he sleeps, his own dreams uninterrupted by thoughts of murder and death, unlike mine. I wonder what he dreams of. Maybe puppy dogs and ice cream.
I wonder what Tate knows of death. I wonder what I knew of death when I was seven years old, if I knew much of anything.
I move on to Otto’s room. There’s a roof outside Otto’s window, a single-story slate roof that hangs over the front porch. A series of climbable columns hold it upright. Getting in or out wouldn’t be such a difficult task in the middle of the night.
My feet instinctively pick up pace as I cross the hall, telling myself Otto is safe, that certainly an intruder wouldn’t climb to the second floor to get in. But in that moment, I can’t be so sure. I turn the handle and press the door silently open, terrified of what I’ll find on the other side. The window open, the bed empty. But it’s not the case. Otto is here. Otto is fine.
I stand in the doorway, watching for a while. I take a step closer for a better look, holding my breath so I don’t wake him. He looks peaceful, though his blanket has been kicked to the end of the bed and his pillow tossed to the floor. His head lies flat on the mattress. I reach for the blanket and draw it over him, remembering when he was young and would ask me to sleep with him. When I did, he’d toss a heavy arm across my neck and hold me that way, not letting go the entire night. He’s grown up too fast. I wish for it back.
I go to Imogen’s room next. I set my hand on the handle and sluggishly turn, careful not to make any noise. But the handle doesn’t turn. The door is locked from the inside. I can’t check on her.
I turn away from the door and inch down the stairs. The dogs follow on my heels, but I move far too slowly for their liking. At some point, they bypass me and dash down the rest of the steps, cutting through the foyer for the back door. Their nails click-clack on the wooden floors like typewriter keys.
I pause before the front door and glance out the sidelight window. From this angle, I catch a glimpse of the Baineses’ house. There’s activity going on even at this late hour. Light floods the inside of it, a handful of people milling about inside. Police on a quest. I wonder what they’ll find.
The dogs whine at me from the kitchen, stealing my attention away from the window. They want to go outside. I follow them, opening the sliding glass door, and they go rushing out. They make a beeline for the corner of the yard, where they’ve recently begun digging divots in the grass. The incessant digging has become their latest compulsion and also my pet peeve. I clap my hands together to get them to stop.
I brew myself a cup of tea and sit down at the kitchen table. I look around for things to do. There’s no point in going back to bed because I know I won’t sleep. There’s nothing worse than lying in bed, restless, worrying about things I can’t do anything about.
On the edge of the table sits a book Will has been reading, a true crime novel with a bookmark thrust in the center of it.
I take the book into the living room, turn on a lamp and settle myself on Alice’s marigold sofa to read. I spread an afghan over my lap. I open the book. By accident Will’s bookmark comes tumbling out, falling to the floor beside my feet.
“Shit,” I say, reaching down for the bookmark, feeling guilty that I’ve lost Will’s page.
But the guilt only lasts so long before it’s replaced with something else. Jealousy? Anger? Empathy? Or maybe surprise. Because the bookmark isn’t the only thing that’s fallen out of the pages of the book. Because there’s also a photo of Erin, Will’s first fiancée, the woman he was supposed to marry instead of me.
My gasp is audible. My hand comes to a stop inches above her face, my heart hastening.
Why is Will hiding a photograph of Erin inside this book? Why does Will still have this photograph at all?
The photo is old, twenty years maybe. Erin looks to be about eighteen or nineteen in it. Her hair is wild, her smile carefree. I stare at the picture, into Erin’s eyes. There’s a pang of jealousy because of how beautiful she is. How magnetic.
But how can I be jealous of a woman who is dead?
Will and I had been dating for over a month before he mentioned her name. We were still in that completely smitten stage, when everything felt noteworthy and important. We’d talk on the phone for hours. I didn’t have much to say about my past, and so, instead, I told him about my future, about all the things I planned to one day do. Will’s future was undecided when we met, and so he told me about his past. About his childhood dog. About his stepfather’s diagnosis with cancer, the fact that his mother has been married three times. And he told me about Erin, the woman he was supposed to marry, a woman he was engaged to for months before she died. Will cried openly when he told me about her. He held nothing back, and I loved him for it because of his great capacity to love.
In all my life, I didn’t think I’d ever seen a grown man cry.
At the time, the sadness of Will losing a fiancée only attracted me to him more. Will was broken, like a butterfly without wings. I wanted to be the one to heal him.
It’s been years since her name has come up. It’s not as if we talk about her. But every now and then another Erin is mentioned and it gives us pause. The name alone carries so much weight. But why Will would dig this photograph out of God knows where and carry it around with him is beyond me. Why now, after all this time?
My hand grazes the photograph but I don’t have it in me to pick it up. Not yet. I’ve only seen one other photograph of Erin before, one that Will showed to me years ago at my request. He didn’t want to, but I insisted. I wanted to know what she looked like. When I asked to see a picture, he showed me with circumspection. He wasn’t sure how I’d react. I tried to be poker-faced about it, but there was no denying the sharp pains I felt inside. She was breathtaking.
I knew in that instant: Will only loved me because she was gone. I was his second pick.
I brush my finger against Erin’s fair skin now. I can’t be jealous. I simply can’t. And I can’t be mad. It would be insensitive of me to ask him to throw it away. But here I am, after all these years, feeling like I’m playing second fiddle to the memory of a woman who’s dead.
I reach for the photo and hold it in my hand this time. I won’t let myself be a coward. I stare at her. There’s something so childish about her face, so audacious and raw, that I feel the greatest need to scold her for whatever it is she’s thinking as she makes a pouty face at the camera, one that is as provocative as it is bold.
I jam the picture and the bookmark somewhere back inside the book, rise from the sofa and bring the book to the kitchen table. I leave it there, having suddenly lost the desire to read.
The dogs have begun to bark. I can’t leave them outside barking in the middle of the night. I open the slider and call to them, but they don’t come.
I’m forced outside into the backyard to get their attention. The patio is freezing cold on my bare feet. But that discomfort is secondary to what I feel inside as I get taken in, swallowed by the darkness. The kitchen light fades quickly behind me as the December night closes in.
I can see nothing. If someone was there, standing in the darkness of our yard, I wouldn’t know. An unwanted thought comes pummeling into me then. My saliva catches in my throat and I choke.
Dogs have adaptations that people don’t have. They can see much better than humans in the dark. It makes me wonder what the dogs see that I can’t see, what
