One More Day (22 page)

Carrie went upstairs and lay on her bed, pulling the pale yellow throw across her feet. It was getting colder this month, with all the windows ringing this room. She remembered before they bought the house, how the real estate agent had trumpeted those three walls of windows, and Carrie kept hearing Danielle's tempered voice warning her:
It will be too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.
She was exhausted suddenly, just as she had been the night before. As if just talking to her mother and thinking about her required more energy than she had.

She turned on the television, flipping through the channels, settling on a home decorating show that used flea market furniture. She'd always meant to do that, to go to flea markets around the area, like she used to with her grandmother. A tear rolled down her cheek, thinking of what Gran would say:
Then get off your keister and let's go!
Maybe after the funeral was over and the other people had gone, she and her mother could go do something like that. Something to bring them closer.

A thud near the front door, like a paper landing, but they didn't subscribe. Had a package come? Had someone sent food? That was probably it—Libby with her lasagna. Other people with casseroles. Chelsea or Tracie. They hadn't kept in touch much, but surely they'd heard by now. The moms from the Y? But she hadn't heard the UPS truck or a car in the driveway.

She went downstairs to the door. The frame was bent, but the dead bolt still turned. She looked outside. A fat yellow phone book on the welcome mat. She shook her head. Who used these things anymore? She unlocked the door, went outside, and picked it up, carrying it toward the garage, straight to the recycling.

As she pushed the code in at the garage, a man stepped out between her house and her neighbor's.

“Carrie,” he said. “Ah, it is you. I'd know you anywhere.”

She blinked. “Mr.…Shepherd?”

He'd lived a few streets away from her and her mother. He looked older than she remembered. Grayer, paler. His hands were shaking like he'd been drinking, even this early in the day.

The Shepherds had two little girls she used to babysit—Emma and Rose. Mr. Shepherd had driven her home a couple of times when he'd come back from a party, insisting it was too late for her to ride her bike. And he'd leaned in too close, asked too many questions about her life. Sometimes he'd watched her house a few seconds longer, after she'd gone inside and turned out the light.

She tried to stay calm as she pushed at the garage buttons quickly, to change the code, keep the door from opening.

“You look…the same,” he said.

He had to be there for a perfectly logical reason. To express his condolences? To see her mother, having heard she was in town? But still, her eyes were fixed over his shoulder, praying one of her neighbors was home, watching. Then, seeing his hands shake, wondering if he was drunk, like he had been those nights. Was he always drunk, like her father?

“Do you and Mrs. Shepherd still live in the old neighborhood?”

He laughed. “Ha, live in the old neighborhood? That's a good one.”

Carrie's heart sank. Good God,
another one
? Mr. Shepherd was clearly unhealthy—he drank too much, and he drove too much. He'd been asking for death for years. She breathed in deeply, looking for the earthy undertones, the clue. Was his joke proof that he was dead too? But how? When? And was it all connected? How was she supposed to know the goddamned difference when he'd looked half dead his whole life?

“Why are you here?”

“Why do you think?”

“I have to get going,” she said and turned away.

He grabbed her by the arm firmly, too firmly for a skeleton. He was strong, wiry.

She tried to fling him off, failed.

“Oh, you think you're tough, do you? Well, you were always a little wild one, weren't you? Always a little tease,” he hissed in her ear. “Practicing the splits in your backyard, fucking your skinny boyfriend in the basement, pretending not to know I was looking through the window!”

He reached up and grabbed her breast, and she screamed, broke away. Ran up the street with him following on her heels. He tackled her at the corner, pinned her down.

He leaned his face into hers, and she turned her head furiously from side to side to avoid his mouth, the sidewalk scraping her scalp.

“That's the thing about staying up all night, taking midnight walks. You see and hear everything. You see boys running to their cars with a bundle of rags, and you open the door and hear a baby cry as he tosses the rags in the trunk!”

“No, he put it in the car; he changed his—”

“Please. You think I don't know what you are?”

“No!” she cried. “I didn't know. I—”

Tires screeched; a door slammed. Her view blocked by Shepherd's body, her eyes squeezed shut as he raised his hand. Then suddenly, John's hands pulling on Shepherd's coat, ripping one sleeve. He yanked him off, but Shepherd squirmed out of John's grasp. John lunged for him but missed and tumbled to the ground.

“John!” Carrie cried.

He scrambled back to her, leaned over, his breath holding together in the cold air, streaming like clouds.

“Carrie,” John said breathlessly. “Are you okay?”

“Don't go after him, John. Don't!”

“I won't. I'm calling the police.”

“No!”

She covered her face with her hands. She was so tired of trying to explain. Of having to worry about what she saw or how it looked or what anyone thought. Tired of no one understanding what was plain and obvious as day.

“No? Carrie, I—we—”

“John, just…let him go. It's over, and I'm fine now. Just…stay with me.”

Tears streaked her cheeks. He ran his thumb across each of them, wiping them dry. He couldn't bear to see his wife cry. Not again. Not more. And staying away from her, never knowing where she was, not following her, trailing her for the first time, it had been torture. Torture, the not knowing.

“Stay with me, Frog,” she cried.

“Okay, babe,” he said. “I'm here. I'm here.”

He pulled her up to a seating position, cradling her head. She glanced nervously in the direction Shepherd had run. But there was no trace of him. He was gone, and John was the only one with her, his arms circling her, his head bending down, blocking the clouds, the wind, the cold, swirling air.

He is my home
, Carrie thought.
He is the lock on my door.

Everybody looks at my clothes like they are trying to figure out what I am underneath. You don't see people like me every day.

If I left the store and followed someone for real, they would notice me right away, with my gypsy skirt and bright scarf. But I don't need to do that.

I just shut my eyes and see.

So I saw the little boy riding in the car, stopping at the corner where the Starbucks was. It's not like a camera; you can't zoom in and pan through your vision until you find what you need to see. It just comes to you, limited, sometimes in pieces. And this time, I saw the boy, waiting, dangling his feet, kicking them until one blue sneaker fell off.

And then the man, the man with the shaggy hair in the back, clothes rumpled like a homeless veteran, lifting him out of his seat, running across the street and behind an idling bus painted red, where his gray car was parked.

The bus blocked the view of the car. But I saw. I saw the first three letters of the license plate—BMT—before he left.

But I never saw the boy's mother. I never heard her scream.

Where were you, Carrie Morgan? I see you everywhere: on the covers of newspapers, on the local news. Anyone who wanted to memorize your face, the way you walk, could do it on YouTube, with all the clips they have of you now. Your pretty hair and your blank expression, like a pale chalkboard.

Am I the only one who knows you weren't there?

Everyone says if you can see it before it happens, you can stop it.

But all I can see is the after, always.

That's why hardly anyone wants to pay for the after. And why they'll pay almost anything for the before.

When was the last time John and Carrie had spent a Saturday afternoon just talking? She couldn't remember. Her mother had called from Nordstrom, wondering if Carrie preferred short sleeves or long, and John had told Danielle to take her time, not to hurry back, that he was there, and Carrie was fine. Better than fine.

Carrie probably hadn't spoken this many words since the last double session with Dr. Kenney, months before.
Why
,
she hadn't spoken this much or listened so hard since those days with Ethan,
she thought with a smile, as they ate leftover fajitas for lunch and opened a bottle of Pinot Noir.

She told John what it was like when her father left them and how she had to go straight from school to the restaurant, work until eleven, ride the bus home, and stay up doing her homework until two or three a.m. How she had to set her alarm for five thirty because her mother had already left for the office and the house had to be vacuumed every morning before she left for school, in case someone wanted to come by and look at it. She told John how she was so tired she cheated nearly every day, vacuuming the first floor only, since no one ever did anything messy upstairs, unless you counted an occasional thread dropping from an errant hem. How she had to quit the cheerleading squad because she was so exhausted after studying all night that she fell asleep during practice, head nodding while stretching in a split, waiting for the music to queue up.

She told him about Ethan and how they studied together and ate meals together, even breakfast some days, because she never had any spare time to actually go out on dates. How one night before a big geometry test, she secretly set an alarm before they had sex, allotting him only ten minutes for the task. “But he only needed three minutes!” She laughed, and John laughed too. It felt so good to laugh, Carrie almost forgot to feel guilty.

Her mother came home from the mall and was surprised to find her daughter half drunk and laughing. Danielle put the packages on the counter and kissed Carrie on the cheek.

“I got you a beautiful dress,” she said.

“Oh, good. Thanks, Mom.”

“And some blue napkins and paper plates.”

“Perfect,” Carrie said. “We're doing everything at the funeral in blue,” she said to John.

He nodded without understanding precisely why. Blue for a boy? Like a baby shower?

“So, Mom, the creepiest thing happened today after you left.”

“Oh no,” Danielle said with dread. She locked eyes with John briefly, but he didn't look angry. He looked almost as drunk as Carrie did. His hair, a little long in the back and sides, tickling his ears, made him look younger, like when Carrie had first brought him home.

“Remember Mr. Shepherd from our old neighborhood?”

“Of course.”

“He came here today.”

Danielle blinked at her daughter. “Oh no, that couldn't be. Ralph Shepherd died five years ago, maybe six.”

John's eyes widened a little, like a door swinging open on a breeze, but not Carrie's. No, Carrie was learning what she could and couldn't say, even with her eyes.

Without missing a beat, she said, “Well, it sure looked like him. Maybe he had a brother?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, whoever he was, he attacked Carrie,” John said. “I tackled him, but he ran away before I got a good look at him.”

“Good God, are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” Carrie said. “Just a little shaken up.”

Danielle looked at both of them, blinking, suddenly seized with comprehension. The things John worried about were the wrong things—Carrie's mental state, her seeing things. The things she had worried about were wrong too—the dress, the arrangements, the food. She felt both a deep sense of shame and an utter call to arms. She could fix this!

“Where's your phone book, Carrie?”

An electric current ran up Carrie's spine, remembering the book's call to her, its warning. Its curse, really.

“It's…out in the recycling bin. Why, Mom?”

“Because I'm going to call an alarm company.” She sighed. “We're going to make this place secure and safe for you, Carrie. For you both. Once and for all.”

John blinked back at her. He had enlisted Libby and the neighbors and his mother-in-law to help—he should have known that a woman couldn't protect another woman from a man.

“I can't remember the name of the one I used to recommend all the time,” she continued. “But if I see their ad in the Yellow Pages with that old photo of a man in armor, I'll recognize it straight off. They'll remember me and come out right away.” Danielle walked toward the door, shaking her head. “This was always such a safe, welcoming hometown,” she exclaimed.

Carrie frowned. Had it been? Safe, maybe, but welcoming? She didn't remember her mother having friends on their block, getting together for a drink or a coffee klatch.

Danielle went outside and came back brandishing the book in the air like it was the Bible. She sat down at the kitchen table and started thumbing through it. “And I thought Florida was full of crazies.” She sighed.

“I tried to convince her,” John said softly. “I got estimates and everything afterward.”

But they'd fought over it, Carrie refusing, screaming, anguished. She'd believed the lack of impediment—no alarm, no gate—had facilitated Ben's return. And she'd failed to understand that John had only been trying, once they had Ben back, to keep him there. To lock him in for good. And when he'd said to her, gently he'd thought, “Carrie, you can't rely on faith to keep you safe,” how she'd turned away from him, as if he'd impugned her character and not just her habit of prayer. But she couldn't argue anymore. This latest episode was proof that she was unsafe and unlucky.

Carrie started to clear their plates. As she passed her husband, she reached up and tucked a shaggy lock of hair behind one of John's ears. He needed a haircut before the funeral, and she was sure if she said something, her mother would find someone who could do that too.