by Mark Lukens
“I don’t want to take any chances. You two can stay somewhere else tonight.”
“I’m staying,” Cathy said, the words coming out before she even realized that she was going to say them.
“I wouldn’t recommend that—” Detective Grady began.
“I’m staying,” Cathy said again. “This is my house,” she added as if she needed an explanation. “This is my house, and I’m going to stay.”
For a moment, from the way Detective Grady was looking at her, she was sure he was going to order her to leave for the night, exercising some kind of martial law, but he softened a little. “You can stay if you want to. I wasn’t telling you that you had to leave, just recommending it.”
“Good,” Cathy said.
Detective Grady looked at Phil.
“I’m staying, too,” Phil said.
“Okay. Leave one of your vehicles in the driveway tonight. Leave your porch lights on. And leave one of the living room lights on. Make it obvious that you’re home.”
Phil nodded solemnly, then he looked at Cathy. “I don’t want Megan here tonight. Just in case . . .” he let his words trail off.
Cathy understood. She didn’t want Megan here tonight either. She wasn’t so sure this Carlos guy was really coming, but she wanted to be alone with Phil tonight so they could talk—really talk and get everything out in the open. She should’ve done this last night; she should’ve done this the moment she found that notecard in his briefcase.
“She can stay at Arianna’s tonight,” Phil said.
“Probably not,” Cathy told him.
Phil looked a little confused.
Had he forgotten about his little escapade at the movie theater already? “After what happened at the movie theater,” she reminded him.
Phil suddenly remembered, flushing a little.
“I can always ask Barbara to watch her,” Cathy said.
“She’s our only neighbor,” Phil explained to Detective Grady. “She lives on the next block. The only other house around here.”
Detective Grady nodded impatiently, like he didn’t really care. His thoughts already seemed to be on to something else. “Look, I’m not saying this guy is going to show up tonight.”
“We know,” Cathy said. “But we want to be ready. Thank you for coming back tonight.”
Detective Grady nodded. “Sure.” He had that impatient look in his eyes again. “I’ll be back in a few hours. You two just sit tight until I get back. And be careful.”
The detective was already walking to the front door.
Cathy looked at Phil. “I need to go get Megan. Let me use your car.”
Phil didn’t question her, but he looked a little surprised. He dug his keys out of his pants pocket.
“Cathy,” Phil said.
“I gotta go,” she told him and grabbed the keys out of his hand.
Outside, she caught up with Detective Grady just as he’d reached his sedan that was parked on the street in front of their home. He turned around, hearing her approach.
“I need to ask you something,” she told him.
He studied her for a moment, waiting for her to ask her question. But he seemed suddenly suspicious, like details about this whole thing were beginning to bother him.
“I know this might sound a little strange,” she said.
“What is it?” he asked, impatient again, but she could tell that his curiosity was piqued.
She glanced back at the house, almost expecting to see Phil standing in the doorway watching her. But he wasn’t there. He could be at the living room window—there would be no way she could tell if he was watching out the windows because of the daylight, but it was like she could feel him watching her.
Detective Grady noticed her glancing back at the house, like he was making a mental note of it.
“Is there any way . . .” Cathy said. “I mean, have you ever heard of somebody doing something, or a few things, and not remembering them?”
Detective Grady didn’t answer—he just stared at her.
“I mean like sleepwalking. Or maybe amnesia. Or a fugue state.”
“I’ve heard of things like that before,” Detective Grady said. “Never came across it myself.”
Cathy just nodded at him.
“Why are you asking me this? Seems more like your husband’s area of expertise.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No.” She wasn’t ready to tell the detective anything yet. She needed to talk to Phil first, give him a chance at explaining things. “Sorry,” she added. “I told you it was strange. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“No bother.”
Cathy left the detective and walked towards her husband’s car in the driveway. Phil had to have left his briefcase in his car—she just hoped that the notecard was still inside. She wanted the calendar book and the notecard with her when she confronted Phil.
TWENTY-FOUR
Cathy
Cathy drove Phil’s Lexus down the street after the detective left. She stopped at the stop sign for a moment. She was still in the empty part of their neighborhood, among the sea of vacant lots where one day, maybe far in the future, other homes would stand. There was certainly no danger of anyone driving up behind her as she waited at the stop sign; it could only be Barbara or Phil.
Phil’s briefcase was on the passenger seat; he’d been in such a hurry when he’d gotten home that he hadn’t brought it inside with him. She wondered if he’d thought of it now, maybe wondering why she’d asked to use his car instead of her Soccer Mom Tank.
She had no way of knowing if the envelope with the notecard was still inside his briefcase. Maybe he had gotten rid of it by now. But she was pretty sure that his calendar book would still be in there with the numbers scribbled inside of it.
She opened up the briefcase and pulled out the calendar book, flipping through the pages. For just a moment none of this felt real. She almost wanted to believe that the notecard she’d found the other night had been some kind of hallucination or a vivid dream. Could her husband be having some kind of massive mental breakdown? And if so, was it trauma caused by the man in the pickup truck following them home on Saturday night that trigged this breakdown? Yes, it had been scary, but had it been so scary that it had reduced Phil to this?
No, there had to be more . . . something she was missing.
Maybe Phil’s breakdown had started before Saturday night. Maybe there had been small cracks in the dam that she hadn’t even noticed, cracks that weakened his psyche little by little until an event happened that finally destroyed that dam beyond repair—an event like the man following them home.
She studied the number twenty-fours drawn all over the calendar pages more closely now that she had more time. They didn’t seem to correspond to any of the days on the calendar, some of the numbers overlapped several days, some of them had been drawn carefully inside the squares. It almost seemed like the calendar pages were only scratch paper for Phil to draw the numbers on, almost like he was doodling—but this was intense doodling, most of the numbers were traced over and over again so heavily that they’d been etched into the paper with the pen, almost cutting through the paper. Some of the numbers had circles around them, a few had been drawn in block numbers with shadowing, making them look three dimensional.
She closed the calendar book and searched his briefcase for the envelope she’d seen last night. She rummaged through the contents, but she couldn’t find the small envelope. Maybe Phil had taken the envelope out and hidden it, or maybe he had destroyed it.
But then she saw the envelope tucked away down in the corner of the briefcase, lying by itself like it had fallen out of his leather-bound notebook. She grabbed the envelope and opened it with trembling fingers, glancing at the rearview mirror to make sure no one was driving up behind her.
Like who? Phil?
She had this vision of Phil jumping into her SUV, since she had take
n his car, and racing down the street to find her. She imagined that he knew somehow that she was going through his briefcase, that she was discovering his secrets. And what would he do if he caught her? Would he attack her? Hurt her?
Was she afraid of Phil now?
She pulled the plain notecard out of the envelope and read the one sentence typed on it. Because the sentence had been typed, there was no chance to compare handwriting samples with the words written on her paintings. She found one of Phil’s legal pads that he used to scribble patient notes down onto. She knew she shouldn’t be looking at these—she was probably breaking some kind of doctor/patient confidentiality, but she considered this an emergency. She needed to have a sample of his handwriting with her so she could compare it to the words on the painting when she got back home.
She stared at her husband’s handwriting, not sure if the lettering even resembled the lettering on her paintings; it was difficult to tell without seeing them side by side. She wondered if she would even be able to compare the two since Phil’s notes had been written in pen on a piece of paper, and the words on her painting had been painted with a brush on canvas. But maybe she could still see similarities if they were there—the slant of the letters, the curve of an e or an a. Wasn’t that how handwriting experts did it on TV cop shows?
She tore a page from the legal pad and folded it up neatly, stuffing it down into her purse. She picked up the notecard again with its one typed sentence: I know what you did to that girl.
After she stuffed the notecard back into the envelope and added that to her purse, she closed Phil’s briefcase. She was going to show the notecard to Phil tonight . . . soon. She was going to confront him about all of this. If he was having some kind of breakdown and not remembering some of the things he was doing, then maybe everything might click into place in his mind once he realized that she knew his secrets.
Maybe.
Of course, it could also be dangerous confronting him if he was really having mental problems. But Detective Grady was coming back tonight. She would wait until he was there before she had her confrontation with Phil. And she wanted to wait until Megan was out of the house.
She wasn’t going to be afraid of Phil, and she wasn’t going to be afraid of the truth no matter what it might be. Right now the need to know was more important than any dark secrets that might be hidden. If Phil was telling the truth, if there really was some crazy guy out there stalking him, and all of this about Carlos wasn’t pure fabrication, then they would deal with that together. But first she wanted to know everything; she wanted to know why he’d been hiding things from her, why he’d been calling out a woman’s name in his sleep.
“No more secrets,” she whispered. “You promised.”
She turned right and headed towards the cluster of homes in the distance, towards the “real” neighborhood, not the empty wasteland where they lived.
TWENTY-FIVE
Cathy
An hour later Cathy helped Megan get some clothes together for her stayover at Barbara’s house. Megan was already in a grumpy mood. She didn’t want to leave tonight, and she really didn’t want to stay the night at Barbara’s house even though it was only a few blocks down the street. Megan had already called Arianna and tried to get her to beg her mother to let her stay the night, but like Cathy had suspected, Arianna’s mother wasn’t going for that, possibly concerned about Phil showing up in the middle of the night, pounding on the door and demanding that Megan come back home.
But Megan didn’t argue with Cathy too much about staying at Barbara’s, especially after Cathy told her that Detective Grady was coming over, and the possibility of one of her father’s patients coming back tonight. Cathy told Megan that they believed Carlos might have broken into their home earlier (but she left out the part about the cryptic sentence painted across her painting).
“Mom,” Megan gasped, her eyes wide. “What about you?”
“We’ll be okay. Detective Grady will be here. You remember him. You met him the other night when he came by.”
Megan nodded. “Yeah, I remember.” But she still looked worried.
“Everything will be fine. Barbara’s real excited about you coming over.”
“Yeah. She’ll want to play cards or Yahtzee or something. She always does.”
“Just be nice. I don’t think she gets a lot of company. And don’t be on your phone all night.”
“I won’t,” Megan groaned as she searched through her closet even though she had already filled her backpack with night clothes and an outfit for school tomorrow.
“What’s wrong?” Cathy asked.
“I can’t find that new hoodie I got for my birthday. The pink one.”
“I don’t know how you can find anything in this disaster area.”
“Mom . . . I’m serious. I need it. Barbara keeps the AC on like fifty degrees or something. It’s like a refrigerator in there.”
“Just take a different hoodie. Your new one’s probably in the washer.”
“I didn’t put it in the washer.”
“Come on, Megan. Just take something else. We need to get going.”
Megan grabbed a gray hoodie and slipped it on. She stopped for a moment, staring at Cathy. “I’m still a little worried about you guys. Maybe all of us should go somewhere tonight. Like a motel or something.”
Cathy gave Megan a hug. “It’s going to be okay. We can’t run away every time someone threatens your father. Detective Grady will be here.” She pulled away from Megan. “Besides, this Carlos guy might not even show up tonight. Probably won’t show up.”
“I still don’t understand why we can’t all leave.”
“Because if we leave and Carlos doesn’t come, then what? We leave tomorrow night? And then the night after that? Eventually we’ll have to stay. Eventually we’ll have to face our problems.”
“So why are you sending me away?”
“We’re not sending you away. You’re right down the street.” How was she supposed to explain that she needed some time alone to talk with Phil, to find out the truth, to find out if all of this about Carlos was even real or not? “Just for tonight,” Cathy pleaded. “Barbara’s lonely and she would love some company. You’d be doing a good thing.”
Megan couldn’t help smiling. “I know.”
“Thank you,” Cathy said and kissed her daughter on the forehead.
“I just hope that detective catches this guy soon and all of this stops.”
“Me too, baby.”
• • •
Twenty-five minutes later Cathy and Megan were at Barbara’s front door. The horizon had turned dark with an approaching thunderstorm. Cathy thumbed the doorbell and a split second later the door opened up like Barbara had been waiting right on the other side of it.
“Hi, Ms. Flynn,” Megan said in a monotone voice with a forced smile.
Cathy gave her daughter a slight warning nudge.
“You know better than that,” Barbara told Megan. “Just call me Barbara. None of that Ms. Flynn stuff; it makes me feel old.”
Megan rolled her eyes at Cathy.
“Thank you so much for this on such short notice,” Cathy said. She’d almost uttered the phrase: watch Megan for us. But she had to bite back those words, knowing that Megan would have scoffed at the idea that she needed to be babysat. The best that Cathy could do was to make Megan feel like she was helping Barbara out more than Barbara was helping them. She’d made Megan promise not to say anything about the possibility of Carlos breaking into their home earlier in the day. She didn’t want to give this poor old woman anything to worry about.
“No problem at all,” Barbara said as she beamed. She opened the door wider and stepped back. “Come on in.”
Cathy followed Megan inside. There was the pleasant mixture of aromas in Barbara’s house, some kind of scented candles burning somewhere along with a faint cleanser smell. There was a deck of cards and a Yahtzee game already waiting on the coffee table in front of the couc
h.
She and Megan exchanged a secret smile.
“You be good,” Cathy said and hugged Megan, giving her a peck on the cheek.
“I will,” Megan said, pushing her away.
“Thanks again,” Cathy told Barbara as she walked to the front door.
“No problem at all. I love having Megan here.”
Cathy left, and she had to admit that Megan had been right about Barbara keeping the house very cold.
TWENTY-SIX
Cathy
Detective Grady showed up a little after seven o’clock. Phil hadn’t started on the alcohol yet, which Cathy was happy about. She didn’t want to nag Phil about his drinking tonight—and she wanted him sober when she talked to him later.
Before Detective Grady got there, Cathy compared the handwriting on the piece of paper she’d torn out of Phil’s legal pad to the words on her painting. She was relieved that the letters weren’t exactly the same. Some of the letters were very different. But she still had to consider that one sample of writing was on paper with a pen and the other was on canvas with a brush and paint. And then another disturbing thought came to her: What if Phil was someone completely different when he’d written that message across her painting? Kind of like a split personality.
Or maybe she needed to consider the fact that a man really had broken into their home today and left that message on her painting. But how had he gotten past the alarm system? And Phil must still know something about all of this if he’d written the number twenty-four over and over again in his calendar book, and because he’d hidden the envelope with the notecard in his briefcase. Was the note from Carlos, or had Phil typed that note himself in some kind of fugue state? And who was Dolores, the girl he kept calling out to in his sleep?
I know what you did to that girl.
Did Phil do something to a girl? To the girl he kept talking about in his sleep? Phil had never once been violent the entire time she’d known him, he had never raised a hand to her or Megan. Why would she think that he could’ve possibly done something terrible to a girl?
