* *
When I was a little girl, Nana taught me to make shortbread.
“The trick,” she said, “is not to overwork the dough. As soon as it holds together, stop mixing.”
She showed me the way the dough was supposed to look, and explained all the things you could do with it. Jam cookies, sandies, bars covered in nuts and caramel, or just plain shortbread, which is how we both liked it best, cut into wedges and warm from the oven. We made it once a week, and sometimes my mom would come in to help.
She wasn’t as domestic as Nana, and probably not as smart, but it didn’t matter because she was so full of life. She’d enter a room in midconversation, sweeping everyone in like a child playing jacks, jostling us in her hand, then tossing us aside again when she left. There was a stillness I came to associate with her absence—a tense, hopeful waiting. I often imagined her across the Sound and walking among the strange tall buildings of the Seattle skyline, all light and glass. Who would she see, where was she going? I asked her sometimes but the answers were always unsatisfying.
“To work,” she’d say. Or, more often, simply, “Out.” Sometimes she’d give my nose a playful tweak, to let me know it was okay for me to ask, and also okay for her not to tell me. I am her age now and still don’t know where she worked when Nana was alive.
Other times, my mother was definitely “in.” She’d sleep all day, lazy and gruff, not eating or bothering to shower or brush her teeth. On those days, Nana would take me to the garden and show me how to tie up the runner beans or transplant the seedlings at just the right depth. We would work peacefully together for hours—or rather, she would work and I’d assemble props for my imaginary games, transforming a basket of vegetables into a cast of characters, the peppers doing battle with the evil eggplant. The world existed in my mind—the objects were only stand-ins to mark my place in the game.
If the weather was bad, Nana and I would read. We went once a week to the library and would come back with a sackful of books about magical places and characters who were more bold and fearless than I could ever be. That was the world I came to understand: out was where things happened, but it wasn’t a place to live.
But living in can be exhausting in its own way. I’ve forced my body into an unnatural circadian rhythm, dictated as much by my fear of the dark as a perverse desire not to be conquered by it. To cope, I’ve resorted to enormous cups of tea and slices of buttery shortbread that I bake in the middle of the night and eat right from the pan, perched on the counter next to the warm oven with one foot propped on a cabinet door, pushing it forward and back as I stare into the impenetrable forest behind my house between swipes at the latest draft of my book.
I’m sitting like that now in a tank top and a pair of men’s white briefs, with a notebook in my lap and a mug of coffee on the windowsill. I’m working through a rewrite of the fifth book in my series, and I’m behind schedule. My agent, Gus Shiroff, has been sending patient emails designed to keep me on track without freaking me out—he’s a paternal sort of guy—but from their increasing frequency I know I need to get a move on. Which means lots of coffee and long hot showers.
As I finish a long passage of dialogue and settle back at my perch with a fresh cup of coffee, I see a pale shape moving at the tree line.
Because of the island’s laid-back population and the fact that the property behind my house is vacant and heavily wooded, I have never covered my back windows with anything more than sheer cotton panels, which are usually left open to take advantage of any meager beam of sunlight that filters through the trees. Until now I’ve never stopped to consider that someone might be looking into my fishbowl the way I have looked into others.
There is no doubt in my mind that the movement is that of a person. The shape is too upright, the motion too familiar. Someone is in my backyard.
I squint through my own lamp-lit reflection into the gloom outside. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust. Then I see him.
A man. In a gray hooded sweatshirt. He’s standing at the tree line, hands in his pockets. Looking right at me.
I jump, half falling off the counter. The coffee cup lands with a heavy clatter in the sink and splashes hot as blood across my chest and bare legs.
The man doesn’t move. He makes no effort to hide and he doesn’t look away. A spark of fear lights at the base of my spine and rushes upward to the nape of my neck. My mind leaps ahead as I catalog my vulnerabilities: my phone is in the bedroom, I’m in my underwear and there are large holes in the walls between us, covered only with fabric and sheets of glass. I feel like a bird in a cage.
Without taking my eyes off the figure outside, I reach behind me and draw a long, narrow knife from the butcher’s block. My fist closes around the handle. I ease down the length of the kitchen to the sliding glass door and check to see that it’s locked. My eyes dart to the clock— 4:17 a.m.—and catalog that, too, as if the time of day will explain the stranger’s presence here. Maybe he’s a neighbor. A farmer from the property next door. But this man is too still, too focused. An innocent motive would have him moving along, especially since he has to know I’m scared out of my mind.
For several seconds, we face each other through the glass and the darkness. My reflection lies between us, as though I’m looking through my own ghost at the man who will murder me. Then he takes a few steps forward, stops again at the edge of the porch light and pulls back his hood so I can see his face.
Jack Calabrese.
My breath seizes, then resumes with a whoosh. The familiarity is a comfort only for a few seconds, until I remember the cold anger in his face when the closet door opened. The huge expanse of his chest. His fist, clenched at his side, the outline of the hammer against the wall. And I was rude to him when we met at the coffee shop. He has every reason to be angry.
His face is expressionless now. He crosses the yard and mounts the steps to the back porch. The wood creaks under his weight. I feel the vibration of his feet on the floor.
He’s right there. On the other side of the glass, his head tilted a little to one side. The shadows obscure his eyes. But I feel his stare. The tips of my breasts crinkle under the thin cotton of my tank top, and I am painfully aware that I’m standing here in nothing but my underwear. A prickling heat suffuses my neck and face. My limbs seem simultaneously weightless and clumsy.
I want to tell him to get the hell off my porch before I call the police. But my lips are frozen and my throat is clamped with fear.
He reaches for the door. Pulls, finds it locked. He smiles slowly.
I back away. My fingers tighten around the handle of the knife. A chill races up my arms, followed by a coursing tremor that rattles my teeth.
“You started it,” he says. Through the glass, his voice sounds warped, as though we’re underwater. He turns and walks away, loose and easy down the steps, through a shaft of hazy window light like a still from a film noir.
The forest closes behind him and he is gone.
* * *
In my bedroom closet is an old peacoat. I reach into the pocket, take out a wedge of papers, unfold the pages and spread them out across my bed.
This is Jack Calabrese’s life story. I know all about him—what he’s done and what he might be capable of doing. He has the sort of mindset I know I can exploit.
I sit down on the bed with
