“Tomorrow after I drop Hal at school,” I say, because of course I’m going. They look at one another then back to me with a mix of surprise and either horror or a bit of excitement—I can’t really tell. But they don’t get it. They don’t know that this is the first time in two years I have felt the fog of my depression shift. I can’t say I feel it lifting exactly, but something is stirring and maybe I feel something resembling hope for the first time—and if not hope, maybe just a laser focus on the possibility of getting some answers for the sudden downward spiral of my life—and it’s fueling me, giving me life right now. Nothing will stop me from seeing this through.
“I’m just gonna say something,” Andi says again.
Sasha places a gentle hand on her arm and quietly replies, “Maybe don’t.”
“I’m just saying. The facts. We wanna keep our heads clear here—be realistic. I don’t think pretending he’s not dead is the helpful thing.”
I see Sasha squeeze her eyes closed briefly and take a breath—a quiet gesture of disapproval of Andi’s usual, but not always appropriate, frankness.
“I mean, we know this—someone is messing with you. Facts.Whyis the question. Also facts. Why would some psychopath do this?”
It’s a good question. Who would have a problem with me? A widowed mother from the suburbs with not an enemy in the world I can think of. And it makes me even more sure that somehow it has to be him.
“What if it was genuinely just someone who looked a lot like him?” Sasha asks. “And maybe he genuinely left the play for some other reason and didn’t hear you call him? He didn’t run, he had an emergency and it wasn’t about you... and what if all your message-board posting just happened to reach someone who saw him since you did the scattershot approach—you said so yourself—hitting all the sites in those cities? I mean, things like this happen. I saw a photo once on social media and it was two little kids on a beach vacation somewhere. A boy and a girl who met later in life and ended up getting married and didn’t know that they were on the same beach twenty years earlier. They each realized they had almost identical old photos of that day. They were strangers who just happened to be caught in the other’s childhood vacation picture and now they have kids and live in Tampa. I mean...”
Andi blinks at Sasha like she’s lost the plot, and I give a small nod in agreement as if a point has been made, and maybe there is some sense in it, but no. It’s more than just a coincidence. It’s an energy. A feeling that something is brewing. Something is happening.
“It’s not him, Reg, come on,” Andi says.
“Who’s not him?” Tom asks playfully as he comes over, places his empty on an end table and squeezes Sasha’s shoulder from behind the couch.
“Nobody,” I say, standing, done talking about it with them at the moment and ready for a drink. As I head to the kitchen, I catch Andi asking Carson if they can please go now, which hits me the wrong way because she’s always the one who stays long after all the guests have left. She’s always the one who has one more joke and one more nightcap to share with me. But not tonight. Andi says her goodbyes and is gone a couple hours before everyone else.
Everyone is weird lately and I don’t know if it’s just my paranoia or if there’s something in the air that’s just not quite right.
After the structured games turn into kids screaming and leaping on furniture, and the game comes to an end, folks start to pluck their coats from the pile in the guest bedroom, starting the goodbye process that just leads to small groups of people moving closer to the front door and continuing conversation until they say goodbye for real, and after twenty minutes or so, the place is empty and the caterers are cleaning up.
I pay Kathy and help her collect her boxes of games and paints, and I tell Hallie to get in the bath before bed and that we can go through her presents and write thank-you notes after school tomorrow. We didn’t intend on having the partyon a Monday—we switched it last-minute when Sunday turned into a town search party—and we were lucky everyone obliged considering the circumstances and I didn’t have to crush Hallie completely. But now I’m beyond exhausted and crumple into the chair by the fireplace after the house is empty and I hear the bath running upstairs.
I’m glad I was forced to wait before responding to this strange Beatrice person, because my instinct was to ask a million follow-up questions, but now, after a little space, I think I need to show up and ask her in person—see her reaction for myself. I message back,Thank you. I’ll be there tomorrow, and then I think about cleaning up the scattering of balloons and wrapping paper that litter the rec room floor, but instead, I pour the last of a bottle of prosecco into a glass and take a swipe of cake frosting with my finger and begin to head upstairs when I see a text pop up. It’s from Janey Beck, one of the moms in Hallie’s class who’s in my book club.
Did you hear about Tia?it reads.
I text her back,No. What?I know her family is close with Ray and Tia. What has she found out?
As I wait for her reply, I hear something.
It sounds like—I don’t know exactly—like something fell. A couple of thumps. I stand and go to the kitchen and stay very still to listen. I think it’s probably a parent outside who forgot something and is coming back up the walk. A lot of people had to park practically two blocks away because the Watkinses were also having a party, a football cookout, and the street was full of parked cars.
I put down my glass and hold my heart for a moment when I realize no, it’s not outside. It has to be coming from the basement. I was sure I heard water running upstairs. But did Halliego down there for something? I move closer to the basement door off the kitchen and open it, peering down the stairs, but it’s dark.
“Hal?” I call down. Nothing. I hear the ping of a text coming through my phone over on the counter, which makes my heart leap from my chest. I take a second and breathe. And then I hover over the basement stairs and switch on the light to try to see if there’s anything down there, and then... yes, I do hear movement. Footsteps. I walk down a few steps and it’s quiet and I think I am probably imagining things. Breathe. In for four, out for eight.Don’t let yourself get likethis, I tell myself.At least wait until Hallie is asleep.
Okay, everyone just left. It’s not like I heard a bump in the night. It’s fine. All the lights are on, and the caterers are probably still loading their car outside. Lana Murray brought her Pomeranian in her purse. What if it got out? I mean, I need to practice being rational. Not everything is a threat. In for four, out for eight.
I reach the bottom stair and see all of the boxes that were sitting on the shelves along the walls turned over, rifled through, upside down, on the floor—papers and files strewn, snow globes and soccer uniforms and old Barbies dumped. What the hell happened? I don’t have more than a second to consider this.
I feel it before I hear it. A crack. A searing pain to my ear—the side of my head. I feel a scream try to escape my throat, but it doesn’t have a chance to come out before the shock and an explosion of pain take me over and the world goes dark.
Chapter Eleven
Sasha
The kids picked at Swedish meatball appetizers and birthday cake all afternoon and said they didn’t want dinner and went to their rooms. So it was not the evening Sasha had in mind when she heard the doorbell and saw it was Tom’s father, Al, holding a couple of bags of barbecue in the rain and peeking through the front glass to see if we were coming to answer the door.
He brings food over a couple nights a week most of the time in addition to his Saturday outings with Chloe—not every week, but as much as he can—and it’s sweet. He hangs out with the kids and lets Chloe paint his nails with purple glitter, and Drew teaches him how to massacre the enemy on some video game Sasha can’t begin to remember the name of. He usually lets her know before he shows up, but generally, he’sthe kind of guy who does whatever the hell he wants, so you never know.
He has so much money that it’s a wonder he doesn’t have a driver take him wherever he needs to go and hold an umbrella over his head as he makes his way up the walk. But not Al. He drives around in an old Cadillac and does tai chi and plays chess in the park and smokes cigars with some of the other retirees and still finds time to micromanage Tom at the restaurant—or at least that’s how Tom sees it.
