The Woman in the Window(72)

“Dr. Fox,” he says, jolly. “That you?”

“Someone came into my house at two o’clock this morning.”

“Hold on.” I hear him pass the phone across his face. “Someone was in your house?”

“At two this morning.”

“Why didn’t you report it earlier?”

“Because I was asleep at the time.”

His voice warms. He thinks he’s got me. “Then how do you know someone was in your house?”

“Because he took a picture and emailed it to me.”

A pause. “A picture of what?”

“A picture of me. Sleeping.”

When he speaks again, he sounds closer. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”

“And—now, I don’t want to scare you . . .”

“I’m already scared.”

“Are you sure the house is empty now?”

I go still. This hadn’t occurred to me.

“Dr. Fox? Anna?”

“Yes.” Surely there’s no one here. Surely I would know by now.

“Can you—are you able to go outside?”

I nearly laugh. Instead I just breathe “No.”

“Okay. Just—stay there. Don’t—just stay there. Do you want me to stay on the line with you?”

“I want you to come here.”

“We’re coming.” We’re. So Norelli will be with him. Good—I want her here for this. Because this is real. This is undeniable.

Little is still talking, his breath billowing into the phone. “What I’d like for you to do, Anna? Is get to the front door. In case you need to leave. We can be there real soon, just a few minutes, but in case you need to leave . . .”

I look at the hall door, move toward it.

“We’re in the car now. There real soon.”

I nod, slowly, watching the door draw closer.

“You seen any movies lately, Dr. Fox?”

I can’t bring myself to open it. Can’t set foot in that twilight zone. I shake my head. My hair brushes against my cheeks.

“Any of your old thrillers?”

I shake my head again, start to tell him no, when I realize I’m still cradling the wineglass in my fingers. Intruder or not—and I don’t think there is—I won’t answer the door like this. I need to get rid of it.

But my hand is shaking, and now wine slops onto the front of my robe, staining it blood-red, right above the heart. It looks like a wound.

Little is still chattering in my ear—“Anna? You okay there?”—as I return to the kitchen, phone pressed to my temple, and place the glass in the sink.

“. . . everything okay?” Little asks.

“Fine,” I tell him. I flip the tap, shed my robe, push it under running water as I stand there in my T-shirt and sweatpants. The wine stain boils beneath the flow, bleeding, thinning, going a soft pink. I squeeze it, my fingers blanching in the cold.

“You able to get to the front door?”

“Yes.”

Off with the tap. I pull the robe from the sink and wring it.

“Okay. Stay there.”

Shaking the robe dry, I see that I’m out of paper towels—the spindle stands naked. I reach for the linen drawer, slide it open. And inside, atop a stack of folded napkins, I see myself again.

Not deep asleep in close-up, not half-baked into a pillow, but upright, beaming, my hair swept back, my eyes bright and keen—a likeness in paper and ink.

A nifty trick, I’d said.

A Jane Russell original, she’d said.

And then she’d signed it.





70


The paper twitches in my hand. I look at the signature slashed in the corner.

I’d almost doubted it. I’d almost doubted her. Yet here it is, a souvenir from that vanished night. A memento. Memento mori. Remember that you have to die.

Remember.

And I do: I remember the chess and the chocolate; I remember the cigarettes, the wine, the tour of the house. Most of all, I remember Jane, braying and boozing, in living color; her silver fillings; the way she leaned into the window as she took in her house—Quite a place, she’d murmured.

She was here.

“We’re almost with you,” Little is saying.

“I’ve got—” I clear my throat. “I’ve got—”

He interrupts me. “We’re turning onto . . .”

But I don’t hear where they are, because through the window I’m watching Ethan exit his front door. He must have been inside the whole time. I’d thrown skipping-stone glances at his house for an hour, my eyes leaping from kitchen to parlor to bedroom; I don’t know how I missed him.

“Anna?” Little’s voice sounds tiny, shrunken. I look down, see the phone in my hand, by my hip; see the robe pooled at my feet. Then I clap the phone onto the counter and set the picture next to the sink. I rap on the glass, hard.

“Anna?” Little calls again. I ignore him.

I rap harder still. Ethan has swerved onto the sidewalk now, heading toward my house. Yes.

I know what I have to do.

My fingers grip the window sash. I tense them, drum them, flex them. Screw my eyes shut. And lift.