Hidden (Nicole Jones #1)(3)

I can see outside now. I can see the stranger’s face. But the problem is he’s not a stranger after all.





TWO


Missing women are all the media rage. It seemed to have started with Laci Peterson and morphed into Natalee Holloway in Antigua or Aruba or Antilles, one of those ‘A’ islands. The Runaway Bride wasn’t missing too long, and the poor thing looked like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket – in more ways than one. That Elizabeth Smart was still a child when she went missing. Too bad she wasn’t when she finally turned up.

All of these women were victims of men; isn’t that such a cliché?

I watch these cases picked apart on the twenty-four-hour news channels. Maybe I would’ve been one of them, too, but when I disappeared it wasn’t like those other women. I was a story that faded as the days and weeks went on, one of those cold cases that might show up in the papers fifteen years later. By then everyone would have forgotten about it. If it weren’t for that FBI agent, who took it personally that I managed to lose him.

Shame that he’d found me.

Steve drops me off at my house, helps me get my bike up on the porch before giving me a kiss on the cheek.

‘Good night,’ he says, and even though it’s dark, I can see him smile.

‘Don’t stay up too late hooking up that new TV,’ I say.

‘What do you mean? It’s already hooked up.’ He laughs as he heads back to the Explorer. He pauses at the door, just before getting in. ‘You could come over and watch, if you want.’

This is as much for him as it is for me. I used to think he asked me over all the time because he worried about me being lonely, but it’s him. Since Dotty died, he’s the lonely one. But tonight I can’t. I need to be alone.

‘Thanks anyway. I’m beat,’ I say, my keys in my hand.

‘Suit yourself. See you tomorrow,’ Steve says, climbing into the SUV.

I wait until the engine roars, he puts it in gear and I watch its back end disappear down the road, toward the llamas. In my head, I map out his journey home as I would one of my tours. He lives over near the Great Salt Pond, which once upon a time was the island’s only entrance point – before Old Harbor and the ferry. A little historical tidbit I offer on my tour.

I stick the key in the lock and open my door, stepping into the little mudroom off the kitchen on the side of the house. I slip off my sneakers, my socks allowing me to move quietly into the silence. I flip a switch, and the light over the stove comes on, a dim glow that bathes the room in yellow. I’ve changed all my light bulbs over to those energy-saving ones. I want to get solar panels for hot water, but the cost’s too prohibitive. I do have a wood stove, which heats the whole house, except on especially gusty nights when the cold air creeps through the cracks in the old window frames, its frigid fingers touching every surface.

The clock tells me it’s still early, not even nine o’clock. I put on a kettle of water to boil and stick a teabag in a mug that I take from the cupboard. While the water begins to heat up, I go into the bedroom, taking off my jeans, sweater, and long-sleeved T-shirt, replacing them with flannel pajamas and a fleece bathrobe. Maybe sometime in June I’ll put the flannel and fleece away and take out the cotton.

I still haven’t turned on any light except the one in the kitchen. I tell myself it’s because I like the cozy feel, but I know in my gut that I’m afraid that black car followed me here, that he knows where I am and is just waiting for the right moment.

I go into the bathroom and close the door, trapping the light inside. I stare at my reflection in the mirror. If he shows a picture of that long-ago woman to anyone, will they recognize me? I trace the lines in my face near my eyes, around my mouth. When did these show up? The glare of the bulb in the lenses of my glasses hides my eyes, so I take them off. The lashes are black with mascara. I pick up a cloth and wash my face with soap, wiping away the day but not the years. There is even more gray in my hair than I thought, leaning closer to take in the short curls, the wisp of bangs covering a high forehead.

I have not seen that younger face in so long. I cannot say for sure that I won’t be recognized, or that I will.

The TV lends its own blue film to the darkness that envelops my bedroom. I don’t keep a TV in the living room, only here, where I can pull the covers up and prop myself up on my soft, goose-down pillows. They are my only luxury, a piece of my past I cannot let go of no matter how much I have tried. My green tea is on the nightstand, the doors are locked, I am alone watching a movie about a boy who was taken hostage and held for ransom. It is based on a true story.

I decide the next morning while making my oatmeal that I have to go out today. I woke up in the night wondering if I had imagined him. It was possible. At first, I thought I saw him everywhere, but soon his numbers diminished to nothing. When I close my eyes and force myself to see that face from last night again, it’s not the young, beautiful man I remembered. This man was handsome but older, his hair receding, his jaw settling into a looser jowl, his middle thicker. He was a man I might notice at Club Soda and play a round of pool with after a few drinks. I try to conjure what had been familiar about him: his stance, the way he held his head, his back stiff and straight, his arms at his sides.

The image plays over and over in my head like a movie marathon. With each showing, however, he becomes more and more a stranger. Like any other tourist wanting a getaway before the crowds show up.