The Shape of Night(77)

“Come here, you bad boy! Come on!”

Again, the meow. The mist makes it seem like the sound is everywhere at once. “I have dinner!” I yell.

He responds with a demanding yowl, and I realize the sound is coming from above. I look up and through the mist I see something move high overhead. It’s a tail, flicking impatiently. Perched on the widow’s walk, Hannibal peers down at me through the slats of the railing.

“How the hell did you get stuck up there?” I yell at him, but I already know how it happened. In my rush to pack up and leave, I didn’t check the widow’s walk before closing the door. Hannibal must have slipped outside where he was trapped.

I hesitate on the front porch, reluctant to enter the house again. Only hours ago, I had fled Brodie’s Watch in fear, believing that I would never return. Now I have no choice but to step inside.

I unlock the door and flick on the light switch. Everything looks exactly the way it always has. The same umbrella stand, the same oak floor, the same chandelier. I take in a deep breath and detect no scent of the sea.

I start up the stairs, setting off the usual creaks on the steps. The landing is cast in gloom and I wonder if he waits in the shadows above, watching me. Upstairs I flick on another light switch and I see familiar cream walls and crown molding. All is silent. Are you here?

I pause to glance into my bedroom, which I’d left in such haste that the dresser drawers are open and the closet door is ajar. I move to the turret staircase. The door creaks as I open it. I think of the nights I stood at the base of these stairs, trembling with anticipation, wondering what pleasures and torments lay in store for me. I mount the steps, remembering the swish of silk at my ankles and the unyielding grip of his hand on mine. A hand whose touch could be both tender and cruel. My heart is thudding as I step into the turret room.

    It is empty.

Standing alone in that room, I’m suddenly overwhelmed with such a sense of longing that I feel as if my chest has been hollowed out, my heart wrenched out of me. I miss you. Whatever you are, ghost or demon, good or evil. If only I could see you one last time.

But there is no swirl of ectoplasm, no rush of salt air. Captain Jeremiah Brodie has departed this house. He has abandoned me.

An insistent meow reminds me why I am here. Hannibal.

I open the door to the widow’s walk and my cat saunters inside as if he’s royalty. He plants himself at my feet and glares up with a look of well, where’s my dinner?

“One of these days, I’m going to turn you into a fur collar,” I mutter as I haul him into my arms. I haven’t fed him since this morning, but he seems heavier than ever. Wrestling the armload of fur, I turn to the turret staircase and freeze.

Ben stands in the doorway.

The cat slips from my arms and thumps to the floor.

“You didn’t tell me you were leaving,” he says.

“I needed to…” I glance at the cat, who slinks away. “To find Hannibal.”

“But you took your suitcase. You didn’t even leave me a note.”

I retreat a step. “It was getting late. I didn’t want him to be out alone all night. And…”

“And what?”

I sigh. “I’m sorry, Ben. This isn’t going to work out between us.”

    “When were you going to tell me?”

“I did try to tell you. There’s so much about my life that’s a disaster right now. I shouldn’t be getting involved with anyone, not until I can straighten myself out. It’s not you, Ben. It’s me.”

His laugh is bitter. “That’s what they always say.” He goes to the window and stands with shoulders slumped, staring out at the fog. He looks so defeated that I almost feel sorry for him. Then I think of the unfinished painting of Brodie’s Watch and the woman’s figure silhouetted in the bedroom window. My bedroom window. I take a step toward the stairway door, then another. If I’m quiet, I can be down those steps before he realizes it. Before he can stop me.

“I always liked the view from this turret,” he says. “Even when the fog rolls in. Especially when the fog rolls in.”

I take another step, trying desperately not to set off a creak and alert him.

“This house used to be nothing but rotted wood and broken glass. A place just waiting for someone to touch a match to it. It would have gone up in a flash.”

I back away another step.

“And that widow’s walk was ready to collapse. But the railing was sturdier than it looked.”

I am almost at the doorway. I place one foot on the first step and my weight sets off a creak so loud it seems as if the whole house has groaned.

Ben turns from the window and stares at me. In that instant he sees my fear. My desperation to escape. “So you’re leaving me.”

“I need to go home to Boston.”

“You’re all the same, every one of you. You dangle yourselves in front of us. Make us believe. Give us hope.”

“I never meant to.”

“And then you break our hearts. You. Break. Our. Hearts!”

His shout is like a slap across the face and I flinch at the sound. But I do not move, just as he does not move. As we stare at each other, I suddenly register his words. I think of Charlotte Nielson, her decomposing body adrift on the sea. And I think of Jessie Inman, the teenage girl who fell to her death on a Halloween night two decades ago, when Ben would have been a teenager, like Jessie. I glance through the window at the widow’s walk.