I leave the bathroom and descend the stairs. Deep in the pocket of my robe, my phone bumps against my thigh.
I sweep up the glass, the broken bodies of bottles and goblets; pluck splinters and slivers of the stuff from the floor, dump them into a trash bag. Try not to think about him seizing me, squeezing me. Standing over me. Stalking through the bright ruins underfoot.
Beneath my slippers, the white birch sparkles like a beach.
At the kitchen table I fiddle with the box cutter, listen to the snick of the blade as it glides out and in.
I look across the park. The Russell house looks back at me, its windows vacant. I wonder where they are. I wonder where he is.
I should have aimed better. Should have swung harder. I imagine the razor slicing through his jacket, ripping his skin.
And then you would have had a wounded man in your house.
I set the box cutter down and bring a mug to my lips. There’s no tea in the cupboard—Ed never cared for it, and I preferred drinking other things—so I sip warm water spiked with salt. It burns my throat. I wince.
I look across the park again. Then I get up, draw the blinds tight across the window.
Last night seems like a fever dream, a curl of smoke. The movie screen on my ceiling. The bright cry of glass. The void of the closet. The coiling staircase. And him, standing there, calling for me, waiting for me.
I touch my throat. Don’t tell me that it was a dream, that he never came here. Where—yes: Gaslight again.
Because it was no dream. (This is no dream! This is really happening!—Mia Farrow, Rosemary’s Baby.) My home was invaded. My property was destroyed. I was threatened. I was assaulted. And I can’t do anything about it.
I can’t do anything about anything. Now I know Alistair to be violent; now I know what he’s capable of. But he’s right: The police won’t listen. Dr. Fielding thinks I’m delusional. I told Bina, promised her, that I’d moved on. Ethan is out of reach. Wesley is gone. There’s no one.
“Guess who?”
Her this time, faint but clear.
No. I shake my head.
Who was that woman? I’d asked Alistair.
If she existed.
I don’t know. I’ll never know.
90
I spend the rest of the morning in bed, then the afternoon, trying not to cry, trying not to think—about last night, about today, about tomorrow, about Jane.
Beyond the window, clouds are brewing, their bellies low and dark. I tap the weather app on my phone. Thunderstorms later tonight.
A somber dusk falls. I draw the curtains and unfold my laptop, place it beside me; it warms the sheets as I stream Charade.
“What do I have to do to satisfy you?” demands Cary Grant. “Become the next victim?”
I shudder.
By the time the films ends I’m half-asleep. The exit music swells; I flap a hand at the laptop, bat it shut.
Sometime later I awake to the buzzing of my phone.
Emergency Alert
Flood warning this area till 3:00 a.m. EDT. Avoid flood areas. Check local media.—NWS
Vigilant, that National Weather Service. I do plan to avoid flood areas. I unstopper a yawn, haul myself out of bed, shuffle to the curtains.
Darkness outside. No rain yet, but the sky has sunk, clouds dropped lower; the sycamore branches are stirring. I can hear the wind. I wrap one arm around myself.
Across the park, a light sparks in the Russells’ kitchen: him, crossing to the refrigerator. He opens it, removes a bottle—beer, I think. I wonder if he’s getting drunk again.
My fingers idle at my throat. My bruises ache.
I slide the curtain shut and return to bed. Clear the message from my phone, check the time: 9:29 p.m. I could watch another film. I could get a drink.
My hand strums the screen, absently. A drink, I think. Just one—it hurts to swallow.
A flare of color at my fingertips. I glance at the phone; I’ve opened the photo roll. My heart slows: There’s that picture of me, sleeping. The picture I allegedly took.
I recoil. After a moment, I delete it.
Instantly, the previous photo appears.
For a moment I don’t recognize it. Then I remember: I snapped the shot from the kitchen window. A sunset, sherbet-orange, distant buildings biting into it like teeth. The street golden with light. A single bird frozen in the sky, wings flung wide.
And reflected in the glass is the woman I knew as Jane.
91
Translucent, soft at the edges—but Jane, unmistakably, haunting the lower-right corner like a ghost. She looks at the camera, eyes level, lips parted. One arm stretches out of frame—grinding a cigarette into a bowl, I remember. Above her head rises a thick whorl of smoke. The time stamp reads 06:04 p.m., the date almost two weeks ago.
Jane. I’m hunched over the screen, barely breathing.
Jane.
The world is a beautiful place, she said.
Don’t forget that, and don’t miss it, she said.
Attagirl, she said.
She did say these things, all of them, because she was real.
Jane.
I tumble from the bed, sheets trailing after me, laptop sliding to the floor. Spring to the window, rip back the curtains.
Now the lights are on in the Russells’ parlor—that room where it all began. And there they sit, the two of them, on that striped love seat: Alistair and his wife. He slouches, beer bottle in his fist; her legs are cinched beneath her as she rakes a hand through her glossy hair.
The liars.
I look at the phone in my hand.
What do I do with this?
I know what Little would say, will say: The photo doesn’t prove anything beyond its own existence—and that of an anonymous woman.
“Dr. Fielding isn’t going to listen to you, either,” Ed tells me.
Shut up.
But he’s right.
Think. Think.
“What about Bina, Mommy?”
Stop it.
Think.
There’s only one move. My eyes travel from the parlor to the dark bedroom upstairs.
Take the pawn.
“Hello?”
A baby-bird voice, fragile and faint. I peer through the dark into his window. No sign of him.
“It’s Anna,” I say.
“I know.” Almost a whisper.
“Where are you?”
“In my room.”
“I don’t see you.”
A moment later he appears in the window like a phantom, slim and pale in a white T-shirt. I put a hand to the glass.
“Can you see me?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“I need you to come over.”
“I can’t.” He shakes his head. “I’m not allowed.”
I drop my gaze to the parlor. Alistair and Jane haven’t moved.
“I know, but it’s very important. It’s very important.”
“My dad took the key away.”
“I know.”
A pause. “If I can see you . . .” He trails off.
“What?”