The Other Mrs.(29)

I bring it out of the closet. I gently unfold it.

Please don’t be mad is scrawled on the page, the ink pale like maybe the sweatshirt was run through the washing machine with it. But it’s there and visible, written in print, far more masculine than my own spidery script, which leads me to believe it was written by a man’s hand, which I could have guessed anyway from the content of the note. You know as well as I do how hard this is for me. It’s nothing you did. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. But I can’t keep living this double life.

From downstairs, the front door suddenly opens. The door slams closed.

Imogen is home.

Inside my chest, my heart begins to hammer.

Will’s voice greets her, more cordial than I wish he would be. He asks if she’s hungry, if she wants him to warm her up some dinner—which goes against the rules we laid down for her, that she eats dinner with us or she doesn’t eat our dinner at all. I wish Will wouldn’t be so obliging, but it’s the way Will is, always eager to please. Imogen’s replies are short, brute—no, no—as her voice drifts toward the steps.

I react, moving quickly. I refold the note and jam it back into the sweatshirt pocket, tousling the clothes into place. I pull the string light and slide the door closed, hurrying from the room, remembering at the last minute to turn the bedroom light off, to pull the door closed just so, as it was when I found it, open a smidge.

I don’t have time to double-check that everything is as I found it. I pray that it is.

Our paths cross in the stairwell and I offer a tight smile but say nothing.



MOUSE


Once upon a time there was an old house. Everything about the house was old: the windows, the appliances, and especially the steps in the house were old. Because anytime anyone walked on them, they groaned like old people sometimes groan.

Mouse wasn’t sure why the steps did that. She knew a lot of things, but she didn’t know anything about how treads and risers rubbed together, grinding against nails and screws on the other side, somewhere below the steps where she couldn’t see. All she knew was that the steps made a noise, all of them did, but especially the last step, which made the most noise of all.

Mouse thought she knew something about those steps that no one else did. She thought it hurt for them to be stepped on, and that was the reason they groaned and pulled back from underfoot whenever she did—though Mouse only weighed forty-six pounds and couldn’t hurt a fly if she tried.

It made Mouse think of the old people across the street, the ones who moved like everything hurt, who groaned just like the stairs sometimes groaned.

Mouse was sensitive in a way other people weren’t. It worried her to walk on that last stair. And so, just as she was careful not to step on caterpillars and roly-polies when she walked down the street, Mouse took extra care to step over that last tread, though she was a little girl and her stride was not wide.

Her father tried to fix the stairs. He was always getting worked up about them, swearing under his breath about the incessant, infuriating squeak.

Then why don’t you just step over it? the girl asked her father because Mouse’s father was a tall man, his stride much wider than hers. He could have easily walked right over that last stair without putting weight on it. But he was also an impatient man, the kind who always wanted things just so.

Her father wasn’t cut out for doing chores around the house. He was much better suited for sitting behind a desk, drinking coffee, jabbering into the phone. Mouse would sit on the other side of the door when he did that and listen. She wasn’t allowed to interrupt, but if she stayed real quiet, she could hear what he had to say, the way his voice changed when he was on that phone with a customer.

Mouse’s father was a handsome man. He had hair that was a dark chestnut brown. His eyes were big, round, always watching. He was quiet most of the time, except for when he walked, because he was a big man and his footsteps were heavy. Mouse could hear him coming from a mile away.

He was a good father. He took Mouse outside and played catch with her. He taught her things about bird nests and how the rabbits hid their babies in holes in the ground. Mouse’s father always knew where they were, and he’d go to the holes, lift up the clumps of grass and fur on top, and let Mouse take a peek.

One day, when he’d had enough of that squeaky stair, Mouse’s father gathered his toolbox from the garage and climbed the steps. With a hammer, he drove nails into the tread, clamping it down to the wood on the other side. Then he grabbed a handful of finishing nails. He tapped them into the tread, reattaching it to the riser beneath.

He stood back proudly to examine his handiwork.

But Mouse’s father had never been much of a handyman.

He should have known that no matter what he did, he would never be able to fix the step. Because even after all his hard work, the stair continued to make noise.

In time, Mouse came to depend on that sound. She would lie in bed, staring up at the light that hung from her ceiling, heart beating hard, unable to sleep.

There she would listen for that last step to bellow out a warning for her, letting her know someone was coming up the stairs for her room, giving her a head start to hide.



SADIE


I watch from bed as Will changes out of his clothes and into a pair of pajama pants, dropping his clothes into the hamper on the floor. He stands for a second at the window, looking out onto the street beneath.