I head back to the main house and upstairs into my bedroom where I remove a plank from the floor underneath my bed. In it is a box full of all the tokens I have collected from all the houses I ever entered wearing a mask. Each one jogs a memory of that particular home, family, and story I had concocted for them based on the clues lying around their house and what I saw through their windows.
When you are as prolific as I am, it can all become a blur, but these souvenirs help me remember. But now, as I hold up a small jade statue of an elephant, I realize that there are things—no matter how much I watch, no matter how many times I scour these people's homes, no matter how invasively I insert myself into their lives—that I will never know. That even for those moments when I am in their home, pretending to be in their skin, it's always bullshit. It's why I can't stop, because I never fucking get what I want. I keep striving for perfection: that perfect prowl where everything runs seamlessly, but it's never perfect because when it's over, I'm still back here, a man hiding behind a mask with a box of shallow tokens.
The realization angers me. Counterintuitively, it motivates me to go back out there and take my anger out on these people. But the actual desire to do it—to peer through windows and coordinate break-ins—has simply vanished with Vesper's arrival. This whole thing—this supposed fuck up I didn't plan for—might be becoming the thing I have been tearing houses and families apart searching for.
I didn't ask questions.
I didn't force her.
And yet she revealed herself to me.
I hold up the necklace she spoke of. Understanding the story behind it gives me a sudden rush that I am holding something more than just gold, something priceless in her eyes. Of all the things I could have taken, I grabbed the most perfect thing.
I didn't like the way the story made me feel. It was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. That's why I wanted to say something. But unlike the other times, I didn't feel a surge of rage so distracting and singularly focused that my mouth would just spew out verbal darts—precise, directed, piercing.
No, my mouth trembled, my tongue felt heavy, and I knew that if I spoke, she would hear my weakness.
She's a liar, they all are.
I almost let her get in my head a few weeks ago, when we showered together. I started it as another way to toy with her, but as we wilted to the floor, I wasn't sure anymore what was real and what wasn't. I wasn't even sure who was playing who.
I drop the necklace back in the wood box, and look down at the open floorboard. It's always felt like a suitable hiding place, but now it feels exposed. It never really belonged here, anyway. There's only one room in this house where this box truly belonged, and for the past year, I was too much of a fucking mess to go into it. I hold the box under my arm and run down the stairs and outside to my truck. I rifle through my tools until I come upon a claw hammer.
I take it up to my mother's room, pull away one of her many bright, complicated tapestries and pull out a plank from the wall. This will be the new home for my box of stolen memories.
Vesp's not getting the necklace back. I won't allow her to know her words carry meaning with me. As far as I am concerned, that necklace is a talisman, and I'm the only one who can hold its power.
There's noise outside my window this morning. I look at my clock and see it's early, only just after seven. I get up from bed and see a moving truck outside through the transparent curtain. There's a couple of men carrying boxes as an old lady directs them. I pull aside the curtain so I can peer at my new neighbor, watching suspiciously, just like my mother does. Were these people sent to kill me? At first I didn't believe her. But then she showed me a razor she found in a pie. So now I'm a little scared that the man who hit me will escape jail and come find me.
Dad said the man won't get out for a long time. I don't press him because mom says I can't tell dad about what she's been saying. Some days she trusts him, and other days she thinks he knows things he's not telling her. She says I should always love and respect him, but that he may have been hypnotized or something. So for now, it's our secret.
My curiosity gets the best of me and I tiptoe downstairs. Scoot and dad went fishing around dawn, so it's just me and mom. The house is quiet and I think she's still in bed. I don't make a sound on the way to our front window, where I watch the people moving up close.
There's a girl standing in their driveway, which butts up to our lawn, jumping rope.
She's singing some sort of song, I can't make it out, but I hear her cheerful voice muffled through the window. She's wearing a baby blue dress with white ruffles and pretty white socks that have ruffles too. I want to be friends with her. It's been so long since I have been outside, but the stitches are out of my face and I can walk fine now. I only have a few bruises left.
Normally, I would be shy, but there's something about the way she hums the song when she jumps rope, like maybe she'll be the one person who treats me different.