A Flicker in the Dark(6)

What then?





CHAPTER FOUR




My car idles in the driveway as I dig into my purse and fish out the pharmacy bag. I rip it open and pull the orange bottle from inside, twisting the cap and dumping a pill into my palm before crumpling the bag in a ball and shoving it, and the bottle, into my glove compartment.

I look at the Xanax in my hand, inspecting the little white tablet. I think back to that phone call in my office: Aaron Jansen. Twenty years. My chest constricts at the memory, and I pop the pill into my mouth before I can think twice, swallowing it dry. I exhale, close my eyes. Already, I feel the grip in my chest loosening, my airways opening wide. A calmness settles over me, the same sense of calm that follows every time my tongue touches a pill. I don’t really know how to describe it, this feeling, other than pure and simple relief. The same relief you would feel after flinging open your closet door to find nothing but clothes hiding inside—the slowing of the heart rate, the euphoric sense of giddiness that creeps into the brain when you realize that you’re safe. That nothing’s going to lunge at you from the shadows.

I open my eyes.

There’s a hint of spice in the air as I step out of my car and slam the door, clicking the lock button twice on my key fob. I turn my nose toward the sky and sniff, trying to place the scent. Seafood, maybe. Something fishy. Maybe the neighbors are having a barbecue, and for a second, I’m offended that I’m not invited.

I start the long walk up the cobblestones toward my front door, the darkness of the house looming before me. I make it halfway up the walkway before I stop and stare. Back when I bought this house, years ago, it was just that. A house. A shell of a thing ready to have life blown into it like a saggy balloon. It was a house prepared to become a home, all eager and excited like a kid on the first day of school. But I had no idea how to make a home. The only home I had ever known could hardly be called a home at all—not anymore, at least. Not in hindsight. I remember walking through the front door for the first time, keys in hand. My heels on the hardwood echoing through the vast emptiness, the bare white walls littered with nail marks from where pictures once hung, proof that it was possible. That memories could be formed here, a life could be made. I opened up my little tool kit, a tiny red Craftsman that Cooper had bought, walking me around Home Depot as I held the lips open while he dropped wrenches and hammers and pliers inside like he was filling up a bag of sweet-and-sour gummies at the local candy store. I didn’t have anything to hang—no pictures, no decorations—so I hammered a single nail into the wall and hung the metal ring that held my house key. A single key, and nothing more. It felt like progress.

Now I look all the things that I’ve done to it since to make it appear like I have my shit together from the outside, the superficial equivalent of slathering makeup over a marbling bruise or fastening a rosary on top of a scarred wrist. Why I care so much about the acceptance of my neighbors as they slink past my yard, leashes in hand, I don’t really know. There’s the swinging bench bolted to the porch ceiling, the always-present layer of buttery yellow pollen making it impossible to pretend that anybody ever actually sits there. The landscaping I had eagerly purchased and planted and then subsequently ignored to death, the skinny brown tendrils of my twin hanging ferns resembling the regurgitated bones of a small animal I once found while dissecting an owl in eighth grade biology. The scratchy brown welcome mat that says, Welcome! The bronze mailbox shaped like an oversized envelope bolted to the siding, maddeningly impractical, the slit too tiny to fit an entire hand, let alone more than a couple of postcards mailed to me by former classmates-turned-Realtors after the promise of their degrees turned out to be not-so-promising.

I start walking again, deciding in this moment that I’m going to throw away the stupid envelope and just use a regular mailbox like everybody else. It is also in this moment when I realize that my house looks dead. It’s the only one on the block without lights illuminating the windows, the flicker of a television behind closed blinds. The only one without any evidence of life inside.

I walk closer, the Xanax cloaking my mind into a forced calm. But still, something is nagging at me. Something is wrong. Something is different. I look around my yard: small, but well-kept. A mown lawn and shrubs push against a raw wood fence, an oak tree’s mangled limbs casting shadows against a garage I’ve never once pulled my car into. I glance up at the house, now mere feet before me. I think I catch a glimpse of movement behind a curtain from inside, but I shake my head, force myself to keep walking.

Don’t be ridiculous, Chloe. Be real.

My key is in the front door, already twisting, when I realize what’s wrong, what’s different.

The porch light is off.

The porch light I always, always leave on—even when I’m sleeping, ignoring the beam of light it casts straight across my pillow through the gap in the blinds—is turned off. I never turn the porch light off. I don’t think I’ve ever even touched the switch. That’s why the house looks so lifeless, I realize. I’ve never seen it so dark before, so completely devoid of light. Even with the street lamps, it is dark out here. Someone could come up behind me and I’d never even—

“SURPRISE!”

I let out a scream and plunge my arm into my purse, searching for my pepper spray. The lights from inside flick on and I’m staring at a crowd of people in my living room—thirty, maybe forty—all staring back, smiling. My heart is slamming inside my chest now; I can barely speak.