The Stranger Inside

by Laura Benedict

  Silence. Then, “Did you take the money?

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She comes over to the sofa but doesn’t sit.

  They both know exactly what he means.

  “I didn’t come here for you to be shitty to me. What do you think, Gabriel?” A year ago he never would have asked the question. It embarrasses her, but there’s something about the new glint in his eyes that attracts her, even in her anger. Before their breakup, before the accident, he was sometimes too soft, too kind for her. It’s a sickness, she thinks, not liking people’s softness.

  “I think you probably padded your accounts. Do I think you did it as much as they’re saying? Probably not.”

  “No. That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?” She looks at him steadily.

  “No one could ever accuse you of being stupid. Your choices suck sometimes, but I think you have your reasons for making them. Are you asking me for help?”

  Her shoulders sag a bit. “I don’t know what I want to do right now, except run away from all of this. People disappear, right? It can’t be that hard.” Then she realizes the irony of what she’s said and laughs. “Hey, you met my dad.”

  “Maybe you’re like your dad.”

  “That’s a hell of a thought. I don’t feel like me at all these days. I feel like someone’s messing with my head. Messing with my whole life. I’ve been certain for years that God hates me. He’s just kicked it into high gear this week. I didn’t steal all that money, and the timing stinks too. What if Lance Wilson is working with Leeza or Brianna? Or maybe even Bill, the station manager?”

  “The station manager? Why would he want to ruin your life?”

  “I didn’t really mean Bill. Leeza’s way more likely. And she’d definitely hook up with a sleazeball like Lance Wilson to get my accounts.”

  “Hey, I do have some good news,” he says. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you this afternoon.”

  “Really? Is there really such a thing as good news anymore?”

  “I heard from the court. The judge is going to meet with us in chambers next Thursday. We’ll get a chance to show him everything, and since you filed a police report about your wallet, there’s evidence someone could’ve used your identification.”

  Except I can’t tell you everything I know. What Lance Wilson is really doing to me. “That really is good news. But it doesn’t tell us who else is involved.”

  “One step at a time, okay?” He gets up and comes toward her.

  What are you doing?

  He puts his hand on her wineglass, and she lets him take it and set it on the windowsill.

  It’s not like that time she woke up to find him watching her, the gray light of a rainy Saturday morning spreading over their faces. His eyes held something that frightened her, a look that said he didn’t want to be without her. That look had made her want to run. Now there’s something possessive but no less honest.

  This is going to happen.

  Do you want it to happen?

  Oh yes.

  He takes her face in his hands, not so gently. “You’re not like your father this way.” He kisses her lips, softly, and stops. Their breath mingles. She doesn’t want him to stop.

  “You’re not like your father this way.” He kisses the hollow between her ear and her jaw, his beard prickling her, making goose bumps rise on the back of her neck.

  She leans into him, her body warming.

  This is good. This is very good. Everything she said to Diana about Gabriel’s possessiveness only an hour or two ago melts away. Except the part about the sex being great.

  This is a terrible idea. Why am I doing this?

  He runs one hand up her side, over her ribs, and across one breast. The pressure is slight but insistent, and now his hand is open on her back, pressing her to him as their lips mold together and open. It’s easy and familiar but fueled by some sharp blade of darkness. Maybe even anger and disappointment.

  Oh. This part was never bad.

  Now his hand slips into the back of her shorts, beneath her panties—the pretty pastel lace panties that Diana had arranged, panties of the sort that Diana might even wear—and cups and squeezes her buttock, bringing her even closer. It’s been so long since anyone has touched her like this. Gabriel was the last.

  Her penance is over.

  “Bedroom?” His breath is hot in her ear, and she has no trouble hearing him now.

  “Mmmmmm.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Her hand in his, she trails behind him, walking in that awkward, not-quite-slinky way one does when one’s body is well into I’m about to have sex mode.

  In the bedroom, he touches a remote and the curtains close, leaving them in near darkness. Dark is fine. Dark is good. They undress each other, hands moving swiftly but with purpose. They laugh when the zipper of his khakis sticks, and he has to help. He unhooks her bra and slides the strap off her arm and bends, for the barest second, to flick his tongue over her nipple, making her giggle.

  We’re laughing. Together. In the middle of all this hell.

  He flings the bra aside so it lands on the bench at the bottom of the bed. The bench where she saw the pink shirt. There’s something about the memory of the shirt that bothers her. But she pushes it to the back of her mind. Now there’s only pleasure.

  Yes, oh yes, that feels good.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Gabriel comes out of the bathroom, still naked, silhouetted by the bathroom light. She forgot how good he looked naked, his limbs and torso slender from running but toned and strong from lifting at the gym. His scarred arm shows no injury in the shadowed room. She doesn’t need to see because she touched the scars unselfconsciously as they had sex—she wouldn’t call it making love because it was more rushed, insistent. They were two old lovers in a kind of battle, reclaiming their territories. Whatever else it was, it was good, and her body is sated. Except for her stomach.

  “I have no idea why I’m so hungry.”

  “Is that a rhetorical statement?”

  As he lowers himself back onto the bed, she punches him in the arm playfully. They both freeze for the briefest of seconds.

  Too soon. Too soon if there’s a future to this. Which there probably isn’t. What in the hell did we just do?

  Gabriel leans on one elbow. “Hey. We both needed that. Let’s not let it get in the way. Let it be what it is, okay?”

  Now she finds herself in the bizarre position of having gotten exactly what she wanted (even though she didn’t know she wanted it) but wondering why it suddenly feels like it isn’t enough.

  “You’re right. Thank you.”

  “That’s a first. No one’s ever thanked me for sex before. You want me to bring you dinner in bed or are you getting dressed?”

  Kimber sits up, letting the sheet remain in her lap, but her breasts are still bare. Gabriel’s gaze lingers on them, and she wonders if they’ll ever get to eat. “Can we at least have a snack or something? More wine? I really want to see what’s in the box. Please?”

  In the bathroom, she splashes water on her face and uses Gabriel’s very clean hairbrush. Long ago she kept a toothbrush here, but now there’s only one toothbrush in the holder on the black marble vanity. (Whoever owned the pink shirt was not so special that she was leaving a toothbrush.) Taking the toothpaste out of the medicine cabinet, she squeezes a pea-sized drop on her finger, swabs it across her teeth, and rinses.

  When she puts the toothpaste back, she notices the line of medicine bottles on an upper shelf. Quietly she takes them out and examines them one by one: ibuprofen, Flexeril, Ativan, tramadol. But also Cymbalta, which she remembers from television as an antidepressant. Only the Ativan and the Cymbalta look like they’ve been recently refilled. She undoes the lid of the Ativan and shakes three into her palm to put in her purse in case she needs them later. As she puts the container back on the shelf, it slips from her hand and bounces noisily around the sink. Finally trapping it, she quickly replaces it
and clicks the cabinet door shut as softly as she can.

  So Gabriel has been in pain, depressed, and stressed out. Because of his accident. Because she’d dropped him. But he seems so calm now. Even confident. He was more confident than ever in bed. Has he really changed or is it the magic of modern medicine? Does it really matter?

  His lawyer and friend Isobel Carter had called her hours after it happened. “He’s in the hospital. Drove into a garage wall.” Isobel’s anxious voice turned accusing. “What did you do to him, Kimber?” She rushed to the hospital and went by his room. Inside, an older woman, surely his mother, and his sister, Helena, sat at his bedside. But she’d never met either of them and couldn’t bring herself to go in.

  A few weeks later she called him. That was when he told her to leave him alone.

  Checking her face in the mirror, she frowns. She looks like hell, with puffy half circles under her eyes and the makeup she’d put on for the meeting blurred from the sex. Turning the water to warm, she washes her face and uses the Aveeno body lotion beside the sink to moisturize, thinking it will have to do. Is she really trying to impress him anyway? He’s frequently seen her without makeup. But somehow it feels different now.

  I don’t have time or space in my brain for this.

  No, you don’t. But that won’t stop you.

  The chandelier light exposes the shabbiness of the black plastic. The ragged edges of the first torn-open package flop against the bowls of nuts and grapes Gabriel laid out for a snack.

  Kimber looks over her shoulder at the picture windows reflecting back the light. “Should we close the curtains? What if someone sees it?”

  “Kimber, we’re on the fourteenth floor.”

  “There’s—what? There must be twenty or thirty thousand dollars here.” She picks up a stack of twenties. In films, stacks of cash always look neat and crisp. This stack is worn and loose in her hand. It smells musty. “What’s he doing with all this cash? Oh God. He has to know I took it.”

  “How would he know it was you in the house?”

  It’s something she hasn’t considered. “Sure. But who else would it be? Unless there really are more people involved in this. Maybe it’s drugs. What if he’s a drug dealer?”

  “Could be. That’s where the police would be helpful.”

  “Huh. Right.” Kimber points to a second, book-shaped package. “What’s in that one?”

  “This is where it gets a little weird.” The second package has some heft, and he handles it gently. Kimber almost reaches out to help when his left hand is awkward with it, but she stops herself and leaves him to it. An old book slides out of the plastic and lands softly on the table. Its cracked leather cover is the color of winter Bermuda grass and is so worn that it’s hard to make out the cross among the embossed floral design. “I’ve seen quite a few of these old family bibles. This one’s smaller and plainer than most.”

  Kimber runs her fingers over the tooled leaves and flowers, then opens the cover. An image of the tortured Christ, surrounded by a design of rich browns and golds and reds, fills the facing page. His head rests to one side, but his eyes stare heavenward in pained resignation. “Lance Wilson doesn’t seem like the bible type to me.”

  “Family bibles used to be a much bigger deal than they are now,” Gabriel says. “The first few pages are usually a handwritten record going back generations. Although you don’t necessarily get the full story—especially if someone’s born on the wrong side of the blanket.”

  Kimber laughs. “Wrong side of the blanket? How very nineteenth century of you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Since his name isn’t really Lance Wilson, I guess there are no Wilsons in here, unless he stole someone else’s family bible.” She turns the page, glad to be past Christ’s troubled eyes, and finds that the next page folds out into a family tree. The stylized branches are filled in with names and birth, baptism, marriage, and death dates. Locations as well. There are at least three different kinds of handwriting.

  “A lot of German names and places here.” Kimber touches the faded ink. “Looks like the Wiedner family came here from Germany in the mid 1800s. Here a Wiedner daughter married a Merrill. Lots of sons, hardly any girls.”

  “Look at the last few entries,” Gabriel says.

  “Wait. There is a Wilson.” Kimber picks up the bible and moves it to a long table set beneath the window. He follows her, and they bend over the bible together, their shoulders against each other with an intimate pressure.

  “But there’s no one named Lance.”

  “John Jacob Merrill was born sixty-some years ago and married a Faye Magdalene Wilson. But look.” Kimber puts her finger on the name Kevin Alan Merrill. “He was baptized in Franklin County, west of here. Not anywhere I’d want to live.”

  Gabriel laughs. “I forgot that you’re kind of a snob.”

  She turns a little pink but smiles. “I just don’t like the country.”

  “Lance Wilson?” he says, wondering. “Maybe the real Lance Wilson is a cousin or somehow related to Faye. It would be strange if the guy in your house was actually related to the guy whose identity he stole.”

  “Or maybe he stole the name Wilson on purpose as some kind of joke.” Kimber taps the page. “The age is right for him to actually be Kevin Merrill. Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Sure. I think we have to look at all the possibilities. But it could be a while before we find out if he’s connected to you. Or connected to the house.”

  Kimber turns on another lamp and takes several close-ups of the bible’s first few pages with her phone. “What I want to know is why this guy carries around a bible and twenty thousand dollars hidden in a cardboard box. He doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type. Maybe he stole the money and someone else’s family bible. Or maybe it’s his grandma’s or his mother’s and he robbed them.”

  “That’s a little melodramatic.”

  “Oh, come on! He has the locks changed on my house and moves into it but can’t possibly be a thief? He’s the definition of a thief. Somebody like that would definitely rob his own grandma.”

  And he’s probably already looking for me and his money.

  “He might be completely out of your life in just a few days. I think you’ve been watching too many crime shows.”

  Kimber picks up one of the stacks of cash and waves it at him, teasing. “Hey, maybe you don’t watch enough.” Then she turns serious. “My money—pun completely intended—is on him being Kevin Merrill. His age is right.”

  He was born near here. Could he have been there the day Michelle died, with one of the other school groups on the field trip? “Proof,” Michelle had told her. “I’ll show you proof, Kimber.” She hadn’t wanted to listen.

  “Is this all that was in the box?” Kimber pokes at the plastic in which the bible was wrapped. “This and the money? The box seemed heavier than that.”

  Gabriel shrugs. “That’s all I saw. But you were kind of in a hurry when you found it, weren’t you?”

  Kimber laughs. “Uh, yeah. You could say that.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the mysterious Lance Wilson and Kevin Merrill for today.” Gabriel takes a draught of wine and looks at his watch. “It’s only eight-thirty. Let’s make dinner and watch a movie together, if you want.”

  Watch a movie together. Just like we used to. Don’t let me do this. I’ll hurt you. Again.

  Even with her own voice in her head telling her to Leave now! she knows she won’t. Can’t. He’s what she needs, and it doesn’t matter if the need is only temporary.

  “Let me text Diana that I’ll be late and send some family-tree images to Shaun. I bet he can get a lot from them. I told you I took pictures of what happened in the house, right? What should we do with those?”

  “Did you tell me that?” Gabriel’s brow furrows. “I mean it’s a good thing you did, but we need to think about who we show them to. They should go to the sheriff’s off
ice and the judge who will handle the case. But I want to be careful because of the breaking-and-entering issue. Let me think about it.”

  She’s disappointed that the photos won’t move things forward right away but decides she can only deal with what’s in front of them right now.

  Their evening together is surprisingly easy. Gabriel cooks marinated chops and asparagus on the kitchen grill, and Kimber makes up a brown rice, mushroom, and shallot pilaf. After dinner they sit side by side on the couch and watch a newish Matt Damon thriller, their shoulders and legs occasionally touching in a familiar way. There’s no hand holding or snuggling or tender looks. Only companionship, and a sense of having stepped out of the chaos of her life for a while. Around 11:30, the effects of the glass and a half of 2013 Shiraz she drank with dinner gone, she tells him she needs to go back to Diana and Kyle’s house so she can be ready for Saturday’s outing with Hadley. With his fingertips at the small of her back, Gabriel accompanies her downstairs and to her car.

  “Listen, there’s nothing more we can do this weekend.” He holds open the door of the Mini. “Wilson, or whoever he is, may not even realize his things are gone yet. I’m sure they were hidden for a reason.”

  “I know.” Knowing something concrete about the man in her house gives her a feeling of power. She’s tired of being worried. The unrelenting guilt is still there, tucked away in her brain with the blackmail photos, and the memory of her crime, but she no longer feels like Lance Wilson’s victim. “Thank you.” The kiss she gives him is warm but not intense, and he returns it in kind.

  Driving away, she checks her rearview mirror to see him walking back into the building. Long ago, during their affair, he would have stood watching after her until her car disappeared. She feels inordinately proud that she decided not to spend the night.

  I can do this. I can be with him this way.

  The shirt pushes its way back into the front of her mind. It had been blindingly pink, almost like a cartoon. It definitely reminded her of something.