And then I heard it: the clink of a metallic key in the lock, the frantic turning of the door’s handle. What I expected to see was Joseph, his silhouette against the faint glow of some light from down the hall. But instead it was Matthew who tore into my room with a deranged look in his eye, his convulsive hand bearing a sharp knife that dripped blood across my bed as he said, “Come on, Claire. Get up.” And I reached for his outstretched hand and let him pull me from bed.
“You need to go, Claire,” he said to me, sweeping me close, tight, in a bear hug. “You need to run.” He tossed clothes into my hands: the sweatshirt and gym shoes, a pair of enormous pants, and told me to get dressed. “Hurry,” he said, his voice rattling.
“Why?” I asked, and then, “Where?”
“There’s a bag,” he said, “by the front door. A suitcase. It has everything you’ll need.” And he pulled on my hand and led me down the hall, through a house that was nearly silent, the door to Joseph and Miriam’s bedroom pulled closed. I cringed as I passed that bedroom door, fearful of what was or wasn’t on the other side.
I couldn’t decide what was worse: what was there or what I imagined to be there, though there was no way to know for sure.
“But what about Joseph?” I asked, though I knew, between the blood and the closed door, by the fact that Matthew and I were moving freely down the wooden steps—making no effort to mute the sounds of the squeaky floors—that Joseph was dead.
That the scream had belonged to Joseph.
That the blood on the knife was his.
He clutched me by the hand on the bottom step and forced me into him. He whispered into my ear, “I know what he did to you,” and I felt my legs give, knowing he knew my secret. Knowing he knew Joseph’s secret. Somehow it was a weight off, the fact that I no longer had to carry that baggage alone. I imagined, all those years, Joseph welcoming himself onto the bed beside me, and Matthew, on the other side of the wall, listening. I clung to Matthew there, at the bottom of the steps, not wanting to go, though he said again, “You have to go, Claire. You have to go now,” and unclasped my hands from the small of his back.
“Where?” I asked, my voice anxious and scared. I’d never been on my own before in my whole entire life.
“There’s a cab,” he said, “outside. Waiting. He’ll take you to the bus station,” and it was only then that I noticed the headlights of a car parked at the curb.
“But I don’t want to go,” I cried, my eyes darting to Matthew, ambiguous in the blackness of the night. “I want to stay with you.” And I clung to him like Velcro, wrapping my arms around his back and for a second he let me, just a split second, before he unclamped my fingers and pried me away. I was crying, this heaving cry that came from somewhere deep within. “Come with me,” I begged, weeping so hard that I had to force the words out between breaths. Come. With. Me. Matthew was the only person I had in the whole wide world. Momma had left me. Lily had left me. And now Matthew was leaving me, too.
“Claire.”
“Come with me,” I pleaded like the child I was. I stamped my foot and threw my arms across myself with a pout on my face. “Come with me, come with me,” and I tried pulling on his arm and dragging him to the door, toward that front door that stood open, the window to the side of the door smashed in, shards of jagged glass strewn upon the floor.
I froze solid for a second and stared.
This is how Matthew had found his way in.
“You have to go, Claire.” Matthew jammed money into my hand, a stack of cash, and hurried to grab the leather suitcase from the floor, towing me behind him by the hand. “Go now,” he said, “before...” but he didn’t finish. “Just go,” he said, but as he did, he pulled me close, absorbing me in his arms. He was shaking; he’d broken out in a cold sweat. He didn’t want me to go any more than I wanted to go. I knew that. And yet he thrust that suitcase into my fickle hand and pushed—actually pushed—me through the door, as I carefully stepped over the broken glass on my way out.
I looked back once, only once, to see him standing in the doorway, the knife hidden behind his back, his face bound in wistfulness and melancholy. He, too, was sad.