Pen Pal(31)

When the silence above my head continues for the next five minutes, I decide I’m not scared anymore. I’m mad.

At myself.

Because if I’d heard another creak, I have no doubt I’d have leapt from the chair and run screaming out the front door, only to make another surprise appearance at Aidan’s apartment, making a complete fool of myself once again.

Armed with my new anger, I take a breath and go to the door.

I’m fine when I step outside the office and look around. I’m fine as I creep up the stairs and peer into the master bedroom, which is exactly as I left it, no floorboard-creaking intruders in sight. I’m also fine as I check all the upstairs rooms, flipping lights on and feeling more and more ridiculous with every passing second when I find nothing out of place.

It isn’t until I go back downstairs, step into the kitchen, and turn on the overhead lights that I go from fine to freaking the fuck out.

Every drawer is pulled all the way out. Every cupboard door stands wide open.

I clap my hands over my mouth to stifle my terrified scream.

I stand frozen, listening to my pulse roar in my ears. Adrenaline burns through my veins, urging me to run, but I’m rooted to the floor in fright. I can’t move a muscle.

The eerie sense that I’m being watched slowly creeps over me.

I almost sob in terror. But I manage to hold it together and turn to see if someone is behind me.

But there’s no one there. I’m alone.

Just me, my paranoia, and the drawers and cupboards, which all apparently have over-greased rails and hinges.

Because there’s no other explanation for this. Because the kitchen just doesn’t decide to fling things open on its own.

Except maybe it does, because out of nowhere, a jar of honey flies off a shelf and smashes to pieces in the middle of the kitchen floor.

My nerves are no match for it.

I jump, scream, and spin around, bolting toward my office. I plow through the door, slam it behind me, lock it, then dive behind the sofa, wedging myself between it and the wall.

I lie there curled in a terrified, shaking ball until the sun rises four hours later.





In the morning, I feel like a gigantic idiot.

Funny how daylight can chase away even the scariest of monsters.

Once the sun came up, I finally remembered to view the camera feed on my phone. I must have hit play and rewind a hundred times, but there was zero evidence of anyone coming anywhere near the house except when Jake drove off in the afternoon and when Aidan arrived and left later.

And according to my trusty security hub, the perimeter of the house was never breached.

Nobody climbed through a window.

Nobody kicked in a door.

I was here alone all night.

As for the open cabinets and drawers, I remind myself there’s the distinct possibility I did that and don’t remember. If I added up all the small lapses in my memory of late, I could make a convincing case for early-onset dementia.

Why on earth I might have felt the need to leave my own kitchen in such a state is a mystery, but there also could have been a small earthquake I missed that would account for it.

Right? That’s plausible.

More plausible than the other things I’m not allowing myself to consider.

Regarding the flying jar of honey, well… I was overstimulated. It probably toppled off the shelf, not flew, and in my agitated state, I conflated it with my fright over the creaking and the stupid open cupboards to be more than it was.

I know full well I’m rationalizing, but that’s what one does when one is faced with the possibility that their grip on reality is in question.

I consider going back to the grief group, but toss that idea as quickly as it comes. If I want to be depressed, I’m doing just fine with that on my own.

Then I consider calling Eddie the handyman to get the number of his shrink. But after careful deliberation, I decide that if Eddie is the end product of psychoanalysis, I might be better off steering clear of it.

If I’m going to spend hundreds a week unloading my various neuroses on a therapist, I’d like to come out the other side without the need to smoke what smelled like an entire crop of marijuana in order to get through my day.

I psych myself up to leave the office and face the kitchen, but when I get there, I feel curiously let down. In daylight, the open drawers and cabinets seem utterly benign. I expected to feel nervous at least, but the only thing I feel is slight irritation.

It’s totally anticlimactic.

I shut the cupboards and close the drawers, then clean the sticky mess of honey and broken glass off the floor. Then I dump the plastic buckets of rain water down the sink.

Thanks to Aidan’s tarp, the ceiling has stopped leaking. The water stains look eerily like two big eyes staring down at me accusingly.

Gazing up at them, I mutter, “Don’t give me that look. You would’ve been scared, too.”

I debate whether or not I should call Aidan, but decide against it. I don’t know what his strange performance was all about yesterday, but I do know that I’m not going to reward him for running off after insisting I show him all my cards.

Isn’t that just typical, though? The minute you start talking about feelings, men suddenly go deaf and mute. It’s like their superpower.

Thinking about it leaves me depressed.

I shower and dress, then work until it’s late enough in the afternoon that I won’t feel like a complete degenerate for opening a bottle of wine. After two glasses, I decide to go back to work. I’m able to finish the boy-feeding-the-talking-rabbit piece I’ve been working on for far too long and move to the next one in the story. I need to complete twenty-seven illustrations for this book, and I’ve only got six weeks left to do it, so I need to hustle if I’m going to make the publisher’s deadline.