A Stranger in the House

  Tom looks at the detective, wonders what he knows, and in that moment hates the man’s guts—his smoothness, his composure, his sly innuendo. “Yes, of course I did,” Tom snaps. “But—driving helps clear my mind. It helps me relax. I have a very stressful job.” It sounds lame, even to him. Tom sees Rasbach’s eyebrows go up. It’s something the detective does, for effect, and Tom despises him for it.

  “Did you stop anywhere? Anyone see you?”

  Tom starts to shake his head and then hestitates and says, “I stopped for a few minutes to sit at one of the picnic tables along the river. For some fresh air. I don’t think anyone saw me.”

  “You remember where, exactly?”

  Tom tries to think. “Near the foot of Branscombe, I think, the parking lots there.” He can’t bring himself to look at Karen.

  Rasbach jots it down, gives him a last, penetrating look, and stands up, putting his notebook away.

  Finally, Tom thinks, they’re leaving. They’ve done enough damage for one night.

  Karen shows the detectives out, while Tom remains sitting in the living room, staring at the floor, preparing to face his wife.

  —

  Karen knows Tom doesn’t like driving. It doesn’t relax him—if anything, it stresses him out. She feels the ground shifting beneath her feet. She has to ask him. “So why were you driving around for an hour that night?”

  “Why did you drive your car into a pole?” he flashes back.

  She opens her mouth in surprise.

  Tom says abruptly, “I’m going out.”

  She watches him leave. She flinches when he slams the door behind him.

  What was Tom doing that night? That detective is no fool. Is it possible that Tom’s lying to her? That he’s hiding something from her?

  Troubled, she wanders into the kitchen to get some ice water and immediately spots a plate of brownies on the table. She stops in her tracks. She recognizes the plate. It’s Brigid’s. Brigid was here, and left her signature brownies. The brownies weren’t there before the detectives arrived. She must have left them on the kitchen table while they were talking to Tom and her in the living room. Karen feels a chill. Could she have overheard anything?

  She hates how out of control everything is getting. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and forces herself to relax.

  She’ll call Brigid tomorrow and thank her for the brownies. She can trust Brigid. She’ll talk to her and find out how much she heard.

  Karen fills her glass with water from the refrigerator and takes the plate of brownies with her into the living room and waits for Tom to return. What is he hiding? Tom has always been an open book. She can’t believe that he is keeping something from her. Where could he have been for that hour, and why doesn’t he want to tell her?

  —

  Tom gets into his car and drives to a neighborhood bar, the kind of place that local teams go to for a beer after a friendly baseball game. He needs to get his head together. He slides into an empty booth, orders a beer, and slumps over it; he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.

  He’s got himself into a bit of a mess. In fact, the more he thinks about it, the messier it looks. He didn’t want to tell the detectives what he was doing that night, not in front of Karen. Because he knows how it’s going to look. Now it will all come out.

  He was supposed to meet Brigid that night, at 8:30, at their spot by the river, at that quiet place between downtown and the suburbs, where the path along the river is less crowded, and trees provide a bit of privacy. It’s where they used to sometimes meet, when they were having their short, misguided, and messy affair.

  She had called him that day, the day of the accident, at his office, and asked him to meet her—she wouldn’t tell him why. But she stood him up that night. He waited over half an hour, in the dark, but she didn’t show.

  He still doesn’t know why Brigid wanted to meet him. When he asked her, in that terse first phone call when he was looking for Karen, what she’d wanted and why she’d stood him up, she’d brushed him off, saying her sister had had some kind of crisis, and that it could wait. He was more worried about finding Karen, anyway.

  He knows he should have told Karen about him and Brigid. Now he’ll have to tell the detectives, and it will look as if he were meeting Brigid that night because he wanted to, and keeping it a secret from Karen.

  He knows he should tell Karen now, tonight—tell her everything—but he’s not in a confiding mood. Maybe he’d feel more like telling her the truth if she went first.

  —

  When Tom returns home, his wife eyes him cautiously. They’re wary of each other now.

  “Do you want one?” Karen asks him after a moment, pointing to the brownies on the coffee table.

  “Where did those come from?” Tom asks as he sits down.

  “They look like Brigid’s. They taste like hers, too.”

  “Was she just here?” Tom asks.

  “She must have been.”

  Tom looks at her questioningly. “What do you mean?”

  “When you left, I went into the kitchen and they were sitting on the table.”

  “What?” Tom says. “When did she put them there?”

  “I assume when we were in here talking to the detectives,” Karen says.

  “Shit,” Tom says uneasily.

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow. Try to explain.”

  Tom rubs a hand over his face. “How are you going to explain two detectives in our living room, asking questions about a murder investigation?”

  Karen doesn’t even look at him. She says, “I’ll tell her the truth. There was a murder that night near where I had my accident. Nothing to do with me. But the police are desperate and they don’t have any leads. They’ll give up when they don’t find anything,” she says.

  She seems to be forgetting about the gloves, Tom thinks, and the tire tracks. And the mysterious phone call. She’s pretending to have a confidence that she can’t possibly really feel.

  There’s a long, fraught silence between them. Finally Tom says, “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  “Why?” Her voice is sharp.

  “Like the detective said—it’s not like you’re actually doing anything to try to get your memory back.” She stares at him now, but he doesn’t look away. “Maybe you should.”

  “What’s a doctor going to do?” she says coldly.

  “I don’t know,” Tom answers. “Maybe you could try hypnosis.” He’s pushing her, goading her. Let’s find out what happened that night. I really want to know. Do you?

  She gives a forced laugh. “I’m not doing hypnosis. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” He’s challenging her, and he can tell she doesn’t like it.

  She gets up and leaves the room, taking the plate of brownies back into the kitchen. Tom remains alone on the living room sofa, crushed by a devastating loneliness. He hears the door in the kitchen slide open and then close again; she’s gone out.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Karen closes the door behind her and stands briefly on the back patio. She has to fight the urge to cry. None of this was supposed to happen. She’s losing Tom. She sits down in one of the wicker chairs, hoping Tom will join her. But he doesn’t, and she feels sad and lonely and angry and frightened.

  And this terrible suspicion she suddenly feels—where was Tom for that hour? What is he not telling her? How she wishes she could remember what happened that night! What had she done?

  She wants to escape the tension of the house with her and Tom in it. She rises from the chair, walks across the back of the house and down the driveway. Maybe she should drop in on Brigid.

  But she can’t face talking to Brigid right now. She walks briskly down the sidewalk, away from the house. She needs to think.

  —

  Karen’s gone out,
and Tom’s home alone. Brigid had seen him return just a few minutes ago. Something’s definitely up.

  Brigid steps outside and quickly crosses the street. She doesn’t know how long she has before Karen returns. She climbs the steps and knocks on the front door.

  He doesn’t answer right away. She knocks again. Finally, Tom yanks open the door, looking tired and distraught. There are hollows in his handsome face that didn’t used to be there; he looks ashen.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi,” Tom says. His left hand remains on the edge of the door, as if he’s about to close it again at any moment. “Karen’s not home, she’s just gone out for a bit.”

  “I know,” Brigid says. “I saw her go down the street.” She hesitates. “I was hoping to get you alone, actually, for a minute.”

  She slips past him into the living room; now he either has to ask her to leave, or close the door behind her. She doesn’t think he’s going to ask her to leave.

  “I wanted to ask you about Karen,” Brigid says, turning around to face him. “How’s she doing? Is she all right?”

  Tom looks back at her coldly. “She’s getting better.”

  “She seemed really rattled when I was here the other day,” Brigid says. “About the glass. That wasn’t like her at all.”

  Tom nods. “It’s just—there’s a lot going on right now.”

  “I know,” Brigid says. “I saw that those detectives were here again a little while ago.” She pauses. When Tom doesn’t say anything, she asks, “What did they want?”

  Tom says tightly, “They wanted to see if she remembers anything about the accident yet. But she doesn’t. She says she doesn’t know what happened that night.”

  “And you believe her,” Brigid says.

  “Of course I believe her,” Tom says, bristling.

  “But the police don’t?”

  “I don’t know what the police believe. Nothing they say makes any sense.”

  Brigid eyes him carefully. Their earlier phone conversation about Karen hangs between them. She can’t resist bringing it up. She says, “The day of the accident—the reason I called you and asked you to meet me—it was to tell you about the man snooping around, hinting about Karen’s past. I thought if I tried to tell you over the phone, you’d hang up on me. But then my sister called, and—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Tom says abruptly. There’s an awkward silence. Then Tom says, “Maybe you should try Karen again in the morning.”

  She nods. “Sure. I’ll call on her then.” She adds, “You look exhausted, Tom.”

  He runs a hand through his hair and says, “That’s because I am exhausted.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to help,” Brigid says, and puts her hand lightly on his arm, “just ask.”

  “Thanks,” Tom says stiffly, “but I’ll be fine.”

  She can feel the warmth of his bare forearm under her hand. He moves away from her, breaking the contact.

  “Good night,” she says, and turns to go back down the stairs to go home. She looks across the lawn and the street to her own house, empty and almost entirely in darkness, except for the light over the front door.

  —

  Tom closes the door behind Brigid with relief, then rests his body against it and feels himself sag with fatigue. He always feels awkward and tense around Brigid. He dislikes the close friendship that has developed between Brigid and his wife. He knows it’s selfish of him. He drifts into the living room wondering what Brigid is thinking. She recognized the detectives. Detectives don’t investigate car accidents. She obviously suspects something more is going on. And he knows she has questions about Karen’s past. He wishes she hadn’t shared her suspicions with him. If what Brigid suspects is true, then Karen’s deceptive behavior started long before the night of the accident.

  And yet, it’s so hard to believe. He remembers all the happy times they’ve had together—holding hands walking through the woods in the fall, having coffee together in the backyard in summer, nestled in bed under the covers in winter. He’s always felt completely in love with her, always believed that they were completely committed to each other.

  But now . . . now he doesn’t know what he believes. If she really can’t remember, why wouldn’t she make an effort to get her memory back, like the detective said?

  Tom goes into the kitchen and reaches into a cupboard for a bottle of whiskey. There’s a lot of liquor left over from their wedding party almost two years ago. He rarely has anything more than a beer or a glass of wine with dinner. Now he pours himself a stiff one, and waits for his wife.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Karen walks quickly, as skittish as a cat. She’s breathing rapidly, from a combination of exertion and emotion. She feels as if she’s about to crack.

  She’s been living in fear for too long.

  Karen thinks about the first time she came home from work and felt that things were not exactly as she’d left them. She noticed that the novel she’d been reading the night before was placed to the left of her bedside table lamp; she was sure she’d put it down to the right of the lamp, on the side nearest the bed, just before she’d gone to sleep. She wouldn’t have placed it on the other side of the lamp. She stood there staring at it in disbelief. Anxiously, she scanned the rest of the room. At first glance, everything looked the way it should. But when she opened her underwear drawer it was untidy, as if someone had rummaged through her panties and bras. She knew that someone had. She stood perfectly still, looking down at her drawer, holding her breath. She told herself it was impossible that someone had been in the house, going through her dresser. Perhaps she’d been rushed that morning, sloppy. But she knew she hadn’t been. It had just been a regular day.

  She hadn’t mentioned it to Tom.

  Then there was the day she came home, not long afterward, and went into the bedroom to change. She’d made the bed in the morning, as she always did. She always made the bed the way she’d learned to do it when she was a young woman working as a chambermaid in a five-star hotel—all tight corners and firm smoothness. She was taking off her earrings, saw the bed reflected in the dresser mirror, and froze. Then she spun around and stared. She could see—faintly—the impression of a body on top of the pale green bedspread. As if someone had lain down on top of the bed and then smoothed it out, carelessly, afterward. It gave her a fright. She knew she wasn’t imagining it. Tom left for work every day before she tidied up and made the bed. She was so rattled that she called Tom at the office and asked him if he’d been home during the day. He hadn’t. She told him she’d found a window open that she thought she’d closed before she left for work, but that she must have forgotten to close it. He didn’t seem to give it another thought.

  After that, she started taking pictures in each room of the house on her cell phone before she left for work each day, and comparing them to how she found things when she got home. She always left for work after Tom and got home before him. They had no cleaning lady, no pets. So if things weren’t exactly as she left them . . .

  The last time had been just a few days before the accident. She could sense that someone had been in the house; she could feel it somehow. She went through the house with her cell phone in her hand, comparing the pictures on her phone with what she saw in the rooms in front of her. Everything was as it should be. Still, she felt certain someone had been there. She was starting to relax until she got to the office upstairs. She stared down at Tom’s desk. She thumbed through the pictures on her phone till she got to that morning’s picture of the office. Tom’s open agenda wasn’t in the same place on his blotter; it was about six inches higher on the blotter than before. She stared at the photo, and then at the desk. There was no doubt about it. Someone had been here, inside their house.

  Someone had been in their house, going through their things. Lying on their bed.

  She
never told Tom.

  And now she knows who it was. It had been him, all along. He’d been in their house, coming and going at will. Watching and waiting. The thought of it makes her ill.

  But now he’s dead. The hideous pictures of the corpse invade her mind and she tries to push them out again.

  That time with the glass on the counter—she must have been mistaken—her raw nerves had made her panic. The glass must have been there before, and she’d just forgotten, probably because of the concussion.

  Her fears now are all centered on that damned detective.

  Her heart thuds in her chest and she walks faster, toward home.

  —

  She enters the house, anxious to get inside. She closes the door firmly behind her and locks it. She turns around and sees Tom watching her intently from the living room. He’s standing by the fireplace, holding a whiskey in his right hand.

  “Can you pour me one of those?” she says. She’s done with the pain meds, and she needs a drink.

  “Sure.”

  She follows him to the kitchen. As he reaches up in the cupboard for the bottle, she watches him. She wishes they could get past this mistrust, this tension. She wonders if that will ever be possible now.

  He turns and hands her a short glass with a shot of whiskey, neat.

  “Thanks,” she says. She takes a sip and immediately feels the liquor burn down her throat, steadying her a little.

  “Where have you been?” Tom asks.

  He’s trying so hard to keep any hint of confrontation out of his voice now that he doesn’t sound natural at all. Gone is the light-hearted, unthinkingly happy man she married. The man with the quick laugh, the spontaneous hugs and kisses. She’s changed him.

  “I went for a walk,” she says, her voice neutral.

  He nods. As if it’s perfectly natural for her to go for a walk alone after dark, without him.

  It’s like we’re perfect strangers, Karen thinks, taking another sip of whiskey.

  “Brigid dropped by,” Tom says. He’s leaning against the counter, facing her.