Behind me, the film is still playing.
“You live in a dream,” sneers Uncle Charlie. “You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? Use your wits. Learn something.”
I slope toward the bathroom, in the length of light falling through the window. Something to help me get back to sleep—melatonin, I think. I’ll need it tonight.
I swallow a pill. On-screen, the body falls, and the train shrieks, and the credits roll.
“Guess who.”
This time I can’t dismiss him, because I’m asleep, though aware of it. A lucid dream.
Still, I try. “Leave me alone, Ed.”
“Come on. Talk to me.”
“No.”
I don’t see him, don’t see anything. Wait—there’s a trace of him, just a shadow.
“I think we need to talk.”
“No. Go away.”
Darkness. Silence.
“Something’s wrong.”
“No.” But he’s right—something is wrong. That stirring in my gut.
“Man, that Alistair guy turned out to be a freak of the week, didn’t he?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I almost forgot. Livvy has a question for you.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Just one.” A flash of teeth; a curving grin. “A simple question.”
“No.”
“Go on, pumpkin. Ask Mommy.”
“I said—”
But already her mouth is at my ear, piping her hot little words into my head, her voice that full-throated rasp she uses when she’s sharing a secret.
“How’s Punch’s paw?” she asks.
I’m awake, with instant clarity, as though I’ve been doused with water. My eyes spring wide. A spine of light runs across the ceiling above.
I roll from bed and pad to the curtains, throw them back. The room fades to gray around me; through the windows, through the rain, I see the Russells’ house shouldering an unholy sky. A jagged seam of lightning up above. A deep toll of thunder.
I return to bed. Punch whines quietly as I settle in.
How’s Punch’s paw?
That was it—the knot in my stomach.
When Ethan visited the day before yesterday, when he found the cat draped along the back of the sofa, Punch slid to the floor and wriggled underneath. I squint my eyes, replay the scene from every angle. No: Ethan didn’t see—couldn’t have seen—his lame leg.
Or could he? Feeling for Punch now, closing my fingers on his tail; he rustles against me. I check the time on the phone: 1:10 a.m.
The digital light spangles in my eyes. I squeeze them shut, then peer at the ceiling.
“How did he know about your paw?” I ask the cat in the dark.
“Because I visit you at night,” says Ethan.
Monday, November 15
95
My body bucks in shock. My head twists toward the door.
Lightning ignites the room, torches it white. He stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame, his head haloed with rainwater, scarf loose at his neck.
Words lurch off my tongue. “I thought—you went home.”
“I did.” His voice is low but clear. “Said good night. Waited for them to go to bed.” His mouth curls in a soft little smile. “Then I came back here. I’ve been coming here a lot,” he adds.
“What?” I don’t understand what’s happening.
“I have to tell you,” he says, “I’ve met a lot of psychologists, and you’re the first who hasn’t diagnosed me with a personality disorder.” His eyebrows lift. “I guess you’re not the world’s best shrink.”
My mouth clacks shut and creaks open, like a faulty door.
“You interest me, though,” he says. “You do. That’s why I kept coming back to you, even when I knew I shouldn’t. Older women interest me.” He frowns. “Sorry, is that insulting?”
I can’t move.
“Hope not.” A sigh. “My dad’s boss had a wife who interested me. Jennifer. I liked her. She liked me, kind of. Only . . .” He shifts his lanky body, angles himself against the other side of the frame. “There was . . . a misunderstanding. Right before we moved. I visited their house. At night. And she didn’t like that. Or she said she didn’t.” Now he glares. “She knew what she was doing.”
Then I see it in his fist. A bolt of silver, glinting.
It’s a blade. It’s a letter opener.
His eyes travel from my face to his hand and back again. My throat has closed up.
“This is what I used on Katie,” he explains brightly. “Because she wouldn’t leave me alone. I told her, and told her, so many times, and she just . . .” Shaking his head. “Wouldn’t stop.” He sniffs. “Kind of like you.”
“But,” I croak, “tonight—you . . .” My voice dries, dies.
“What?”
I lick my lips. “You told me—”
“I told you enough to—sorry, but to shut you up. I’m sorry to say it like that, because you’re really nice. But I needed to shut you up. Until I could take care of things.” He fidgets. “You wanted to call the police. I needed a little time to—you know. Get stuff ready.”
Motion in the corner of my eye: the cat, stretching himself along the length of the bed. He looks at Ethan, cries.
“That darn cat,” he says. “I loved that movie as a kid. That Darn Cat!” He smiles at Punch. “I think I broke its leg, by the way. I’m sorry.” The letter opener winks as he wags it at the bed. “It kept following me around the house at night and I kind of lost my temper a little. Plus I’m allergic, like I told you. I didn’t want to sneeze and wake you. I’m sorry you’re awake now.”
“You came here at night?”
He takes a step toward me, the blade liquid in the gray light. “I come here almost every night.”
I hear my breath catch. “How?”
He smiles again. “I took your key. When you were writing down your phone number that day. I saw it on the hook the first time I visited, and then I realized you wouldn’t even notice it was missing. It’s not like you use it. I made a copy and put it back.” Another smile. “Easy.”
Now he giggles, presses his free hand over his mouth. “Sorry. It’s just—I so thought you’d figured it out when you called me tonight. I was like—I didn’t know what to do. I actually had this in my pocket.” Waving the letter opener again. “Just in case. And I was stalling like crazy. But then you just lapped it all up. ‘My daddy has a bad temper.’ ‘Oh, I’m so scared.’ ‘Oh, they don’t let me have a phone.’ You were practically drooling. Like I said, you’re not the greatest shrink.
“Hey!” he exclaims. “I’ve got an idea: Analyze me. You want to know about my childhood, right? They all want to know about my childhood.”
I nod dumbly.
“You’ll love this. This is, like, a therapist’s dream. Katie”—he practically pushes the word over with disdain—“was a druggie. A crack whore, except for heroin. Heroin whore. She never even told me who my dad was. And, man, she should not have been a mother.”
He looks at the letter opener. “She started using when I was one. That’s what my parents told me. I can’t remember most of it, really. I mean, I was five when they took me away from her. But I remember being hungry a lot. I remember some stuff with needles. I remember her boyfriends kicking the shit out of me whenever they felt like it.”
Silence.
“I bet my real father wouldn’t have done that.”
I say nothing.
“I remember seeing one of her friends overdose. I saw her die right in front of me. That’s my first memory. I was four.”
More silence. He sighs faintly.
“I started misbehaving. She tried to help me, or stop me, but she was too strung out. And then I went into the foster system, and then Mom and Dad got me.” He shrugs. “They . . . Yeah. They gave me a lot.” Another sigh. “I cause trouble for them, I know. That’s why they took me out of school. And my dad lost his job because I wanted to get to know Jennifer. He was mad about that, but, you know . . .” His brow darkens. “Tough luck.”