“I’m so sorry,” I say. I can’t help myself.
“Julie.” Connie squints and turns me to the side. “I don’t think this is just a hickey. It stretches from behind your ear and all the way down to below your clavicle.” She points to a spot under the collar of my shirtdress and I angle my head to try to see and there it is. The bruise is pushing at its boundaries, expanding as I watch. I think of the way James grabbed my shoulder on our walk to the restaurant and pull my collar wider to see the bruise on my neck advancing toward the one on my shoulder. They rush for each other at a glacial pace. I feel my eyes well up with fury that I’ve done this to myself. I let the hickey happen and now the bruise can grow from there. Is it harder to begin something or to keep it going? My mind races with examples that make both statements feel true and I think of how it’s easy to keep dating a person but hard to keep the relationship alive once you’ve hit a tough spot. Had I provided a host or would it have found me anyway?
Connie swipes back the hair behind my ear and leans in. “It continues past your hairline, Julie. Jesus.”
I bite my lip to keep from crying. “Get to work. I’ll deal with this later. No use worrying about it now. It’s not like it’s anything new.”
Connie walks away, like I’ve let her down.
I see an email from my boss, and my stomach drops. I’m worried he’ll have read the plan for the product I drew up while I was at home and see all the weaknesses, all the details I should have had time to figure out while I was out of the office, the specifications I took educated guesses on rather than researching. “Looks like a great start. Let’s meet as a team later this week to discuss” is all the email says, and I wonder if I’m working too hard most of the time, if it’s always me inviting trouble.
69
IN MY DARKROOM, I dream of returning to the city. The cool basement air reminds me of the air-conditioned bar. The noon sun muted by the dark plastic sunshade pulled down over the windows. The chilled feeling of the lacquered oak beneath my forearms. The prickle of freshly poured lager down my throat as I examine the names of the horses on the betting sheet. The rush at either win or loss, the extremity of feeling assured, controlled in all but outcome. I long for the comfort of placing my worry on a race rather than this real life crumbling around me.
The doorbell rings and I make my way upstairs. Through the glass I can see the detectives’ car out front. I wonder if they’ve found Rolf.
I swing the door open. “What can I do for you, Detectives?”
“Can we come in?” asks O’Neill.
“Please.” I step aside. I open the door wide. They hover for a moment before I lead them to the dining room.
They eye me. “Did we wake you?”
“No, no. I was working in the basement. What is this about?”
Poremski’s eyes move to the crumpled sheets of paper on the floor, covered in our grievances. O’Neill asks, “What’s all this?”
I curse myself for bringing them into this room. I stumble over myself. “My wife and I … we had a fight. She wanted to do some kind of … writing exercise together to try to work things out.” I laugh, performing the dismissiveness I think is expected of me. “Anything she says so we can move on already, right?”
They nod tentatively. O’Neill says, “And that would have been before or after you visited Connie Abbatacola’s house?”
“After.” Of course this is about Connie. I had nearly forgotten. Obviously Officer Scarface passed the word on that we were at Connie’s.
“Do you mind if we take a look around?” O’Neill asks.
I feel fear at what they might find, what we’ve failed to hide. I don’t see a way around it. “Is something the matter, Officer? Have Julie and I done something wrong?”
“No, no. Where is your wife?”
“At work?” I phrase it like a question. I can’t be sure. It seems like the most likely answer.
I follow the pair of them upstairs. They peek into the guest room briefly before moving on. In our bedroom, they pause. They note the figure drawn on the wall. They can’t help but exchange a glance. Poremski steps out of the room to make a call. O’Neill looks at me. He gestures toward the wall. “What can you tell me about that?”
I panic inside. I know what his mind is telling him. This figure looks like the one in Connie’s entryway. They must be related. It only makes sense that it’s me who’s drawn both. I wonder if Connie told them about this drawing. Could she have asked them to come take a look? “These keep showing up in our house, too. I assumed it was my wife making them. She thought it was me. Neither of us is correct, from what I understand.”
“And you haven’t reported them?” O’Neill appears to be giving me the benefit of the doubt. He wants to hear a good reason why we would keep this information to ourselves.
“Like I said, we both thought the other was playing a trick. We’ve been going through a lot.” I pause and then decide to move in a direction that might discount my reliability, but also take some heat off us. “Honestly, we think this house is haunted. Everyone in town keeps saying as much. We keep looking for another reasonable explanation, though. We don’t really believe in that sort of stuff. We’ve been trying to work through it on our own. We’re not getting very far. We need help.”
O’Neill’s eyes bug out for a moment in frustration. He does not want to hear about our marital problems. He is a logical man. I am talking in riddles. “Mr. Khoury, I’m going to need you to be more explicit. What is it you need help with? Are you in danger? Are you unwell? Is there something more we should know?”
I realize then that the detective thinks we might not have reported the drawings because we have something else that we’re trying to hide. He believes we have evidence of some crime we have or haven’t committed. In that same moment I realize there’s no way to say, believably, without attracting more suspicion, We haven’t done anything. Instead, I say, “My wife and I, I believe we’ve both taken this move rather hard. I don’t know if it’s depression, paranoia, anxiety. We’re not ourselves. It’s been complicated by some strange stuff happening in the house. Sounds we hear. We think we see things. There are all of these hidden storage areas we keep finding. We haven’t settled in like we hoped.”
Poremski returns to the room to take pictures of the drawings. O’Neill watches him for a moment. Then he looks at me. “Mr. Khoury, I think you and your wife need to get ahold of yourselves. If you think you need help doing that, I suggest you talk to a doctor or a social worker who can help you work through your issues. In the meantime, we’re going downstairs, and you’re going to tell me everything you can remember about when this drawing showed up and the circumstances around it.”