Thinking back on it now, I remember the terror and excitement I felt in the small, dark space, Rebecca Rast’s clothes rustling up against me, the ski mask on my face starting to make me sweat. I had the closet door cracked a little and was able to hear Rebecca’s car pull into the driveway, to hear her enter the house and walk slowly up the stairs. She went to the bathroom first for what seemed a long time, then the toilet flushed, and she entered her bedroom, humming tunelessly to herself. My heart was thudding so loudly in my chest that I wondered how she hadn’t heard it. I had planned on leaping out of the closet in my ski mask, but I didn’t need to. She came straight to the closet door and slid it open along its tracks. I stepped toward her, scissors in one hand, duct tape in another. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out. I watched all the color drain from her face, and I was sure that she was about to faint, but instead she turned to run. I tackled her from behind, realizing as I did it that she had stripped to just her underwear. I held her down and managed to wrap duct tape first around her face and mouth, and then around her hands and ankles. It wasn’t easy; I got kicked several times but refrained from making any noise, from letting her know who I was. After she was securely bound in duct tape, I dragged her into the closet, and before I shut the door, I ran the edge of the scissors along her neck. Her eyes were squeezed shut, tears coming out of them. I could smell the sharp tang of urine.
I dumped the coat, the ski mask, the scissors, the crowbar, and the backpack into the Dumpster behind the liquor store. I drove home shaking, my emotions alternating between enormous satisfaction that I had paid Rebecca back for the pain she had caused me, and a sickening shame that I had gone too far. Those feelings lasted through the summer, the shame temporarily replaced by the horrible fear that I was going to get caught. I would be publicly shamed, and sent to prison, and I wouldn’t get to go to Harvard. But the police never showed up, and, as the summer progressed, I began to believe I’d gotten away with it. I did hear about the incident once, from a gossipy friend of mine named Molly. She told me that Rebecca Rast—“You know her, right? Oh my God, you went to the prom with her, didn’t you?”—had been assaulted in her own home, tied up and left in the closet, and that everyone thought it was her own father, that creepy dude who used to work at a gas station. That was all I ever heard about it.
I still dream about Rebecca Rast. In these nightmares—and they are definitely nightmares—Rebecca dies the night I duct-taped her and left her in the closet. In these dreams I am plagued with guilt, and terrified of being caught, and I can never remember whether I meant to murder her or whether I meant to just scare her. But either way, I am a murderer, and that knowledge has taken over my life.
On the Friday morning that Miranda was flying down to Miami Beach for a bachelorette party, I woke, having had one of these dreams. I was alone in the bed, and I lay there for a moment, the images from the nightmare flashing in my brain, then disappearing. At first I thought it was a Rebecca Rast dream, but then I realized that the person in the dream that I had killed had been Miranda. I’d trapped her in Rebecca Rast’s closet and she had died there. Other images from the dream came back to me. A funeral where no one would look at me. The terrible fear that I forgot to hide the body. An image of my father, water coming from his nose. A field that I was frantically digging in. For one terrible moment, I thought that these weren’t pictures from my dreams, but recent memories. I’d had this feeling before, always when I was in the half state between sleep and wakefulness—this dreadful feeling that what I was dreaming about was in fact real, that I was a murderer, and it was only a matter of time until the whole world knew it. I shook my head and told myself I’d been dreaming, then rose from the tangled sheets and picked up my phone from the dresser. It was past eight, much later than I usually slept. Miranda’s car service was coming at eight thirty to take her to Logan. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a cotton sweater and went downstairs.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” she said when I’d found her in the formal dining room. She was sitting at the long Stickley table, her luggage by her side. She wore a short blue dress and a pair of red cowboy boots and was avidly studying her phone.
“Aren’t you cold in that?”
She looked up. “Yes, but not for long. I’ll tell the driver to turn the heat up to Miami temperatures.” She turned her phone off, slid it into her purse, and stood. “What are you going to get up to while I’m away?”
“First of all, you’re always away, so this is nothing new. And second of all, work, obviously.”
“You should have dinner with Mac tonight. I’m sure he’s around.”
“He’s not, actually. He’s at his aunt’s funeral. Remember, I told you about that? No, I’m going to take that lamb out of the freezer. Special dinner, just for me.”
“Please. Eat it all. Casey said we’re going to Joe’s Stone Crab tonight.”
I brought her luggage to the foyer, resisting the urge to comment on how heavy it was for a three-day weekend. Miranda peered through the front door’s leaded window. “Limo’s here,” she said, and pulled me in for an unusually tight hug. “I’ll miss you, Teddy,” she said.
“How long exactly are you going for?”
She slapped my chest. “Don’t make jokes. I really am going to miss you. You’re a good husband, you know.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” I said, trying to get some feeling into my voice. The way Miranda was acting I wondered briefly if the bachelorette party was made up. Was she meeting Brad down in Miami?