The Woman in the Window(54)

We coasted around a bend. I gripped the wheel harder.

And suddenly the chasm opened up next to us, that vast pit gouged from the earth; now, under the moon, the trees below glowed like ghosts. Flakes of snow, silver and dark, tumbled into the gorge, down, down, lost forever, mariners drowned in the deep.

I lifted my foot from the gas.

In the rearview I watched Olivia as she peered through the window. Her face was shiny; she’d been crying again, in silence.

My heart cracked.

My phone buzzed.

*

Two weeks earlier we’d attended a party, Ed and I, at the house across the park, the Lord place—holiday cocktails, all glossy drinks and mistletoe sprigs. The Takedas were there, and the Grays (the Wassermen, our host told me, declined to RSVP); one of the grown Lord children put in a cameo, girlfriend in tow. And Bert’s colleagues from the bank, legions of them. The house was a war zone, a minefield, air-kisses popping at every step, cannon-fire laughter, backslaps like bombs.

Midway through the evening, midway through my fourth glass, Josie Lord approached.

“Anna!”

“Josie!”

We embraced. Her hands fluttered over my back.

“Look at your gown,” I said.

“Isn’t it?”

I didn’t know how to respond. “It is.”

“But look at you in slacks!”

I gestured to my pants. “Look at me.”

“I had to retire my shawl just a moment ago—Bert spilled his . . . oh, thank you, Anna,” as I tweezed a length of hair from her glove. “Spilled his wine all over my shoulder.”

“Bad Bert!” I sipped.

“I told him he’s in a lot of trouble later. This is the second time . . . oh, thank you, Anna,” as I pinched another filament from her dress. Ed always said I was a hands-on drunk. “Second time he’s done that to my shawl.”

“The same shawl?”

“No, no.”

Her teeth were round and off-white; I was reminded of the Weddell seal, which, I’d recently learned from a nature program, uses its fangs to clear holes in Antarctic ice fields. “Its teeth,” the narrator had pointed out, “become badly worn down.” Cue shot of seal thrashing its jaws against the snow. “Weddell seals die young,” added the narrator, ominously.

“Now, who’s been calling you all night?” asked the Weddell seal before me.

I went still. My phone had buzzed steadily throughout the evening, humming against my hip. I would slip it into my palm, drop my eyes to the screen, tap a reply with my thumb. I’d been discreet, I thought.

“It’s a work thing,” I explained.

“But what could a child possibly need at this hour?” Josie asked.

I smiled. “That’s confidential. You understand.”

“Oh, of course, of course. You’re very professional, dear.”

Yet amid the roar, even as I skimmed the surface of my brain, mouthed questions and answers, even as the wine flowed and the carols droned—even then I could think only of him.

*

The phone buzzed again.

My hands jumped from the wheel for an instant. I’d stowed the phone in the cup well between the front seats, where now it rattled against the plastic.

I looked at Ed. He was watching the phone.

Another buzz. I flicked my eyes to the mirror. Olivia was staring out the window.

Quiet. We drove on.

Buzz.

“Guess who,” Ed said.

I didn’t respond.

“Bet it’s him.”

I didn’t argue.

Ed took the phone in his hand, inspected the screen. Sighed.

We cruised down the road. We hugged a turn.

“You want to answer it?”

I couldn’t look at him. My gaze bore through the windshield. I shook my head.

“I’ll answer it, then.”

“No.” I snatched at the phone. Ed held it from me.

It kept buzzing. “I want to answer it,” Ed said. “I want to have a word with him.”

“No.” I knocked the phone from his hand. It clattered beneath my feet.

“Stop it,” cried Olivia.

I looked down, saw the screen trembling on the floor, saw his name on it.

“Anna,” Ed breathed.

I looked up. The road had vanished.

We were rocketing over the edge of the gorge. We were sailing into the dark.





54


A knock.

I’ve drifted off. I sit up, groggy. The room has gone dark; night beyond the windows.

The knock again. Downstairs. It isn’t the front door; it’s the basement.

I walk to the stairs. David almost always uses the front door when he visits. I wonder if this is one of his houseguests.

But when I flick the kitchen lights and open the basement door, it’s the man himself on the other side, looking up at me from two steps below.

“I thought maybe now I should start coming in this way,” he says.

I pause, then realize he’s trying to joke. “Fair enough.” I step aside, and he moves past me into the kitchen.

I shut the door. We eye each other. I think I know what he’s going to say. I think he’s going to tell me about Jane.

“I wanted— I want to apologize,” he begins.