I hear Will, Otto, Tate and Imogen moving about in the house. From upstairs I hear ordinary, everyday conversations ensue about ham-and-cheese sandwiches and history tests. Their words come to me through the floor vents. Tate tosses out a riddle, and by God, it’s Imogen who answers it, Imogen who knows that in the one-story blue house where everything is blue—blue walls, blue floor, blue desk and chairs—the stairs are not blue because there are no stairs.
“How did you know?” Tate asks her.
“I just knew.”
“That’s a good one, Tater Tot,” Will declares, his nickname for Tate, as he tells him to find his backpack before they’re late for school.
The wind outside is ferocious. It flogs the clapboard siding, threatening to tear it right off the house. It’s cold in the house now, the kind of cold that gets under the skin. I can’t warm up.
“Let’s get going, guys,” Will calls, and I rise from the bed and stand at the door, listening as Tate noses around the coat closet for his hat and boots. I hear Imogen’s voice in the foyer with them. She is riding along to the ferry with them, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s only the weather’s doing, but I can’t help but notice the irony of it. She’ll let Will drive her to the ferry, but not me.
Suddenly all I hear is feet, like the rush of animals, before the front door opens and then closes again, and the house is nearly still. The only sounds are the whistling of the furnace, the rush of water through pipes, the wind scourging the outside of our home.
It’s only after they’re gone that I rise from bed and leave the room. I’ve only just stepped into the hallway when something catches my eye. Two things actually, though it’s the doll’s marble-like eyes that get my attention first. It’s the same doll of Tate’s that I found in the foyer the other day, the one he carried roughly to his room at Will’s request.
She’s perched at the edge of the hallway where the wooden floor meets the wall. She sits nicely on her bum, wearing floral leggings and a knit print. Her frizzy hair lies over her shoulders in two neat braids, hands set in her lap. Someone has found her missing shoe.
Beside the doll’s feet is a pencil and paper. I go to it, reaching for the scrap of paper.
I brace myself, knowing what it is before I look. I turn the paper over in my hand, seeing exactly what I expected to see on the other side. The same crying, dismembered body as on the drawings I found in the attic. Beside the dismembered body, an angry woman clutches a knife. Charcoal blobs fill in the excess white space, tears or blood, though I don’t know which. Maybe both.
I wonder if these were here early this morning when I carried the laundry down. But it was dark then; I wouldn’t have seen if they were. And on the way back up, I was nauseous, running to the toilet, barely getting there in time. I wouldn’t have noticed them then either.
I wonder if Will saw these things before he left. But the doll he’ll have assumed was Tate’s and the drawings were upside down. He wouldn’t have seen the content.
These things terrify me, because I think that if they do belong to Otto, he is regressing. It’s a defense mechanism, a way to cope. Taking on childish behavior to avoid facing a problem head-on. My own therapist used to say this about me, telling me I acted like a child at times when I didn’t want to tackle adult issues in my life. Perhaps Otto is doing the very same thing. But why? On the surface he seems happy enough. But he’s the quiet type; I never know what’s going on inside his mind.
I think back on that therapist of mine. I was never very fond of her. I didn’t like the way she made me feel silly and small, the way she denigrated me when I expressed my feelings. It wasn’t just that. She also confused me with other patients.
Once I sank down into her leather swivel armchair and crossed my legs, took a sip of the water she always left on the table for me. She asked what had been happening lately, in that way she always did.Tell me what’s been happening.Before I could reply, she began to counsel me on how to sever ties with some married man I was seeing, though I wasn’t seeing a married man. I was married already. To Will.
I blanched in embarrassment for her other client, the one whose secrets she’d just shared.
There is no married man,I explained.
She asked,No? You broke it off already?
There was never a married man.
I stopped seeing her soon after.
Otto had a therapist back in Chicago. We swore we’d pick up the therapy when we moved to Maine. We never did. But I think it’s time we do.
I step past the doll. I go downstairs. I take the drawing with me.
A plate of French toast sits on the kitchen counter. That and a pot of coffee, keeping hot on the coffee maker’s warming plate. I help myself to the coffee but I can’t bring myself to eat a thing. As I lift the mug to my lips, my hands tremble, casting waves across the coffee.
Beside the plate of French toast is a note.Feel better, it reads, with Will’s signature closing, the ever-presentXo. He’s set my pills out for me. I leave them where they are, not wanting to take them until I’ve gotten some food inside of me.
Out the kitchen window, I see the dogs. Will must have let them outside before he left, which is fine. They’re snow dogs—huskies—in their element in weather like this. It’d be nearly impossible to get them back in before they’re ready to come.
In the backyard, the wind beats through the naked trees, making their limbs bend. It’s snowing, a heavy snow. I hadn’t expected so much. I’m surprised that school wasn’t canceled today. But I’m also grateful for it because I need this time alone.
The snow doesn’t fall vertically, because of the wind. It falls sideways instead, with abandon, forging snowdrifts across the yard. The sill of the kitchen window begins to collect with snow, burying me alive inside. I feel the weight of it on my chest. It’s harder to breathe.
I take a careful sip of the coffee, noticing that the pendant necklace I left on the counter early this morning is gone. I search the floor, behind the canisters, the junk drawer where we keep random things. The necklace is nowhere. Someone has taken it. I picture it lying there how I left it, the dainty chain coiled into a mound with theMon top.
The fact that it’s now missing only adds to my suspicion. This morning while I lay in bed, the four of them—Will, Otto, Tate and Imogen—were in the kitchen together. It would have been so easy for Imogen to slip that necklace from the countertop when no one was looking. I consider the threatening notes Morgan received. Would Imogen have sent those? Why, I wonder at first, and then just as quickly: Why not? I think of the way Imogen treats me. The way she scares me. If she could do this to me, she could just as easily do it to Morgan.
