When the Lights Go Out(48)

The deer, I’ll blame, when Aaron asks what happened to the flowers. I’ll say that the deer have had their way with the hollyhocks, eating them to the quick.

And he’ll be more upset about this than he is our lack of a baby.

After all our hard work.

“Such a shame,” he’ll say, before waging a war against the innocent deer.





jessie

I take the Brown Line back to the carriage home, walking the last couple of blocks from the station at Paulina. I feel lost without my bike. I don’t have my bike, Old Faithful, because I left it outside the Art Institute, tethered to some sort of loopy bike rack, when I walked to Liam’s, chasing after the mystery man.

It’s dark inside by the time I arrive, night falling quickly. I close the door behind me and jiggle the handle a couple of times to be sure it’s closed tight. I’m in a trance, thinking about little else but the dead Jessica Sloane. The one who is three years old. The one who is me but not me all at the same time. Lines from the newspaper article run through my mind, committed to memory already.

A four-lane highway with a speed limit of just twenty-five.

The road twisted through the small seaside town.

The driver rounded a bend at nearly twice that speed.

Every time I close my eyes I see her face.

I have only a vague recollection of riding the elevator downstairs; of pushing my way through the turnstile doors of Liam’s apartment building; of walking to the Merchandise Mart to catch the train with him at my side. He’d offered to cover the cost of a cab for me but I said no.

Still, he walked me there, to the Merchandise Mart, and paid to stand on the platform beside me, waiting until the Brown Line came. And now that I look, I see his jacket draped over me, keeping me warm. He must’ve put it there, but that I don’t remember.

I turn and walk up the carriage house’s stairway, a rickety old thing with steps that are a bit concave, the edges worn away. The steps sink at their center. They squeak. The tread pitches downward from a century’s worth of weight, and I cling to the railing so I don’t fall.

When I get to the top I have to fight for breath. The steepness of the steps isn’t to blame, nor for once my overwhelming fatigue.

What knocks the wind from my lungs is something else entirely.

Because as my feet hit the wooden floorboards and my eyes size up the open rooms, I see that the white window curtains I’d pulled shut before I left, so that no one could see inside while I was gone—every single one of them is open wide.

It’s instinctive, the way the blood coagulates inside me. It becomes thick and gooey so that I can’t move.

Someone was here.

My gut feeling is to hide. There’s a closet nearby, a catchall for coats and shoes. My eyes go to it. I could hide. I could bury myself in a dark nothingness and cower on the floor in fear. Because whoever opened the blinds might still be here. Inside the old home.

I listen for strange noises. For calculated footfalls coming for me. For the sound of restrained breaths, slow, repressed and controlled unlike mine. I listen for the groan of floorboards, but the only sound I hear is that of my own heartbeat.

I don’t hide.

I’ve never been a particularly courageous person. Mom always said to face my fears, to take matters into my own hands, to fight for what was mine. And so I make my way slowly through the home, searching for signs of life.

Much of the carriage house is easy to see from where I stand. But then there are those places I can’t see. An upstairs closet, the bathroom, under the eaves of the pitched roof where shadows make it hard to see. All of that is up another set of stairs, on the third floor of the home.

I ascend those steps on tiptoes, the arches of my feet beginning to burn. Convinced that if I walk on tiptoes, the intruder won’t hear me, that he or she won’t know that I am here.

Upstairs, I see a figure hunkered down beneath the sloped ceiling and my breath leaves me. It’s hidden to the side of the mattress, trying to hold still and yet moving in a gentle rhythm.

What I see is a man on bent knee, crouched down, waiting to lunge at me as I reach the top of the staircase.

I gasp aloud, attempting to brace for impact. But instead I lose balance, slipping backward on the top step and sliding downward the eight-or nine-inch rise to the step below. I catch myself there, gripping tightly to the stairwell banister before I plunge down an entire flight of stairs, head over heels over head. Breaking my neck.

My heart pounds hard.

I cling to the banister and realize that no one has lunged at me.

And this time, when I look again, there’s no one there.

It’s just the shadow of a tree streaming in through an open window. The leaves are hair, the branches arms and legs. The gentle rhythm, the movement of wind. No one is there.

I turn to make my way to the bathroom. It’s a small room, but as I come to it, I take note: the door isn’t pressed flush against the wall as it should be. Behind the open door, there is enough space for a body to hide.

I have to muster every ounce of courage I have to go on. It isn’t easy. My feet don’t want to move, but they do. It’s slow, deliberate.

When I reach the bathroom door, I don’t step inside. I don’t look behind the door.

Rather my movements are sudden and abrupt, an impulse. I kick the door as hard as I can, where it ricochets off the wall, the rubber stopper running headfirst into the baseboard, not bumping into a person first. Because there’s nobody there to slow it down. There’s nobody there at all.