Open House(25)

Priya drove past the Protestant church on Main Street with its spire shooting into the white winter sky, and then the yoga studio and the new coffee shop. Her nerves made her fingers shaky against the steering wheel. She had her medication ready if she needed it, but she was trying not to take it. She’d woken up this morning feeling not quite right, and she wondered again if maybe Brad had gotten the dosage wrong.

Priya had to admit, the open house was a good place to meet. If Brad ever found out, Priya could always say she saw the gorgeous colonial with green shutters online and wanted to see it for herself. Josie and Priya had met exactly three times over the past decade, and Brad had never caught her. The meetings always seemed to happen when the weather took a turn to frigid. (Emma had disappeared in the winter, so maybe it triggered something in Josie, something she wanted to try to make amends for.) During their meetings, Josie had said many condemning things about Brad, mostly involving the emails she’d found and deleted on Emma’s computer back in college. Apparently when Emma disappeared, Josie’s biggest concern was that Emma would be in trouble for sleeping with Brad because he was a teacher, and that she’d lose her scholarship, which is why she deleted all the emails between Brad and Emma before the cops could secure her laptop.

Priya could never exactly figure out Josie’s motive for telling her these things. Was she trying to warn Priya, convinced that Brad had done it, or was she hanging it over Priya’s head for some kind of blackmail to eventually be used against her and Brad?

Still, Priya went to the illicit meetings when Josie requested them. They seemed like a kind of therapy for Josie, the way she poured out her fears that Brad had done something to her roommate and that she should have stopped it. And Josie always seemed to take solace in the fact that Priya didn’t actually believe her husband had hurt Emma. Josie listened intently as Priya went on about what a gentle person Brad was, and she always exhaled when Priya was done convincing her anew of Brad’s innocence, as though Priya was absolving Josie, too, of having done anything wrong. Priya thought it must be what priests felt like, to absolve and console with that kind of power.

Something’s changed, and I need to explain.

That’s what Josie’s text had said yesterday. But what could have possibly changed after all these years?

Priya turned right onto Carrington Road. She scanned for house numbers and tried to get her bearings, which was nearly impossible in the whiteout weather. A yellow farmhouse with black shutters and a red barn sat high on a hill, and Josie was pretty sure she could make out the number three on a stone pillar covered in snow. She hugged the right side of the road, careful not to veer onto a lawn. Carrington Road was much snowier than the interstate, and Priya’s nerves spiked as she fishtailed once, then twice, failing to steady the car. She finally righted it, and pressed the accelerator to keep climbing the hill past two more houses. She tensed when the car skidded at the top, terrified the wheels wouldn’t grip the slick pavement, imagining herself sliding back down the hill and into traffic. She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw a black Land Rover behind her. The person was driving too fast, coming too close. Priya had the childish urge to press her brakes and slow down even more. She despised people who drove carelessly in bad weather. Did they have nothing to lose?

Her foot was shaky against the accelerator. The car behind her was nearly at her bumper, and she could make out a dark-haired man and woman, the man driving and the woman gesticulating in the passenger seat. They were definitely arguing. Priya almost pulled over to let them pass, but she worried she’d get stuck on the side of the road, or that the people would crash into her car as they tried to swerve around her. “Back off!” she yelled, and even though she knew they couldn’t hear her, the man seemed to notice how much he was tailgating her and suddenly slowed.

Priya let go of a breath. The Land Rover followed her down the slippery hill and around the next bend. Priya could barely see the road, but she made out three blue balloons tied to a mailbox, and thank goodness, because the snow had erased any sign of a house number. It had to be the open house. Priya pulled carefully into the driveway, but to her dismay, so did the Land Rover. Priya’s heart raced as she followed the curve of the driveway. Why had Josie asked her to come only a few minutes before eleven? This was so foolish—Priya would never be able to talk to her alone now. She tried to breathe, tried to figure out what to do. The driveway was too narrow for her to turn the car around, even without the snow.

She kept going. The driveway was long and winding, and when the house came into view, Priya marveled at its classic beauty. She was so taken by the white house with green shutters that it took her a moment to realize that Josie’s car wasn’t the only one parked near the garage.

Priya’s heart pounded as she studied the license plate of the Highlander.

Brad was here.





EIGHTEEN

Haley

This is mortifying,” Haley said as she and Dean went up the driveway toward the open house behind the Subaru he’d been tailgating. “This woman’s going to think we’re insane.”

“Who cares?” Dean asked. It was so callous and unlike him that Haley’s mouth dropped an inch. “Sorry,” he muttered, navigating the snowy driveway. He pulled the car behind the woman’s Subaru, boxing her in.

“Perfect,” Haley said beneath her breath.

“What did you just say?” Dean asked.