No One Knows Us Here(84)

I brushed my teeth with my eyes closed, avoiding looking at myself in the mirror. I splashed cold water on my face. The water stung, reopening tiny cuts on my skin. Everywhere we go, we leave traces of ourselves. Skin cells and hairs and molecules from our spit. At this very moment, detectives could be scraping my skin off the cupboards in Leo’s kitchen. They would find the salt left from my tears mixed in with his blood.

There is no way I am getting away with this. The thought scrolled through my head, waved in front of me like a banner carried through the sky by an airplane. It didn’t frighten me or send me into hysterics. It was, simply, the truth.



Sam and Wendy didn’t see me emerge from the hallway. Sam was stirring something on the stove, and Wendy was sitting at a wooden farm table. She was talking, trying to impress him with some story. While she talked, she was peeling and slicing carrots. I watched them for a few minutes. The kitchen was filled with steam, with smells of baking bread and canned soup.

Wendy was telling Sam a story about our mother. I couldn’t hear what it was about beyond that, but from the way she told it, it sounded like a happy memory. She couldn’t talk and peel carrots at the same time. She would pause midsentence to peel one long curl of carrot skin and then resume, looking back up at Sam to make sure he was paying attention. He was. He chuckled softly while she talked, raised his eyebrows in anticipation during the pauses.

When I shuffled in on stocking feet, Wendy dropped her peeler onto the cutting board, and Sam let the spoon clang into the pot. They rushed to my side, each taking an arm, and they led me across the kitchen to the dining table, settled me into a chair.

“Where are we?” My voice sounded hoarse. I cleared my throat. “How long have we been here?”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Wendy said. “No one will find us here.”

In the kitchen window I saw my own reflection, this picture of me curled up on a dining chair, Sam and Wendy behind me, a hand on each shoulder, like we were about to pose for a portrait. Beyond that reflection, darkness. A forest and a night sky. “What is this place?”

“We’re at my aunt and uncle’s cabin,” Sam said. “Outside La Pine.”

“What are we doing here?”

Sam and Wendy exchanged looks.

“We thought it’s what you wanted,” Sam said after a pause.

“What you needed,” Wendy clarified, and Sam nodded in agreement. “You weren’t talking; we couldn’t ask you—we tried but you were in shock—and Rosemary, you should have seen yourself. Your face. Your dress, it was—”

Sam shook his head at Wendy, and my sister clamped her mouth shut. She stared at me, biting her lip, her eyes bulging out.

“Maybe we should eat.” Sam dished out bowls of soup and set one in front of each of us.

“There’s bread, too.” Wendy opened the oven door, unleashing a gust of acrid smoke. “It’s burned.” She frowned at the baguette cremains on the tray.

“We can’t cook,” Sam said.

My lips cracked as I broke into a smile; it seemed like it had been weeks since they had formed that shape, since I’d had anything to smile about. Sam and Wendy beamed back, and for a few moments we pretended nothing was wrong. We sat together and ate our soup. For the first time in a long time, I started to imagine that everything might work out, that the last several months had been nothing but a horrible dream, that my real life was here, in this A-frame cabin in the middle of the forest. This is where we belonged, in this place where no one would ever find us.





CHAPTER 28


I couldn’t fall asleep that night, not after dozing all day. I’d been off schedule ever since my trip to France. It was dark inside the room, but I could make out the shape of Wendy on the twin bed next to mine, the blankets sighing up and down over her breathing body.

I padded down the dark hallway and into the living room. I told myself I’d go up to Sam if his light was still on in the loft. The light wasn’t on, but I went up anyway. The moon shone through the skylight, illuminating his face. I’d never watched him sleep before. All those nights we’d slept, side by side in our separate beds, in our separate apartments, that wall between us. His face was twisted up, tortured. His eyeballs moved back and forth under the lids, faster and faster. I reached out my hand and let it hover over his face. I couldn’t remember—were you supposed to wake someone from a bad dream or just let them work through it, ride it out?

His breath quickened. He was sucking air in quickly, in bursts. Fft, fft, fft.

“Sam!” I whispered. The moment my hand landed on his cheek, his eyes opened, two unseeing moons. His own hand lifted to his throat, like he was choking, and then he jerked straight up.

I shook his shoulders and said his name over and over until I felt him collapse onto me. Our arms cinched around each other, tighter and tighter, and I closed my eyes and buried my face in his shoulder. Into my ear he whispered, “What did you do, Rosemary?” Instead of answering, I placed my mouth on his. He tasted like buttered toast.

I wanted him to touch me everywhere, to erase all the places Leo had touched. When I was with Sam, I could forget everything that had happened, pretend to go back in time, before I’d made such a mess of things. As if being with Sam reversed it all. Everything could go backward: Leo in the pool of blood, the knife in his throat, the knife in my hand, my head on the cupboard, France, the symphony, Hawaii, San Francisco, Thai Lotus, Sebastian St. Doug, and just before that, when Leo didn’t exist at all, not for me. When I was with Sam, I could forget that I’d ever met anyone named Leo Glass. I could pretend that I’d never heard of him, that he never existed at all.