“Can I ask you something?” Nora asks. “If they meet here every day after school . . . why are we here?”
“For one thing, everyone comes here. It’s the best café in the neighborhood.”
“And for another thing . . . ?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jules grins. “I mean, aren’t you curious about what’s going on with them?”
Nora digests that, wondering if Jules had ever even invited Ricardo to join them today.
Careful, Nora . . . Careful who you trust . . .
She doesn’t trust Jules.
Injecting her tone with wry nonchalance, she says, “Well, I guess we know where Courtney gets it.”
“Hey, at least I don’t hack people’s phones. Mostly because I have no clue how to do it. Enough about the kids. What have you been up to all week?”
It’s an innocuous question, Nora knows, but she breaks eye contact, again shifting her gaze to the plate glass window. “Oh, you know . . . settling in, getting organized, exploring the neigh—”
She breaks off, staring in disbelief at a man who’s stepped out of the pedestrian parade to lean toward the window and look inside the café. He’s wearing a red flannel work shirt, untucked and unbuttoned like a jacket over a dark thermal Henley, just as he did when she knew him.
“Nora? Are you okay?”
“I . . .”
The man cups his hands alongside his face, as if to block the sun’s reflection on the glass. As if he’s searching for someone.
Not her. He looks right through her.
She squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them again, he’s gone.
But she didn’t imagine that he was there—or someone who looked just like him. Farther down the street, she glimpses a patch of red flannel before he disappears into the crowd.
Jacob
The last couple of afternoons, he’d made it to Anna’s subway stop in plenty of time to settle in on a bench and wait for her to appear after school.
She rides the subway to and from Manhattan with the shaggy-haired stranger. He accompanies Anna to the café, too, and walks her to her house afterward. In the evenings, he waits for her in the shadows beneath the stoop and escorts her to the park.
When Anna isn’t with him, she’s with the blond people who now occupy the house. She’s never alone.
To Jacob, it now seems as if they’ve imprisoned her.
Is it because she’s been brought back to life like . . . like something out of a science fiction movie?
Is she even Anna?
Whenever he spots her, he’s certain she is. But afterward, he wonders if she was just a random brunette . . . or if there was even a girl at all.
Occasionally since her death, he’s glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye and whirled around to find no one there.
Or he’s done a double take at a young woman on the bus or walking past on a crowded street. It always turns out to be a stranger who resembles her. Sometimes, not even all that much.
This girl, though . . . she doesn’t just look like Anna. She lives in her house. In her damned room.
Is that the reason he’s been seeing her again since Friday? Had the moving van and open front door triggered power of suggestion so that some wistful, subconscious corner of his brain conjured her?
Maybe.
There’s no sign of her today. But he was delayed getting to her neighborhood, courtesy of a rewiring project out in Canarsie that should have taken half the time.
It was a residential job in an old house. The owner, an elderly widow, followed him around like he was going to steal something and kept asking questions. Her husband had been an amateur electrician who’d cobbled things together behind those old walls. Sorting it out had been a frustrating, painstaking process. He barely held his temper in check.
Now he walks along Edgemont, hoping he isn’t too late. He has to find Anna. He needs her to be alone this time, just like the old days.
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve been alone and lonely all my life,” she’d told him, so long ago. “I used to cry myself to sleep, wishing I had just one friend.”
“Well, now you do. You have me.”
She’d smiled, and nodded. “Now I have two friends. You, and Ellie.”
Nora
“Mom!”
Nora opens her eyes. The room is bathed in Saturday morning sunlight. Piper is standing over the bed.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, just . . .” She pauses, overtaken by a yawn. “What time is it?”
“Almost eleven.”
“Eleven!” Nora sits up. “How did I sleep so late?”
“Dad said you’re still on California time.”
“I guess I am,” she murmurs, but that’s not it.
Yesterday afternoon, she could have sworn she’d glimpsed someone from her past peering through the café window. She wanted to believe it wasn’t him, but the truth is, it could have been. For the rest of the day, and well into the night, she wondered about it.
Grateful that Keith was having dinner in the city, she’d gone to bed early. She was still awake when he got home close to midnight, but feigned sleep when he climbed into bed, smelling of whiskey and the hard rain that was falling on the flat roof above their heads.
“Nora?” he whispered, boozy and hopeful. “Hey, I missed my beautiful Barbie doll.”
She lay on her side, eyes closed, and heard him sigh and mutter, “Guess Malibu Ken’s not getting lucky tonight.”
He was asleep within minutes, snoring loudly the way he does when he drinks. It was close to dawn when she got up and took one of the secret prescription sleeping pills she’d brought with her from California.
Now, limp and hazy, she looks at her younger daughter, never much of an early riser herself. Piper’s blond hair cascades in waves that probably took her an hour to create with a hot iron. She’s fully made-up and accessorized, wearing her favorite jeans, sweater, and boots.
“Going somewhere?” Nora asks, shoving her hair out of her eyes and rubbing them with her palms.
“Shopping! With Courtney! I told you last night. You said you’d leave your credit card on the hall table for me in case I see something I need.”
Did she? Maybe.
“My wallet’s on the dresser. Take it.”
Piper pounces, tossing a sly grin over her shoulder with “Your wallet?”
“Funny. My Amex. And don’t use it unless you have to.”
“I won’t, unless I find those boots I told you about.”
“You have boots. You’re wearing boots.”
“Not snow boots. I need snow boots, remember?”
“It’s snowing?”
“Not yet, but when it does, I’ll be ready.” Piper waves the card at her. “Thanks, Mommy. Bye.”
She disappears into the hall and pounds down the stairs, leaving the bedroom door open. Nora gets out of bed, stretching, and looks out the window in time to see Piper descend the steps and bounce off down the street to meet her friend.