“Delusional crazy person?” Nora suggested.
“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”
“Those were Stacey’s own words when I was on the phone with her earlier.”
“She said she’s delusional and crazy?”
“No, she said she’s not, and that she hadn’t imagined the man on the roof.”
“Maybe she didn’t.”
“Maybe not. This was a stressful day for her, Keith. She was upset about an argument she had with Lennon.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
She braced herself for him to accuse her, again, of keeping secrets from him.
But he seemed to digest and accept it. “What was the fight about?”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? I just think it’s possible that the stress might have triggered a panic attack. If she can put it behind her for tonight, so should we, and we’ll see how things look in the morning.”
Things were brighter on Sunday despite dreary weather. Marital tensions eased by a decent night’s sleep, Nora and Keith spent a couple of quiet, companionable hours reading the New York Times. Piper didn’t return from her sleepover until midafternoon, too weary to be her usual effusive self, and went up to her room to nap.
Stacey, too, spent most of the day in her room. When she emerged she seemed to be her usual self. Keith attempted to bring up the night before, but she shut him down. “It’s all good, Dad. You guys were right. It was probably just a shadow from a tree or something.”
“Did you say that?” Nora asked him after she’d left the room.
“No. Did you?”
She hadn’t, but if that was what Stacey had decided, they weren’t going to argue the point.
Now that she finally has Keith’s blessing to find a psychiatrist for her, Nora has been weighing whether to look into it. But it had seemed so much more urgent in California. Here, Stacey seems happier, boyfriend troubles and all.
Is it just that here, you have other things to worry about? Or are you afraid that you’re the one who needs to see someone? Are you the one who’s delusional?
The last few evenings, she’s caught the occasional familiar whiff of cigarette smoke in the air and expected to find Jacob lurking in the house, or around it. She looked for him behind draperies and in closets, and in the rainy garden. Jacob, or his ghost.
Of course she didn’t find him, just as she hadn’t found him online. He might be long dead. Or the name he’d given her back then had been an alias. Either way, it’s unlikely that he’s stalking the house or haunting it decades later.
Yet even now she scans the rooftops and bramble border, where Kato has done his business and is nosing around. No sign of Jacob. No Peeping Tom.
“Come on, boy,” she calls. “Time to go in!”
The dog doesn’t come, intent on pawing at something—probably trying to get at a chipmunk. Or, God forbid, a rat.
“Kato!” Nora whistles. “You want a treat? Let’s go get a treat!”
His ears perk up and he trots toward her.
Back in the kitchen, she delivers on her promise, and he settles in to crunch on a bone-shaped biscuit as Keith appears.
“Wow, treats at this hour? What’d he do to deserve that?”
“He came when I called him.”
“So would I. You’re looking pretty hot in that skimpy T-shirt.”
“It’s your shirt,” she reminds him. “Not that skimpy, and I slept in it, and I haven’t combed my hair or brushed my teeth.”
“So? Still hot. Do I get a treat, too?”
She raises an eyebrow and shakes the box she was about to return to the cabinet. “If you want a liver-flavored cookie, who am I to deny you?”
Keith laughs and steps up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I’m glad you didn’t deny me last night. Every night could be like that, if you didn’t fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow.”
“Yeah, well, what can I say? Cross-country moves are exhausting for everyone.” She slips from his grasp and puts the dog treats away.
Keith pours coffee into a go-cup. “By the way, I’ve got to get back to Andrew this morning. Should I tell him Saturday night’s good for us?”
“What?”
“Dinner with Andrew and Marla.”
“Right. Great.” Nora smiles as if she’s looking forward to meeting Keith’s old college roommate and his wife.
Much as she appreciates Marla’s help in landing the girls at a fantastic school, she hates the thought of socializing with strangers when she’s got so much on her mind.
Keith kisses her on the cheek. “Love you.”
“You, too.”
He leaves the kitchen. Hearing the front door close a moment later, she heaves a weary sigh.
Cross-country moves are exhausting . . .
Keith, you have no idea.
“Moving to New York is a sign,” Nora told Teddy on the phone in July, when she first found out. “Please try to understand why I have to do this.”
“I don’t know that it’s a sign, but you don’t have to live in that house.”
“I do. It’s what I’m supposed to do. You’re the one who said—”
“Nora, no. Stop right there. I never said you should go back there!”
Of course Teddy knew about the young woman who’d died in this house, in her bed, on that awful night.
“But you said I need to heal, and that I can’t heal if I keep running away from the past instead of facing it.”
“What you’re doing is punishment, not healing. This is a self-imposed penance. Facing the past is one thing, but revisiting it is just—you’re tempting fate, Nora.”
“Maybe. But I have to do this. Because she was my friend, Teddy. And I owe it to her.”
Stacey
Riding the crowded subway to Manhattan, Stacey stands with Lennon in their usual spot beside the door to the next car.
He has one hand braced on the wall behind her, his long arm stretched like a barricade between her and the other passengers. Both their backpacks are slung over his shoulder, though she’d prefer to carry her own. Not just because his insistence often strikes her more as aggression than chivalry, but because he’s occasionally inattentive to his own belongings.
Books and clothing, cash, and even his phone sometimes poke up from his bag or pockets, precariously close to falling out. Once, when his dangling school tie trailed from his backpack like a limp tail, she gave it a tug and asked him how a native New Yorker could be so reckless.
“It only looks reckless to you because you’re not a New Yorker. I’m always in tune with my surroundings,” he claimed. “I know exactly who’s around me. Nothing’s going to happen to my stuff. Or to your stuff, or you, when you’re with me.”