The Night Before(66)

Shit. Now he has me thinking absurd thoughts right along with him. I try to recall the exact series of events that led to my departure in Rosie’s dress, with the cherry-red lipstick that I put in the purse.… I can see it on the counter in the kitchen. Rosie and Joe were cooking. Mason was running around half naked, glee on his face. Gabe had left sometime earlier when I went up to get ready. There was laughter.… You could always hit up nursing homes next.… Haha, yes, he’s forty. Who had said it, Gabe or Joe? Joe, I think. It’s more like Joe to tease me that way.

Rosie brought the purse. I remember that now. She set it down on the kitchen counter, but I didn’t bring it with me because I had nothing upstairs that needed to go inside. Except the lipstick, which I carried in my hand when I came back down.

I opened the purse and shoved things in it—the lipstick in the kitchen, and then my wallet and other things from my purse I’d left in the car. I would have seen the note. I would have felt it.

Wouldn’t I?

“It was empty when I got it,” I tell him. But I’m not at all sure.

“Are you sure?” he asks, right on cue, like he’s just read my mind. Again.

I won’t think it. That note was not put in this purse by Rosie or Joe or Gabe.

How devious he is to make me question them. How ruthless. I feel my eyes narrow as I look at him.

“How about this for a theory: I left the purse in your car when I ran into the park. Remember?”

Silence descends. Jonathan stares. I stare back.

Then he breaks it. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that the note was not in the purse when I left the house. I’m saying that I left it alone—with you. First in your car … and in this apartment,” I say, realizing this just now. “It’s been on the counter the whole time.”

“So you think I did this? That’s insane! I didn’t even know you before tonight. You said there were three notes, right? I saw you on the website a week ago—well after the first note was left on your windshield. Jesus Christ! I feel like we just drove off a cliff here.”

He walks away, starts cleaning things up. The pizza box to the fridge. The glasses to the sink.

“I can’t believe you just said that.” He doesn’t look at me.

And suddenly I’m the one who can’t believe I just said that.

The voice is so loud as it rumbles through my mind. This is why no one loves you. You are damaged and broken and no one ever will …

I told Dr. Brody that she wouldn’t listen—that little girl tugging on a sleeve. The face in that photo. That starving child who lives inside me. I told him and he told me that I was wrong. He told me it would all get better now that I knew the truth about my childhood.

But he told me a lot of things.

And the last thing, the worst of all.

I saved the text on my phone so I would never forget it. The text that ended everything between us.

I don’t love you. I love my wife. Please don’t contact me ever again.

I’m about to do what that starving child asks of me, to fix things with this man—with Jonathan Fielding. That is the only voice I hear now, and it is loud and desperate. I start to plot ways to make him believe I’m worthy. To trick him into thinking I’m not what I seem even though I’ve just accused him of something horrible.

“I’m sorry…” I say.

But the doorbell rings before I can go on.

He looks up, past me to the door. He’s frustrated and angry as he storms around the counter to the small entryway.

“It’s probably my neighbor,” he says. “We’re being too loud.”

He walks to the door as though he’s walked to it before, explaining why he and some woman are making too much noise in the middle of the night. He turns the locks, his mouth already forming an apology.

But then the door slams hard against him, pushed with extreme force from the outside as soon as the locks give way and he’s shown himself. He’s stunned as he falls back against the wall and just as he leans forward, the door slams him a second time and he falls to the floor. It slams again, the hard metal of the bottom corner catching him right in the forehead.

I am perfectly still now, staring at Jonathan Fielding as his head bleeds. As the blood pools around his face.

I have been here before. I have seen this before.

I look to the door.

“Laura!”

It’s a man standing there. I don’t recognize him at first because he wears a baseball cap and a hoodie over it.

But then he looks up at me after he sees the damage he’s inflicted on his victim.

“Gabe?” I say. I am hallucinating. “Gabe?”

I say it again, but he has already moved into the apartment. He grabs the purse on the counter. Sees my keys beside them and puts them in his pocket.

Then he looks at me, head to toe.

“Where are your shoes?” But he finds them in the corner behind the door before I can answer.

“Did you have a coat?” he asks, and I shake my head, still staring at him in a daze.

My eyes find Jonathan Fielding and the small but growing pool of blood. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t make a sound. He lies in a fetal position right where he fell. A large gash exposes bone at the top of his head where the sharp edge of the door struck it just right.