The video turns jerky as Lakshmi walks through her house and onto her porch. She centers her phone on the car parked in front of Diana’s. “The car was an older gray sedan. There wasn’t a license plate on the front bumper, so I wanted to see the back.” Lakshmi points to the screen. “Here’s when I’m spotted.”
Diana’s front door slams open, and the intruder dashes from the house, their hat pulled down, nearly covering their face. They wear a tan Carhartt jacket, buttoned up to the chin, jeans, and black sneakers. The intruder never looks at Lakshmi, not even when she runs down the steps and yells, “Stop, stop! I want to talk to you!” They jump into the car and race down the street, nearly colliding with a van pulling out of the school parking lot.
“You came home a few minutes later,” Lakshmi says. “I’m sorry I didn’t get more.”
“No apologies. This is helpful, Lax. Thank you. It was a big risk.” Diana texts the video to her number and returns Lakshmi’s phone. “So now we know the people Tom mentioned in his letter are real. They know where my hidden house key is, or was, and they’ve probably been here before. What were they searching for? That’s the question.” She again looks around the kitchen, assessing whether anything else is different, and that’s when she sees the empty space on the refrigerator.
A small square next to the ice machine is blank. Typically, Diana’s refrigerator is covered with photos, Phoebe’s drawings, and scribbledgrocery lists. In that space should be a snapshot of Tom and the kids, taken on the playground across the street.
This is when Diana understands real terror. Her heart thudding in her chest, she drops to the floor. “Where’s the photo?” She scans under the fridge and along the cabinet kickplate. “The one of Tom and the kids. Did they steal it? A photo of mykids?”
“I don’t see it,” Lakshmi says, crawling into the pantry. “Are you sure Duncan or Phoebe didn’t take it? Maybe it’s in their rooms?”
“The photo was here this morning,” Diana whispers. She smiled at the photo when she returned the milk to the fridge after preparing the kids’ breakfast. “I’m sure it was.”
That night, Diana sleeps on her living room sofa, though “sleep” is a generous interpretation of her actions. Instead of falling into oblivion, she holds Duncan’s baseball bat in her lap and stares at the front door, where she jammed a kitchen chair under the doorknob as an added safety measure. It doesn’t offer the assurance she wants, and she jumps at every creak and sigh her house makes.
After her discovery of the missing photo, Diana and Lakshmi looked for the front door key, correctly assuming that the intruder didn’t have a chance to return it to the fake stone before their hasty departure. It was nowhere to be found. That key is the main reason Diana settles onto her sofa for the night. The intruder, or anyone they’re affiliated with, could return at any time. Tonight, tomorrow, next week.
How long can someone go without sleep,Diana googles, the light from her phone illuminating the darkened room.After three or four days without sleep,the internet tells her,hallucinations may occur.“If only this was a hallucination,” Diana mutters.
The missing photo plagues her, tapping at the back of her mind like a metronome. She’d gotten so used to that photo on her refrigerator that she barely saw it; now, she struggles to recreate its image in her mind.
The photo had come in one of the condolence cards she received after Tom’s death. Andrea opened the cards for her, sorting them into piles: cards that arrived with flowers or charitable donations and required a thank-you note; cards that included a story about Tom that Diana might want to read; cards from Tom’s colleagues and clients; and cards from family and friends. Andrea sent all the necessary acknowledgments, and Diana read the cards only once before letting her sister pack them away.
Andrea separated the photo from the card it came with, hanging it on the refrigerator without explanation. Diana has no idea who sent it; all she remembers is that the photo was taken on the school playground and captured Duncan and Phoebe on the double swing, with Tom behind them, mid-push. It must have been taken during a school event and sent to her by a well-meaning parent or neighbor. She has thousands of photos of Tom and their children, yet this one haunts her. Was Phoebe laughing? Was her hair down or in a braid? Was Duncan wearing a red sweatshirt, or had it been blue? Where had she been when the photo was taken?
And why did the intruder steal it?
She accepts, for the first time since she opened that letter, that her home might not be safe. That perhaps she and her children are not safe either. She’s shocked that her husband left her so vulnerable.
“I really didn’t know him at all,” she whispers, tightening her grip on the bat and staring at her front door.
Chapter Twelve
The referee’s whistle screeches through the crowd’s chatter. He calls a foul on Alcott’s opponent, and Duncan’s team takes possession of the ball. The whistle blows again, and Jadyn, Duncan’s cocaptain, is a blur of elegant movement as he dribbles down the court, sneakers squeaking against the hardwood, the other players on his heels. Jadyn is too fast, though, and without any obstacles, he approaches the basket, shoots, and scores.
Across the stuffy gymnasium, Diana and Phoebe throw their hands in the air and cheer. Andrea and Evan join them in celebrating, stomping their feet against the bleachers. Noah jumps up, as he does every time Duncan or his teammates get near the ball, and shouts his approval. Having appointed himself Duncan’s number one fan, Noah refuses to miss any of his games, even going so far as to wear a shirt with Duncan’s number, eleven, written on the back in permanent marker. Duncan loves the attention, though he plays it cool for his cousin.
Diana is nervous, her jitteriness and agitation so palpable she feels as if she’s guzzled multiple espressos. Her nerves are not for Duncan—he’ll play his best and that’s enough—but for another reason.
It’s been three and a half weeks since she found Tom’s letter, and while she’s spent this time immersing herself in the complicated details of criminal law, studying felony and misdemeanor statutes in North Carolina and Vermont, and reading issues of theVermonterfrom the early 1980s, she’s no closer to understanding his message. Even whenshe leaves the letter at home, hidden away, Tom’s secret weighs on her, like a snake encircling her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. It’s as if the efforts she’s put into rebuilding her life are meaningless, lost to this unsettling yank into the past.
On the plus side, she’s not had another uninvited guest. Diana called the locksmith the morning after the intruder’s visit and paid extra to have him come immediately to replace every lock in the house. She also had him install bars over the basement windows. When she gave new keys to her parents, Andrea, and Evan, electing not to hide a spare in the backyard, she explained that she’d read an article advising widows to change their locks, a “best practice” for living alone, and they all nodded sympathetically. Only Lakshmi accepted the new key with concern etched across her face.
“If you still won’t go to the police, how about getting an alarm system?” she asked. “I’ll look into it for you.”
Diana shook her head. “The new locks should be enough.”
“New locks are not enough, and you know it,” Lakshmi said, clearly frustrated. “Stop being stubborn about this. Think about your kids. You need to do more. If an alarm system freaks you out, how about one of those doorbell cameras? I’ll order one for you and have Ramesh install it.” Lakshmi put her hand on Diana’s shoulder. “Say yes, if for no other reason than it will makemefeel better. And I know you don’t want to stress me out.”
Diana gave in then, and Lakshmi had the new doorbell installed by the next afternoon.
These extra precautions haven’t helped to alleviate Diana’s worries. She’s taken to looking over her shoulder when she walks down Alcott’s Main Street, sleeping with Duncan’s baseball bat next to her in bed, triple-checking that the doors and windows are locked before bed each night, and googling every call she receives on her landline. She checks the answering machine each evening, and the hang-ups have continued. So far, they’ve all come up as Unknown.
The letter is weighing on Duncan, too. He hasn’t mentioned it since their talk on the basketball court, but this morning, Diana found a photo of Duncan and Tom in the trash, ripped into pieces. The photo of the two of them on a beautiful spring afternoon as they battled it out in a competitive game of H-O-R-S-E, their foreheads puckered in concentration, had been pinned to the bulletin board over his desk. When she asked him about it, he stalked off with a heartbroken look on his face. She saved the pieces in her jewelry box for the day when she has answers for her son.
Down below on the court, Duncan jumps into the air and sends the basketball into a perfect arc. The ball falls through the net, and the gym vibrates with chants of “Alcott! Alcott!”
