The Woman in the Window

by A. J. Finn

  The rock face, in the glare, was flat and faultless. Nowhere to jam my fingers, nothing to seize, not a weed or a branch, not a lip of rock—just soil and scree, forbidding as a wall. I walked the width of our little cliff, scanned every inch. I aimed the light upward until the night smothered it.

  Nothing. Everything had become nothing.

  10 percent power. 1:11 a.m.

  As a girl I’d loved constellations, made a study of them, mapped whole skies across scrolls of butcher paper in the backyard on summer evenings, bluebottles drowsing around me, the grass soft beneath my elbows. Now they paraded overhead, the winter heroes, spangled against the night: Orion, bright and belted; Canis Major, loping after him; the Pleiades, strung out like jewels along Taurus’s shoulder. Gemini. Perseus. Cetus.

  In my wounded voice I murmured their names like a spell to Livvy and Ed, their heads on my chest, rising and falling with my breath. My fingers stroked their hair, his lips, her cheek.

  All those stars, smoking cold. We shivered beneath them. We slept.

  4:34 a.m. I shuddered myself awake. Inspected both of them—Olivia first, then Ed. I applied some snow to his face. He didn’t flinch. I rubbed it against his skin, sloughing off the blood; he twitched. “Ed,” I said, jostling his shoulder. No response. I checked his pulse again. Faster, fainter.

  My stomach complained. We never ate dinner, I remembered. They must be famished.

  I ducked into the car, where the dashboard light had dimmed, almost died. There it was, squashed against the rear passenger window: the duffel bag I’d packed with PB&Js and juice boxes. As I gripped the strap in my fist, the light went out completely.

  Back outside, I peeled the plastic wrap from a sandwich, shook it to one side; a strand of wind caught it, and I watched as it floated up and away, gossamer, like a fairy, a will-o’-the-wisp. I tore off a corner of bread, brought it to Olivia. “Hey,” I murmured, my fingers playing against her cheek, and her eyes drew open. “Here,” I offered, tucking the bread into her mouth. Her lips parted; the bread bobbed there, like a drowning swimmer, before sinking to her tongue. I picked the straw off the juice box, stabbed it in. Lemonade bubbled through it, dribbled onto the snow. I pushed an arm beneath Olivia’s head and lifted her face to the straw, squeezed the box. It overflowed her mouth. She spluttered.

  I lifted her head farther, and she sipped, hummingbird gulps. After a moment, her skull lolled into my hand, and her eyes slipped shut. I laid her softly on the ground.

  Ed next.

  I knelt beside him, but he wouldn’t open his mouth, wouldn’t even open his eyes. I tapped the pinch of bread against his lips, stroked his cheek as though it might unhinge his jaw, yet still he didn’t move. Panic rose inside me. I put my head to his face. A current of breath, weak but insistent, warmed my skin. I exhaled.

  If he couldn’t eat, he could still drink, surely. I rubbed his dry lips with a bit of snow, then slid the straw into his mouth. Clenched my fingers around the box. The juice ran down either side of his chin, clotted in his stubble. “Come on,” I pleaded, but liquid kept hurrying down his jaw.

  I withdrew the straw and placed another dollop of frost on his lips, then on his tongue. Let it melt down his throat.

  I sat on the snow again, sucked on the straw. The lemonade was too sweet. I drained the box anyway.

  From the car I pulled a duffel bag stuffed with down parkas and ski pants. I yanked them out, laid them across Livvy and Ed.

  Looked up at the sky. It was impossibly huge.

  Light settled on my lids like a weight. I opened them.

  And squinted. Above us stretched the sky, unbroken, unending, a deep sea of clouds. Snow sifted down in dandelion flakes, burst against my skin. I checked the phone. 7:28 a.m. 5 percent power.

  Olivia had shifted slightly in her sleep, banked herself upon her left arm, the right trailing loose along her side. Her cheek was pressed into the ground. I tipped her onto her back, mopped the snow from her skin. Gently thumbed her ear.

  Ed hadn’t moved. I leaned into his face. He was still breathing.

  I’d pushed the phone into my jeans pocket. Now I fished it out, squeezed it for luck, dialed 911 again. For a breathless second I imagined it ringing, could almost hear it, trilling in my ear.

  Nothing. I stared at the screen.

  Stared at the car, turtled on its back, helpless, like a wounded animal. It looked unnatural, even embarrassed.

  Stared at the valley beneath us, spiky with trees, a thin silver ribbon of river unfurled in the distance.

  I stood up. I turned around.

  The mountain reared over me. In the daylight, I could see that I’d misjudged how far we’d dropped—we were at least two hundred yards from the road above, and the stone face looked even more impassable, more impossible, than it had the night before. Up, up, up my gaze climbed, until it reached the summit.

  My hand wandered to my throat. We’d plunged all that way. We’d survived.

  I tilted my head back farther still, to take in the sky. And squinted. It all seemed too vast, somehow, too massive. I felt like a miniature in a dollhouse. I could see myself from without, from afar, tiny, a speck. I spun around, wobbled.

  My vision swam. Something twinged in my legs.

  I shook my head, rubbed my eyes. The world subsided, retreated to its boundaries.

  For a few hours I dozed beside Ed and Olivia. When I awoke—11:10 a.m.—the snow was crashing on us in waves, wind cracking like whips overhead. A low growl of thunder sounded nearby. I swept flakes from my face, jolted to my feet.

  That same flutter in my vision, like ripples in water, and this time my knees snapped toward each other, magnet-jerked. I started to slump toward the ground. “No,” I said, my voice raw and chapped. I swung a hand to the snow, propped myself up.

  What was wrong with me?

  No time. No time. I pushed against the ground, stood. Saw Ed and Olivia at my feet, half-submerged.

  And I began dragging them into the car.

  How did the time creep by? It seemed, during the following year, that the months were passing more quickly than those hours with Ed and Livvy on that inverted ceiling, the snow rising against the windows like a tide, the windshield creaking and popping under the weight of white.

  I sang to her, pop songs, nursery rhymes, tunes I invented, as the noise outside grew louder and the light within got dimmer. I studied the whorls of her ear, traced them with my finger, hummed into them. I wrapped my arms around his, braided my legs with his, twined my hands with his. I wolfed a sandwich, guzzled a juice box. I unscrewed a bottle of wine before remembering that it would dehydrate me. But I wanted it. I wanted it.

  We were underground, it felt; we had burrowed someplace secret and dark, someplace sheltered from the world. I didn’t know when we would emerge. How we would emerge. If.

  At some point my phone died. I fell asleep at 3:40 p.m., 2 percent power, and when I awoke, the screen had gone dark.

  The world was silent, except for the scream of wind, and Livvy, tugging breaths from the air, and Ed, a faint crackle in his throat. And me, sobs guttering somewhere in my body.

  Quiet. Absolute quiet.

  I came to in that womb of a cabin, my eyes bleary. But then I saw light leaking into the car, saw the dim glow behind the windshield, and heard the silence the way I’d heard the noise. It inhabited the car like a living thing.

  I uncoiled myself and reached for the door handle. It clacked reassuringly, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  No.

  I scuttled on my knees, rolled onto my aching back, crammed my feet against the door and pushed. It budged against the snow, then stopped. I kicked the window, clopped it with my heels. The door stuttered open. A little avalanche piled into the car.

  I slithered outside on my stomach, crushing my eyes shut against the light. When I opened them again, I could see dawn boiling over the distant mountains. I rose to my knees, surveyed the new world around me: the valley, drenched in white; that far
away river; the plush snowfall beneath my feet.

  I swayed on my knees. And then I heard a crack, and I knew it was the windshield collapsing.

  I sank one foot then the other into the snow, stumbled to the front of the car, saw the glass staved in. Back to the passenger door, back inside. Once more I pulled them from the wreckage, Livvy first, then Ed; once more I arranged them side by side on the ground.

  And as I stood above them, my breath steaming before me, my vision went fuzzy yet again. The sky seemed to bulge toward me, pressing upon me; I crumpled, eyelids clenched, heart hammering.

  I howled, a wild thing. I turned onto my stomach, flung my arms around Olivia and Ed, clutched them to myself as I whimpered into the snow.

  That was how they found us.

  67

  When I wake on Monday morning, I want to speak to Wesley.

  I’ve twisted myself in the sheets, have to peel them from my body, like apple skin. Sun is pouring through the windows, lighting up the bedclothes. My skin glows with heat. I feel oddly beautiful.

  My phone is on the pillow beside me. For an instant, as the ring purrs in my ear, I wonder if he might have changed his number, but then I hear his voice boom, unstoppably loud as ever: “Leave a message,” he commands.

  I don’t. Instead I try his office.

  “This is Anna Fox,” I tell the woman who answers the phone. She sounds young.

  “Dr. Fox. It’s Phoebe.”

  I was wrong. “I’m sorry,” I say. Phoebe—I worked with her for almost a year. Definitely not young. “I didn’t recognize you. Your voice.”

  “That’s all right. I think I’ve got a cold, so I probably sound different.” She’s being polite. Typical Phoebe. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Is Wesley available?” Of course, Phoebe’s quite formal, and will probably call him—

  “Dr. Brill,” she says, “has sessions all morning, but I can ask him to give you a buzz later.”

  I thank her, offer my number—“Yes, that’s what I have on file”—and hang up.

  I wonder if he’ll call back.

  68

  I head downstairs. No wine today, I’ve decided, or at least not this morning; I need to keep a clear head for Wesley. Dr. Brill.

  First things first: I visit the kitchen, find the stepladder as I left it, leaning against the basement door. In the morning light, almost combustibly bright, it looks flimsy, preposterous; David could knock it down with a smash of his shoulder. For an instant, doubt tiptoes into my brain: So he’s got a woman’s earring on his bedside table; so what? You don’t know that it’s hers, Ed said, and that’s true. Three small pearls—I think I’ve got a similar pair myself.

  I watch the ladder as though it might walk toward me on its spindly aluminum legs. I eye the bottle of merlot gleaming on the counter, next to the house key on its hook. No, no booze. Besides, the place must be littered with wineglasses by this point. (Where have I seen something like that? Yes: that thriller Signs—middling film, splendid Bernard Herrmann–esque score. Precocious daughter strews half-drunk cups of water everywhere, and they end up deterring the space invaders. “Why would aliens come to Earth if they’re allergic to water?” Ed ranted. It was our third date.)

  I’m getting distracted. Up to the study with me.

  I park at my desk, slap my phone next to the mouse pad, plug it into the computer to charge. Check the clock on the computer: just past eleven. Later than I thought. That temazepam really put me under. Those temazepams, technically. Plural.

  I look out the window. On the other side of the street, right on schedule, Mrs. Miller emerges from her front door, soundlessly shutting it behind herself. She’s in a dark winter coat this morning, I see, and white breath flows from her mouth. I tap my phone’s weather app. Twelve degrees outside. I stand, pad to the thermostat on the landing.

  I wonder what Rita’s husband is up to. It’s been ages since I saw him, since I looked for him.

  Back at my desk, I gaze across the room, across the park, at the Russell house. Its windows loom empty. Ethan, I think. I’ve got to get to Ethan. I felt him waver last night; “I’m scared,” he’d said, his eyes gone wide, almost wild. A child in distress. It’s my duty to help him. Whatever has happened to Jane, whatever has become of her, I must protect her son.

  What’s the next move?

  I chew my lip. I log on to the chess forum. I start to play.

  An hour later, past noon, and nothing has occurred to me.

  I’ve just kissed the bottle to the wineglass—again, it’s past noon—and think. The problem has been droning in the back of my mind like ambient noise: How to reach Ethan? Every few minutes I glance across the park, as though the answer might be scrawled on the wall of the house. I can’t call his landline; he doesn’t have his own phone; if I were somehow to attempt to signal to him, his father—or that woman—might see me first. No email address, he told me, no Facebook account. Might as well not exist.

  He’s almost as isolated as I am.

  I sit back in the chair, sip. Set the glass down. Watch the noonday light crawl over the windowsill. The computer pings. I move a knight, hook him around the chessboard. Await another move.

  The clock on-screen reads 12:12. Nothing from Wesley—surely he’ll call? Or should I try again? I reach for my phone, swipe it to life.

  A chime on the desktop—Gmail. I grasp my mouse, guide the cursor away from the chessboard. Click on the browser. With my other hand, I bring the wineglass to my lips. It glows in the sun.

  I peer over the lip of the glass at the inbox, empty except for a single message, the subject line blank, the sender’s name in bold.

  Jane Russell.

  My teeth chink on the glass.

  I stare at the screen. The air around me is suddenly thin.

  My hand quakes as I place the glass on the desk, the wine trembling within. The mouse bulges against my palm as I grip it. I’ve stopped breathing.

  The cursor travels to her name. Jane Russell.

  I click.

  The message opens, a field of white. There’s no text, just an attachment icon, a tiny paper clip. I double-click on it.

  The screen goes black.

  Then an image begins to load, slowly, band by band. Grainy bars of dark gray.

  I’m transfixed. I still can’t breathe.

  Line upon line of darkness on-screen, like a curtain slowly falling. A moment passes. Another.

  Then—

  —then a tangle of . . . branches? No: hair, dark and knotty, in close-up.

  A curve of fair skin.

  An eye, closed, running vertical, edged with a frill of lashes.

  It’s someone on their side. I’m looking at a sleeping face.

  I’m looking at my sleeping face.

  The picture suddenly expands, the bottom half bursting into view—and there I am, my head, in full. A strand of hair trailing across my brow. My eyes clasped shut, my mouth slightly open. My cheek submerged in the pillow.

  I bolt to my feet. The chair topples behind me.

  Jane has sent a photograph of me asleep. The idea downloads slowly in my brain, the way that picture did, stuttering line by line.

  Jane has been in my house at night.

  Jane has been in my bedroom.

  Jane has watched me sleep.

  I stand there, stunned, in deafening silence. And then I see the ghostly figures in the lower-right corner. A time stamp—today’s date, 02:02 a.m.

  This morning. Two o’clock. How is it possible? I look at the email address bracketed beside the sender’s name:

  guesswhoanna@gmail.com

  69

  So not Jane, then. Someone hiding behind her name. Someone mocking me.

  My thoughts aim like an arrow straight downstairs. David, behind that door.

  I clutch myself through my robe. Think. Don’t panic. Stay calm.

  Has he forced the door? No—I found the stepladder as I’d left it.

  So—my hand
s are shivering against my body; I lean forward, splay them on the desk—so did he make a copy of my key? I heard sounds on the landing that night I led him to bed; had he roamed the house, stolen the key from the kitchen?

  Except I saw it on its hook just an hour ago, and I barred the basement door shortly after he left—there was no way back in.

  Unless—but of course, of course there was a way back in: He could have just entered the house whenever he liked, using a copied key. Replaced the original.

  But he left yesterday. For Connecticut.

  At least that’s what he told me.

  I look at myself on the screen, at the half-moon of my eyelashes, at the line of teeth peeking from behind my upper lip: utterly oblivious, utterly unarmed. I shudder. Acid roils somewhere in my throat.

  guesswhoanna. Who, if not David? And why tell me? Not only has someone trespassed in my house, entered my bedroom, recorded me sleeping—but someone wants me to know it.

  Someone who knows about Jane.

  I reach for my glass with both hands. Drink it, drink deep. Set it down and pick up my phone.

  Little’s voice is crinkly and soft, like a pillowcase. Maybe he was sleeping. Doesn’t matter.

  “Someone’s been in my house,” I tell him. I’m in the kitchen now, phone in one hand, glass in the other, staring at the basement door; as I say them out loud, those impossible words, they sound flat, unconvincing. Unreal.

  “Dr. Fox,” he says, jolly. “That you?”

  “Someone came into my house at two o’clock this morning.”

  “Hold on.” I hear him pass the phone across his face. “Someone was in your house?”

  “At two this morning.”

  “Why didn’t you report it earlier?”

  “Because I was asleep at the time.”

  His voice warms. He thinks he’s got me. “Then how do you know someone was in your house?”

  “Because he took a picture and emailed it to me.”