She had tried to do the same, of course, to conjure up images of past or potential lovers to make the experience less unpleasant, but they were too few, and they brought with them their own troubles, and in the end she had simply given up. Her appetites had faded to such a degree that it was easier just to think of other things entirely, or to look forward to the time when this man would be gone from her life. She could not even recall why she had wanted to be with him to begin with, and he with her. She supposed that, with a young daughter and all that had happened with her father, she had just desired some stability for a time, but he had not been the man to give it to her. There had been a debased element to his attraction to her, as though he saw something within her that was corrupted, and he had enjoyed touching it by entering her. He had not even liked her daughter very much, the product of a relationship begun before she was fully ready to have one. (And who knows, perhaps she was never meant to have a proper relationship, not really?) Jenna’s father had drifted away. He had seen his child only a handful of times, and then only in the early years. He would not even recognize her now, Rebecca thought, then realized that she was thinking of him as if he were still alive. She tried to feel something for him, but she could not. His life had ended prematurely on a dark minor road far from home, his body dumped in a ditch, his hands tied roughly behind his back with fuse wire, blood soaking into the soft ground to feed the small scurrying things that burrowed up from below to scavenge upon him. He had not been good for her. He had probably not been good for very much at all, which was why he had ended up the way he did. He had never been one to keep his promises, to make good on his commitments. It was inevitable, she supposed, that one day he would encounter someone who would not forgive him his trespasses and would instead extract a final, grim payment from him.
For a time Jenna had asked a lot of questions about him, but in recent years they had become fewer and fewer until at last they were either forgotten, or she elected to keep them unspoken. She had not yet worked out how to inform Jenna that her father was dead. He had been killed earlier that year, and she had not found the right opportunity to talk with Jenna of his death. She was deliberately putting it off, she knew, yet still she waited. Now, in the darkness of her kitchen, she decided that when Jenna next raised the subject of her father, she would tell her daughter the truth about him.
She thought again about the private detective. In a sense, Jenna’s father was the reason that she had approached him. Jenna’s paternal grandfather had talked of the detective. He had wanted him to look for his son, but the detective had turned him down. She thought that the old man might have felt bitterness toward him, especially after the way things had worked out, but he had not. Perhaps he understood that his son was already a lost cause, even if he refused to surrender himself to the consequences of that understanding. If he had no faith in his son, then how could he expect another, a stranger, to believe in him instead? So he did not blame the detective for declining to help him, and Rebecca had remembered his name when the stranger came asking about her own father.
The faucet was still running, so she began to pour the rest of the bottle down the sink. The water circled around the drain, stained with red. Jenna was asleep upstairs. Rebecca was making plans to send her away if the detective could not quickly rid her of the stranger’s attentions. So far, the man had not approached Jenna, but she was concerned that such a situation might not last, and he would use the daughter to get at the mother. She would tell Jenna’s school that the child was sick, and she would deal with the repercussions when the time came. Then again, perhaps she might simply tell them the truth: that a man was bothering her, that Jenna might be at risk if she stayed in Portland. Surely they would understand.
Why now? she wondered. It was the same question the detective had asked her. Why, after so many years had gone by, would someone come asking about her father? What did he know about the circumstances of the disappearance? She had tried to ask him, but he had only tapped his forefinger against his nose in that knowing way of his before saying: “It ain’t his disappearance I’m interested in, missy. It’s another’s. He’ll know, though. He’ll know.”
The stranger had spoken of her father as though he were certain that he was still alive. More to the point, he seemed to think that she knew it too. He wanted answers she could not give him. She lifted her head and saw herself reflected in the window. The sight gave her a sudden shock so that she jerked slightly, the face before her turning from a single image to a double through a flaw in the glass. But when she had regained her composure, the second image still remained. It was like her, yet not like her, as though she had somehow shed her skin as a snake might, and the discarded membrane had settled upon the features of another. Then the figure outside drew closer and the impression of a doppelg?nger faded, leaving only the stranger in a leather jacket, his dark hair slick with grease. She heard his voice, distorted by the thickness of the glass, but she could not understand his words.
He pressed his hands against the glass, then slid the palms down until the tips of his fingers were resting against the window frame. He pushed, but the lock inside held. His face contorted in anger, and he bared his teeth.
“You get away from me,” she said. “You get away now, or so help me—”
His hands withdrew, and then Rebecca saw a fist punch its way through the glass, shaking the frame and showering the sink with fragments. She screamed, but the sound was caught up in the screeching of the alarm. Blood coursed down the shattered pane as the stranger pulled his hand back through the glass, not even attempting to avoid the jagged edges that ripped at his skin, tearing red channels across his palms and severing veins. He stared at the wounded fist, as if it were a thing beyond his control, surprising him with its actions. She heard the phone ring and knew that it was the monitoring company. If she didn’t reply, the police would be called, and someone would be sent to check up on her.
“I shouldn’t ought to have done that,” said the man. “I apologize.” But she could barely hear him over the shrieking of the alarm. He tilted his head to her. It was a strangely respectful gesture, almost old-fashioned in its courtliness. She stifled the urge to giggle, fearful that if she started to laugh she would never stop, that she would descend into hysteria and never surface from it again. The phone stopped, then began to ring again. She made no move toward it. Instead, she watched as the stranger retreated, leaving her sink covered with his blood. She smelled it as, slowly, it combined with the stink of the corked wine to create something terrible and new, lacking only a chalice from which it might be sipped.