I look away from Isla and to the ceiling when I hear the telltale sounds of footsteps. There’s a thud directly above me before they start their march in the opposite direction. The house is noisy tonight.
The fire comes alive in front of me and I stand with a sigh. “I hit Henry,” I tell my great-great-great-great-grandmother. “Like right in the face and I kicked him too. Right in front of everyone.” I wrap my arms around myself as I talk and then groan when I remember there hadn’t just been Henry. There had been another man too. A tall blond man with pale blue eyes so light I’d thought they were silver at first until the light showed their color. He’d been handsome, strong jaw, broad shoulders, the kind of handsome I knew the girls in town would love to see on their morning coffee run.
And. I. Shoved. Him.
I wince at the thought. Whoever he was, he was big and immovable too. I’d know after putting hands on him, right? He hadn't moved a hair though which was saying something. I could pack a punch. Just ask, poor Henry.
I bite my lip and look up at my great-great-great-great-grandmother again. She gives me a disapproving look like she knows all about the handsome man I tried to shove but I don’t tell her about him. I keep that to myself and warm myself by the fire. I stand there for a few minutes in companionable silence with Isla before I decide I should get dinner going.
“I’ll be back,” I tell her softly on my way out. She doesn’t answer but that’s okay. With the way I’m shunned in town, I’m used to the silence. I walk out of the living room and down the hallway. The kitchen is back through the foyer and on the right. When I was younger, I slept on the first floor but I don’t anymore. I’ve been in the turret bedroom for just over two years now. On my way to the kitchen I check the parlour and dining room doors to make sure they're locked up tight. I pull on bothhandles just to double check. The glass knobs are cool to the touch when I test them to make sure the rooms are locked as they should be. When I’m satisfied with both rooms, I head into the kitchen to get started on dinner.
I turn on the old radio that’s sat on the kitchen window since my granny put it there. The mellow sound of oldies fills the room and I relax. I haven’t changed the station from the one she loved. 105.7 The Call, the local Vesper Point radio station. It’s nothing but oldies and weather reports with a few catty segments when the hosts are feeling spry enough to talk shit about their bocce ball club, or whatever it is they’re into. Last month it was pickleball drama.
I warm up the oven and take out the leftover roast chicken and veggies I made last night. If I’m not microwaving them then I can convince myself that I’m making dinner and not eating sad, lonely, leftovers alone. I’ve just gotten the food in the oven and set the timer when I see a light come on next door.
“Who is that?” I move away from the oven and to the sink where I can get a better look. The Owens live next door, or they did. They moved out of town last summer when the elder Mrs. Owen took a fall and her children moved her into an assisted living home in Seattle. I’d heard about the airbnb Mrs. Owen’s kids had turned the place into when the town nearly had a bitch fit about it, especially inthis neighborhood.Mrs. Owen had been nice to me. When the other neighbors pretended they didn’t see me in town, she always came up to hug me and talk like everything was just peachy. She’d been friends with my granny. I’d spent a lot of afternoons running between the houses and climbing up and down the ladder us grandkids put there to cross the fence. That ladder had stayed there until two years ago when I stopped being Maris and became the bitch everyone stared at. It’s not them that watches now, it’s me.
Whoever is inside the house is moving quickly. I watch as lights come on one by one. First on the second floor and then the first. Weird. Why did they start at the top, I wonder. While I’m watching, I see another strange thing. Now that the lights are on the curtains start to close. Not the second floor though, those stay open but the rest get shuttered right up.
It’s when the guest in Mrs. Owen’s house gets to their kitchen that I get a clear look at them.
It’s the man from The Perky Perch.
My eyes bug out of my head, I know they do when I see it’s him. Of course, I tried to attack the man that’s now my neighbor.
“Jesus, fucking christ,” I growl and brace my hands on the farmhouse sink. “Of all the damn houses in town.” He couldn’t just be moving on, where my little freak out would just be a weird story he told his friends back home, could he?No.The answer was fucking no because the universe hated me.
I let out an internal existential scream of frustration, or maybe it’s an out loud one because the second I do the man looks at me. Even from the half acre or so of well-maintained lawn that separates us, I know he’s looking at me. He tilts his head and takes a step closer to the window to get a better look at me where I’m hunched over the sink staring at him. No doubt about it. He’s watching me. Kinda hard to miss when he raises his hand and waves a second later.
“Oh shit,” I whisper-scream and hit the ground to hide from him. “Who is he?” I scoot down so I can crawl away from the counter but then stop when I realize the further away from the counter I get the more he can see me. I growl in frustration and crawl back to the counter cabinet. There I sit down and sigh, head pressed to my knees.
“I’ll just wait him out,” I tell myself. It’s a good plan, at least it is until the oven timer goes off and I have to get up. If I don't, I'm going to burn my dinner and set off a fire alarm. Even if hedidn’t see me on account of my hiding, he’d hear the fire alarm on a quiet night like this. I weigh the embarrassment from each scenario for a minute before I decide that it's worth getting up to get my food from the oven. I get up slowly, eyes just peeking over the sink to the window to see if I can see him.
Sure enough. He’s there but he’s not watching me or waving anymore. He’s working on his own meal, or getting ready to. He’s got bags of groceries up on the table and counters and is putting them away. He’s busy at the cabinets, back turned to me and I seize the opportunity to rush to the oven and get my food out. If I’m quick he won’t see me and even if he does, I’m deadset on not lifting my head to look at him.
I burn my finger dishing up my food but I don’t stop. I grab silverware and hesitate when it comes to something to drink. I should have water. I really should but after the day I’ve had? Nah, I need something stronger. I open a cabinet and grab one of the bottles of cheap red wine I keep there. They’re not nice enough for the wine fridge or the small cellar area we have for actual vintages worth storing. The bottle I have is a screw top that I got on discount at the grocery store. I tuck the bottle under my arm and pick up my plate and silverware to leave the room, but not before I steal a glance out the window at my neighbor.
He’s there, putting away groceries. His back is still to me. He never even turned around. I relax a little knowing he didn’t see me rushing around the kitchen after I hit the ground like a crazy person and finally leave the kitchen to have dinner and wine with Isla.
Four
JULIAN
Vesper Point Memorial Hospital
Founded in 1901 in memory of the brave souls who lost their lives in the Storm of the Century of 1900. May lost souls find rest and their families peace within these walls.
In service, there is strength.
Erected by the Vesper Point Historical Society, 1973
The plaque shines bright in the morning sun. I’m surprised to see it given the overcast nature the coast has, but it’s a nice little break in the gloom. I sip my coffee and turn to look out from the hospital to the cliff drop off just a few hundred yards away. The sea rages beneath and I can smell the salt spray and hear the caw of the gulls as they glide on the wind overhead.
A cliff drop off isn’t the safest choice of location when it comes to a hospital but the view can’t be beat. The ocean stretches out in front of me, the waves an infinity of motion that blends right into the horizon the longer that I watch it. I sip my coffee and stand there for a minute longer, enjoying the quiet of the morning. It's my first day at Vesper Point Memorial and I’m in no rush to meet the locals. In a place as quiet as this, I’ll haveto be on my best behavior. There won’t be any getting away with mistakes or sloppiness feeding. In Seattle, it was easy, it wasn’t unusual for patients to never come back given the transient nature of the city.
Seattle was vibrant, raw and alive in a way that made people move. Sometimes to it and sometimes away. A neighborhood could change in the blink of an eye. It was easy to lose people, you came to expect it, the loss, the longer you lived in the city, so why would it be any different when it came to patients in the city’s busiest hospital? I’d been spoiled at Harborview Medical Center, but that was really just another way of saying that I had gotten lazy. So much so that my maker was able to fuck my shit up and I barely locked it down before I lost everything.
I grip the paper cup I got from The Perky Perch a little tighter when I think of Rosanna. Coffee sloshes out of the top and gets on my hand. I sigh and flick it off before I take another scalding sip of my morning coffee to calm the fuck down. I’m fine. I’m not going to lose my shit about having to lay low in a backwater town where I have to watch my every fucking step in an effort to go unnoticed.
