“Let’s go to bed and I’ll show you.”
While Greg heads to my room, I turn off the lights and text, Goodnight, to Sophie, who’s spending the night at Delaney’s. I check the dead bolt on the front door and take a quick glance out the window to the road. I used to sense when Andrew was driving home before I even heard his truck, could feel that flutter in my stomach as he rounded the last curve.
I close my eyes, put my hand over my stomach. It’s calm, but I know Andrew has something else planned. Will mind games be enough for him? Or is he going to try to hurt me? I remember his threats to kill me, how strong he is when he’s angry, how nothing in this world can stop him. I touch my neck, feel the warm skin, my pulse. I’m alive, I’m still breathing.
I take one more look out the window, and follow Greg to the bedroom.
I wake at seven to the sound of rain. One of the gutters must be plugged, the water cascading in a loud waterfall outside my window. I’ll have to call the landlord. I force myself out of bed and into the kitchen, switching on lights. Greg went home at midnight and the house is quiet. He rarely spends the night. I say it’s because of Sophie, but the truth is I panic sometimes when I wake up with him in my bed, his heavy leg wrapped around mine suddenly too much.
Now I wish I had asked him to stay. I could have buried myself against his warm side, listened to the rumble of his deep voice, which always sounds rougher in the morning, like liquid gravel. I’d traced my finger over his scars: one from his appendix surgery, the long raised one down his leg from a chain saw, the jagged one on his collarbone from a motorbike accident when he was a teenager. I’ve never known a man with so many scars.
I put the coffee on, drink a cup while I make my lunch, then fill a thermos with the rest. I’m going to need the energy. Today I have two houses to clean, then a training session with Marcus. My first client of the day is one of my oddest. Joe, a man in his fifties, who’s had a head injury and suffers from short-term memory loss—his family hired me. Sometimes he forgets I’m in the house and visibly startles when he finds me scrubbing his bathtub. A couple of times I’ve been the one who’s startled by the sight of Joe lounging in the living room in his striped boxer shorts, eating canned chicken or spaghetti, and once he was dancing to “Let It Go,” from Frozen, wearing his tablecloth as a cape. He urged me to join in, calling me “Anna.” I hesitated for a moment, then wielded my mop like a microphone and gave it my best shot.
After I’m finished cleaning for Joe, who spent most of the time watching Matlock reruns, I move on to a my second job of the day, a large two-story house with four very busy, very messy kids all under the age of twelve. Today it’s not too bad, though, and I finish a little early, so I decide to stop at the bank on the way to Marcus’s house and get some cash. As I wait for the machine to spit out my money, I feel an odd sensation in my stomach, a flutter of nerves. I quickly glance behind me, but there’s no one else in line.
I collect my receipt and tuck it and the cash inside my purse and turn around.
I see him standing by the corner of the bank. He’s putting money into his wallet, sliding it into his back pocket. He looks different with short hair and a beard, but the way he moves is so familiar, the shape of his head, the shrug of his wide shoulders.
The cement walls of the bank are rushing toward me as though there are only inches standing between me and Andrew. I can smell his skin, his soap, see the edge of his mouth, the way it turns up. Sophie’s smile. He’s going to see me, then he’s going to say my name with that tone that sounds loving and angry and scolding and disappointed all at once.
Run.
Legs. I have to move my legs. Some internal force spins me around. Too fast, I drop my keys. It seems as though they fall in slow motion, hitting the sidewalk with a metallic clang that echoes across the pavement. I lurch downward, clutch at my keys, and rise.
“Lindsey.” He’s moving forward, walking toward me. The distance narrows.
“Get away from me.” I stand straight, holding my keys out in my hand like some sort of sword. They’re nothing. Just tiny pieces of metal.
He stops with his palms in the air. “I was in the bank. I didn’t know you were outside.”
“Why are you here?” It doesn’t matter. I know why he’s here. I need to walk away, but my feet are rocks. I look around, hoping for people, for safety in numbers, but it’s as though the earth has opened and sucked everyone down. Not a car on the street, not one pedestrian.
“The construction company I’m working for got a new subdivision contract in Dogwood Bay. I was looking around at some places to rent.”
No. He knew we lived here. He planned this.