The Imposter

by Marin Montgomery

  Deborah’s shrieks are carried away in the draft as she meets the slippery ice head on. The rifle escapes from her clutch and tumbles to the ground. Luckily, the snow pads her fall, but only enough to act as an ice pack against her immediately bruised face and knees.

  Mumbling “Ouch,” Deborah notices dark-red blood seeping from her knuckles.

  Dazed, she clenches the powdery substance in her hands until a black figure appears out of the shadows.

  Assuming it’s Esmeralda, Deborah calls out to her, expecting paw prints to dart across the porch, light and effortless, accompanied by a purring sound. But the footfalls coming closer are weighty and forceful, like a person’s.

  “Esmeralda,” she moans, staring at her outstretched arms. Then she watches in horror as the snow-covered feet stop in front of her motionless body.

  Frantic, she glances over her shoulder for the rifle, her eyes darting uselessly across the whiteout conditions.

  Resignedly, Deborah levels her gaze with dark pants, then moves her eyes toward the torso, also clothed in black. When she reaches the stranger’s face, Deborah lifts her chin in defiance, but she’s disappointed to see a mask covering their features, the only exception the narrow slit in the front for the nose and eyes.

  She tries to make eye contact, but just as abruptly, the heavy boots step forward and crush her fingers underneath what are surely steel-encased toes.

  Before she can scream, a swift kick lands on her forehead, and she tastes blood as it slides from above her left eye, down her nose, and into her mouth.

  The assailant steps around her, and before Deborah can try for another shriek, she’s being dragged down the porch steps by her feet, each clunk the sound of her head hitting the concrete.

  Usually, the stars give her comfort, but tonight they seem to be frozen stiff in the sky, as if they are too cold and numb to twinkle. Her body mimics this behavior, and she shuts her eyes against the blustery wind, her scarf like a noose as it gets tangled in frozen pieces of grass and gravel as Deborah’s hauled across the stretch of property.

  Her hands clench at the ground, but it’s futile; the solid clumps of snow are unforgiving against her swollen hands.

  A sorry excuse for a scream catches on her chapped lips, emerging as nothing more than a pleading whisper.

  Deborah silently begs for it to be over, but she can’t form a coherent thought, with shock settling in every fiber of her being. It’s not until something hard jabs into her skull that she realizes too late the rifle is in the hands of the intruder. Deborah doesn’t remember much of what happens next or how long she’s beaten against the ice-covered ground. She does know that if it weren’t for the weather and the lingering smell of manure and hay, she probably wouldn’t have woken up and crawled into the ramshackle barn for cover.

  Later, baffled to wake up in a hospital bed, Deborah stares in loathing at the uniform four walls. They’re a dizzying reminder of the life-changing news delivered to her in the same medicinal environment. Even with the decades gone past, she gets goose bumps at the similarities when she’s face to face with a doctor.

  This time when the white coat rests a hand on her shoulder, she flinches. His hands are smooth and less calloused than before. Back then, the doctor’s rough hands felt gritty like sandpaper when they inspected between her legs, poking and prodding during the examination.

  Before, when she wanted to interrogate the doctor and ask him questions, he refused to meet her eyes. His stare was fixated on the ugly watercolor painting behind her.

  Deborah still recalls how her husband, Jonathan, was seated beside her, clawing her wrist with his bear-size hands. Both he and the doctor couldn’t refrain from digging their fingers into her skin. Staring down at her lap, she clutched the thin cotton hospital blanket wrapped around her protruding abdomen.

  “I’m afraid I have some news to share,” the doctor told her. He stumbled over the “news” part, as if he couldn’t decide if that was the right word to use.

  “News?”

  “I’m sorry, Deborah. It’s unfortunate what happened to her.”

  But this isn’t thirty-four years ago, and presently the man in the white lab coat speaks to her with compassion and makes eye contact, explaining it’s a good thing she made it into the dilapidated structure because she was this close to dying of hypothermia.

  He warmly tells her, “You must have a guardian angel watching over you.”

  Puzzled, she asks, “What do you mean?”

  “If the police chief hadn’t stopped by after the department received a call about a potential UFO sighting in the sky, you’d be a frozen carcass, found in the spring when the ground thawed.”

  Deborah does remember hearing a blast, but she figured she imagined it, and she says so. Her brain feels like mush, all the events a jumbled blur.

  “Nope,” the doctor says. “It was some dumb kid trying to set off fireworks.”

  “In the middle of winter?”

  “Yep. In the middle of winter.” He rolls his eyes. “Stupid kid. But it got the police out to investigate.”

  Reaching a hand to her forehead, Deborah touches an elastic bandage. “It feels like someone lit them inside my brain,” Deborah moans.

  “That’s not surprising, considering you have some circular lesions from the butt of the rifle, called friction blisters. We’re going to keep you under observation for a few days.” The doctor looks jubilant. “But I must say, you have a thick skull, Mrs. Sawyer.”

  “I’ve had to have one,” she mumbles, more to herself.

  “You have some surface lacerations from being dragged, but you’re fortunate to be alive. We did a CT scan, an x-ray, but we’re going to do an MRI today for a more comprehensive view, make sure there isn’t abnormal brain activity like a concussion. My concern was an intracerebral hemorrhage, a brain bleed, but there’s no evidence of that.”

  “That’s comforting.” Deborah sighs with relief. “What about the farm? Is it still standing? Did they take anything from the house?”

  The doctor shrugs. “The police didn’t say anything about a robbery.”

  Deborah’s asking out of concern for her safety. It’s not like she has anything to confiscate. Deborah’s lucky she wasn’t shot with the old rifle for having nothing of value but a few old antiques. Her intention has never been to draw attention to herself. Any person with a lick of common sense knows that people get caught by being too flashy or materialistic. When you give someone a reason to pay attention, that’s when the spotlight shines brighter on you.

  But why now? she wonders.

  And did the letters have anything to do with this unplanned visit?

  If Deborah had perished, she could picture the people in town clucking their tongues, shrugging their shoulders in mock grief, and speaking about the irony. She was found mere feet away from where Jonathan had tragically died.

  And most would have said she got what she deserved—karma at its finest. The religious zealots would claim God had a hand; others might say the ghost of Cindy had a hand, that it should’ve been Deborah, not Cindy, who died all those years ago, as she was an innocent bystander in the whole sordid tale.

  As if I asked Cindy to involve herself, Deborah thinks bitterly.

  CHAPTER 2

  Deborah

  When Deborah goes home from the hospital, she’s still wearing a bandage wrapped around her head and some adhesive strips on the less severe abrasions.

  Though she’s starting to recuperate from the superficial wounds, Deborah freezes in nervous anticipation when she hears a knock at the front door, expecting the worst.

  By far, the psychological damage from the trauma is going to surpass the visible imprints.

  Tempted to ignore the unwanted visitor, Deborah halfheartedly drags her feet to peek out the picture windows facing the highway.

  Spotting the neighbor’s old truck, she lets out a sigh of relief.

  When she opens the door slowly, she’s face to face with him. Eve
n in her fragile state of mind, he’s a sight for sore eyes, even tired ones.

  Robert lives on a neighboring farm and is a widower. They lost their respective spouses around the same time, and their families used to be close until tragedy struck.

  Holding up a grocery bag as a peace offering, Robert tells Deborah he came to check on her. He mentions the prayer circle at church and says the congregation has added Deborah to their prayer chain.

  Flustered at this thought, she assumes Robert feels pity for her. Even though Deborah sits in the same pew at church every Sunday, their interactions have been cordial but distant for years.

  Suddenly self-conscious of her appearance and used to having a spotless house, Deborah becomes embarrassed because she has a few dishes in the sink and hasn’t dusted since before the “incident.”

  She didn’t plan to invite him in, but after they stand awkwardly at the door for a few minutes, she feels like she has no choice.

  After she motions Robert to sit at the table, they stare at the empty chair between them in an unbearably long silence fraught with tension. Unpleasant memories belong to this chair and the owner. It was once Jonathan’s, and his cigarette burns are stubbed into the fabric, the pockmarks a permanent reminder of his bad habits. It’s apparent they both feel the ghost of him sitting in their midst. The blame game is as prevalent now as it was back then. Neither of them needs to say out loud that they think the other bears a majority of the responsibility for Jonathan’s death, because neither would be wrong. No one can deny mistakes were made—some well intended, a few reckless, others vengeful.

  But guilt, that’s a dangerous thing. That’ll eat your insides alive, as Deborah is well aware due to the acidity in her stomach lining.

  “If people in town had minded their own business”—she runs her hand through her hair, unsettling a few sparse grays—“we wouldn’t be sitting here like complete strangers.”

  “I know,” Robert admits in a clipped tone. “But there was truth to some of it. We had to be careful.”

  After she offers a cup of coffee, black with no cream or sugar, the way he used to take it, they finally start to talk like old times. Slowly she loosens up, and laughter creeps upon Deborah; smile lines finally appear on her wrinkled face. She’s forgotten how good it feels to have a conversation where there’s actual dialogue. The farm cats aren’t so adept at answering back.

  When Robert leaves, he promises to come back and install an outdoor security camera and some floodlights. The seventy-acre farm has far too much land to have eyes on all of it, but she’s grateful the house will be protected. Deborah tries not to read into this renewed friendship, telling herself it was born out of neighborly obligation and nothing more.

  But she is pleasantly surprised when he calls the next day to invite her over for a friendly card game. Deborah cautiously accepts. Like a true gentleman, he picks her up, and they sit in front of his fireplace to play gin rummy and hearts.

  Deborah returns the favor a few days later by inviting him over to watch television.

  Then he cooks dinner for her, and they sit at his dining room table and trade stories.

  After a few weeks she suggests they have their own book club, which might seem silly with only two people, but they agree on an author to read.

  Sometimes Robert will sit in the recliner and nod off when it gets late, and Deborah then feels relieved not everything has changed with time. He’ll fall asleep with his head at a painful-looking angle, his snores loud enough to rouse an army. Deborah giggles at the memory of him doing this during church sermons. His wife would give him an elbow in the ribs or loudly whisper for him to wake up. Deborah would snicker at her outbursts, since they drew more attention than his inconvenient naps because of the echo in the high-ceilinged chapel.

  When his eyelids finally flip open, he wears a sheepish expression on his face. Slapping his knees, he slowly pulls himself out of the chair. He doesn’t ask to stay the night, and she never offers, their companionable silence enjoyable for the two of them up until a point.

  One warm afternoon when the snow has melted, hopefully for the last time, they go down to the pond on the edge of Deborah’s property to fish, a perfect, cloudless April day upon them.

  They don’t need much in the way of conversation, both able to enjoy each other’s company, but Deborah is abnormally quiet, a lot weighing on her mind as of late.

  She had struck the letters from her memory, but now, after a long dry spell, another one has arrived. She’s dying to tell someone, and Robert’s the closest she has to a confidant. Pacing the grass, she makes the decision to tell him.

  With a glance over his shoulder, he shoots her a questioning glance before he throws out his fishing line.

  The last thing she wants to do is alienate him, and suddenly shy, Deborah second-guesses if she should share the secret. Maybe she should wait. It might spark old memories that they’ve both tried to bury.

  “What is it, honey?” Robert reaches out his arm to grab hers in an attempt to stop her aimless wandering. “What’s wrong? You’re lucky that patch of grass is still dead because you’ve trampled it repeatedly.”

  Deborah can’t help but grin at the term of endearment, often said by her husband but not meant. It was a force of habit and now sounds different coming from Robert.

  Natural, even.

  She blushes like a teenager, beaming with pride. “I’ve really been enjoying my time with you.”

  He squeezes her arm. “I feel the same.” He’s quiet for a moment, and then he says, “I know that’s not all.”

  “No. It’s not.” She shrugs. “You can read me like a book.”

  “Always have.” He guffaws.

  Looking down at the brown grass, she murmurs, “I have something to tell you.” She hurriedly adds, “I got a couple letters in the mail. Three now, actually.”

  Deborah tells Robert about the letters while his fishing pole bobs up and down, the rippling water movement the only sound. She can tell he’s unnerved by the red flush that spreads from his face and down his neck, disappearing into the collar of his shirt.

  He finally responds, “Did you write back?”

  “No.” She bites her lip. “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Do you think there’s an ulterior motive for reaching out?”

  “Yes.” She rests a frustrated hand on her hip. “Money.”

  “After all these years . . .” There’s a sharp exhale on his end.

  “I thought it was just us there that night.”

  “It was,” Robert promises.

  “The letter mentions the gun . . .”

  “What about it?”

  “They claim to know what happened to it.”

  “I dumped it in the pond, Debbie.” He shields his face from the sunlight. “It’s someone messing with you.” He reaches a hand out to hold hers. “Everything’s going to be fine, honey. I’m here with you now.”

  “Do you ever think about that night?”

  “No.” But his abrupt release of her hand tells her he’s being untruthful.

  “I hear his shrieks sometimes in the night.”

  “Deborah . . .”

  She chokes on a sob. “I wish my actions hadn’t hurt so many people.”

  “Stop,” Robert demands. “This doesn’t help us, getting all emotional. No one was there but us.”

  Deborah inhales a ragged breath, reminding herself all she can do is breathe. Just breathe, Deborah.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whimpers. “I’m worried this can only mean trouble.”

  “Not on my watch.” His voice sharpens. “Give me some time. I take it you kept the letters?”

  “Yes.” Her voice quivers.

  “Give them to me. I’ll think of something.” He nudges her arm gently. “You’ll let me know if another letter comes?”

  “Of course, but there’s more.” She hesitates. “The letters are sent from a PO box that supposedly belongs to her.”

&
nbsp; Robert grimaces. “After all this time?”

  Not trusting herself to speak, Deborah stares down at the hole she’s dug in the barren grass. Before Robert can respond, she watches his hand tremble, the line bobbing up and down. “I think I got something.”

  Watching in amazement, Deborah’s impressed at how Robert expertly holds the line almost taut. “Did you get a hit?”

  Nodding, he keeps his hand underneath the reel while his index finger and forefinger skillfully press down on the line.

  “Nibble or a bite?”

  “They might’ve just taken the bait.” Glimpsing tiny swells in the water, Robert lifts the rod up at a ninety-degree angle to reel it in. They both chuckle when they realize the lure is gone, but no fish is attached to the hook.

  As they enjoy the solitude, Robert moves closer to her as she snuggles into his side. When he brushes a large hand through her windswept hair, Deborah winces. Nothing seems to get past him, and looking concerned, he tenderly touches a swollen lump on her head.

  Sounding alarmed, he asks, “What happened to your head?”

  “It was a fall, nothing serious.” Yet Deborah can’t meet his eyes.

  “Looks pretty serious to me.” Robert motions to her leg. “You also weren’t limping a couple of days ago.”

  Her mouth puckers like she’s tasted something sour. “This getting old is not for the weak of heart.”

  He sighs. “How did you fall?”

  “Trying to carry a laundry basket down those dreadful stairs.”

  “Those stairs are a death trap. How is it that no one’s fallen down them before this?”

  Deborah’s mouth drops open and she stammers, then thinks better of it and shakes her head. Robert waits for her to continue, but she stares distractedly out at the water. She’s not sure she wants to tell him what prompted her to lose her balance. She knows he’s already worried about her mental state. Depressed and weepy, Deborah’s unable to sleep, night terrors a constant invasion.

  “Debbie.” He softens his voice. “What don’t you want to tell me?”

  If anyone else called her Debbie instead of Deborah, she’d automatically correct them. But she finds she doesn’t mind at all when he says it.