Collapsible

by Buchanan, Ruth;

  “You do sound tired.”

  Rachel heard water running in the background. She pictured Lynn in her warm kitchen, washing her hands before sitting down to a delicious dinner with her little family. Rachel looked around her messy apartment and wondered when it had all gone so wrong.

  “I’ll bring you some leftovers when I come by tomorrow.”

  “You’re coming by tomorrow?” Rachel perked up.

  “To help you pack, remember?”

  “But not tomorrow,” Rachel said, confused. “Tomorrow night’s Friday. Ethan has jiu jitsu class, doesn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll come by later in the weekend, then.”

  “Which night?”

  “Whichever. I need to stop by as much as I can before you guys move all the way out to State Road 47.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve never even been to that side of the county. Ann says it’s really peaceful out there, so I guess that’s something.”

  “Peaceful,” Lynn said musingly. “That’s a nice way to say isolated.”

  “I’ve been trying not to think about that,” Rachel admitted.

  “You know, with all of these murders that have been happening, I don’t know that you two moving all the way out there is such a good idea.”

  Rachel sighed. “First of all, the Memento Killer’s murders haven’t necessarily been in isolated locations. So moving out to the boondocks doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in any more danger than if we stayed here. Think about it! That woman from Dr. Singh’s office lived in a neighborhood just like yours!”

  “I try not to think about that,” Lynn said.

  “And second of all, we gave up our lease on this place. Most of our stuff is already packed. It’s not like we can just not move.”

  “You could always move in with us.”

  “You’re hilarious.”

  “Just for a while. Until it’s safer.”

  “Where would we sleep?”

  “In Ethan’s room.”

  “Where would he sleep?”

  “On the dog’s bed.”

  Rachel laughed.

  “Got to run. Dinner’s ready. Stop by for coffee on your way home from work tomorrow, and I’ll give you the leftovers,” Lynn said. “I want to see you.”

  “If you insist.” Rachel tried to sound put-upon. “Although I’m not very good company right now.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you that a little coffee won’t fix,” Lynn said, a smile in her voice. “A little coffee and a whole lot of prayer.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  ~*~

  While Rachel’s personal life slowly pulled apart at the seams, she strove to keep herself pulled together during the school day, at least.

  “So Romeo’s just going to the party in the first place to meet up with this Rosemund girl—” Chris was saying.

  “Rosaline,” Rachel corrected calmly.

  “Right—whatever. Rosaline. But that’s how he winds up meeting Juliet.” He shook his head, sneering. “How ironic.”

  Rachel held up a hand. “Wait, ironic?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

  Chris gave her a hard look. His dark, bushy brows drew together.

  “Better give it the Irony Test,” Rachel recommended. The class groaned. “Just do it,” she told them. The students faced off with partners across the aisle and fell into quiet bickering.

  Denise and Justin were the first to raise their hands. “We think it’s just coincidence,” Denise said, laying out her hand for a low five. Justin slapped his palm against hers and nodded at Rachel. A few other pairs raised their hands in agreement with the coincidence verdict. In the back, Ryan waved his skinny hand and shook his head vigorously.

  “It’s irony,” he insisted, “because Romeo expected to spend the evening reconnecting with that girl—”

  “Rosaline,” Rachel sighed. Nobody ever cared about poor Rosaline.

  “OK, with Rosaline. Instead, he winds up meeting this entirely new girl and falling for her and then eventually dying. So it’s irony, because irony is something contrary to expectation, and there’s no way anybody expected that to happen.” He concluded his little speech with a triumphant look, scanning the classroom for validation.

  Chris smirked. “Except for all of us, who knew what was going to happen before we even opened the book.” He pointed to a sketch of Romeo and Juliet undergoing death throes on the cover of his script. Ryan rolled his eyes.

  “I kind of see how it might be either one.” From over near Rachel’s desk, Carl piped up. His fingers ran back and forth along the edges of his desk as he considered.

  Denise nodded, thinking. “If it was ironic, wouldn’t there—I mean, I think there would be something else going on. Something to make it more… ironic. You know?”

  “What do you mean by that?” Rachel asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Denise said. A crease formed between her eyebrows and she stared straight ahead, thinking.

  Rachel could almost see Denise pulling at the mental thread, searching for where it led. She smiled slightly. “I think you might be on to something.”

  Obviously bored by all the equivocation, Chris stuck his feet out in the aisle, crossed one ankle over the other, and cleared his throat loudly. “So which is it?” he asked. “Is it irony that he meets Juliet, or is it coincidence?”

  Rachel had a sudden vision of Call-Me-Matt as he leaned toward her in the waiting room of Dr. Singh’s office, his brown eyes smiling into hers; of him walking toward her down the aisle of the church, somehow straight and firm even with his limp.

  No matter how much evidence there was to the contrary, most people associated good looks with qualities such as kindness, intelligence, and goodness. Such assumptions would give a handsome killer a distinct advantage—as, indeed, had been the case with Ted Bundy.

  Not that Rachel really thought Matt was the Memento Killer. Not necessarily. But if he were, nobody in their right mind would suspect him.

  Rachel thought of all those poor, innocent women who had made eye contact with their own killers, unaware of what lay in store for them. She wondered why, with all the publicity surrounding the killings, the victims hadn’t recognized their own danger when the mementos starting showing up. Did these women not watch the news? Had they harbored secret hopes that their situations were different and that the gifts were from actual secret admirers? Had they just been in denial? Realizing that she’d zoned out, Rachel shook her head and regrouped, focusing her eyes on Chris, who waited expectantly for her verdict.

  “I’m going to let you all think about that tonight,” she said, “and develop your own theories, which you will deliver to me tomorrow in the form of a one-page essay.”

  More than a few narrow-eyed looks shot Chris’s way for having raised the question in the first place. The bell rang. Students jotted down assignments, stuffed their books into their backpacks, and began leaving the room.

  “It was a good question,” Rachel said to Chris as he passed her on his way out. “And it actually gives people a lot to think about. It’s a little bit like comedy and tragedy, you know?”

  Chris tilted his head, lost.

  “You’re never sure what things mean until later. Just like Romeo didn’t know what his decisions meant when he was making them.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Chris said, shifting his backpack higher on his shoulders.

  “You never know when you’re going to meet someone who will change your life,” Rachel told him.

  “Like you’ve changed mine,” he joked dramatically, hand over his heart.

  Rachel laughed.

  ~*~

  “I’m so glad it’s Friday,” Rachel told Lee as they made their way slowly across the staff parking lot at the end of the day. As soon as they reached her car, she took her backpack from him and dug in the front pocket for her keys. “This week has been the worst.”

  Lee stuffed his hands into his pockets. “How’s the packing coming? Almost done
?”

  Rachel frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She pulled out her keys and clicked the button to unlock the car. “Next time I move, I’m just going to burn all of my stuff and start fresh.”

  Lee took her backpack, opened the driver’s door, and tossed the backpack onto the passenger’s seat. With a sigh, she lowered herself into the driver’s seat and flipped down the sun visor.

  Lee angled her crutches in the backseat, so she could reach them easily when she got home. She pulled her foot inside the car, and Lee pushed the door shut.

  As she cranked the engine, a blast of hot air hit her in the face. She switched off the air conditioning until it cooled sufficiently to be effective and rolled down the window. “Any fun plans this weekend?”

  “Same old, same old,” Lee said, scratching his beard. The light of the low afternoon sun behind him lit the very tips of his hair, surrounding his head in a fiery nimbus. “How about you? Just packing?”

  She sighed, squinting in an attempt to see him clearly. “A little. It’s mostly cleaning at this point. Oh, and trying not to fall and break my other leg.”

  “Yeah, maybe don’t do that.”

  Rachel slipped on her sunglasses. “I can’t wait ‘til this move is over. And the school year ends. And my cast is off. And my life stops being ridiculous.”

  “Don’t hold your breath on that last one.”

  Rachel swatted at him, but he rocked back on his heels, swaying just out of reach.

  “Keep an open mind,” he told her. “Maybe the weekend will surprise you.”

  ~*~

  It wasn’t long before Lee’s words became prophetic. Rachel arrived home to discover that a dozen long-stemmed roses had been delivered to the apartment. Printed in careful block letters on the accompanying card were two small words.

  For you.

  12

  “I just don’t know how he got our address!” Rachel fumed. She smashed her fork into a pile of hash browns so forcefully that everything came loose and fell off. She growled at her plate.

  “How do you know they’re from Call-Me-Matt?” Ann asked.

  “Who else would they be from?”

  Lynn slid into the booth next to Ann. “What did I miss?” She reached for Rachel’s water, moved the straw aside, and took a long, gulping drink.

  “Not much. Just Rachel having an epic freak-out over the fact that some secret admirer sent her roses.”

  “It’s not a secret admirer. It’s Call-Me-Matt,” Rachel said, turning her fork sideways and using a single tine to drag soggy bits of hash browns from a pool of Ranch dressing. “It has to be. I told you guys he was creepy.”

  “Not necessarily.” Lynn signaled a waiter. “Remind us again why roses are creepy?”

  “Thank you,” Ann said to Lynn, as if Lynn’s question had confirmed something.

  Lynn ordered a green salad and polished off Rachel’s water as she waited for her own. “I can’t stay long. I just dropped Ethan off at jiu jitsu and Alex has a work thing tonight, so I have to pick him back up in less than an hour. Fill me in.”

  Rachel told her about finding the roses and went on to describe how she had spent the rest of her Friday afternoon. “First I called the church to be sure he hadn’t gotten my address from the office.”

  “And?” Lynn asked around a mouthful of salad.

  “The church secretary now officially thinks I’m insane. But she said nobody’s called about my address. Then I called Dr. Singh’s office…”

  Ann paused mid-chew. “You didn’t.”

  “I did. And the receptionist there wound up thinking I was trying to get info on Matt and gave me a huge lecture about patient-physician confidentiality, and now she also thinks I’m insane.”

  “Do you blame her?” Ann asked, shaking her head.

  Rachel jabbed her fork at her eggs and sighed. “I just want to know how he got our address.”

  “Hold up, there, Nancy Drew,” Ann said. “How about we step back from the assumption that the roses came from Matt.”

  “And I ask again, who else would they come from?” She let out an undignified little snort. “The Memento Killer?”

  Lynn and Ann exchanged a look.

  “What?” she asked.

  Lynn put down her silverware. She leaned over and patted Rachel’s arm. “First of all,” Lynn said patiently, “Let’s not joke about ongoing murder investigations. What if one of the victims’ families were sitting nearby?”

  Rachel swiveled her head in a panic and slumped slightly in her seat. “Sorry,” she muttered, although to whom exactly she was apologizing seemed unclear.

  “Second,” Lynn continued, “If we tell you, you’re going to have to promise to hear us out.”

  “If you insist.”

  “Without interrupting,” Ann put in.

  “I can do that.”

  Ann rolled her eyes, but Rachel gestured for Lynn to continue. She forked a huge bite of hash browns into her mouth, zipped her lips shut, and threw away the key.

  “Ann and I think—”

  “Wait, wait, wait—” Rachel reached up a hand to block bits of hash brown from flying out of her mouth. “You guys have been talking about me behind my back?”

  “I knew it.” Ann balled up her napkin and threw it across the table. “You didn’t even let her get through one sentence.”

  Lynn reached over to pick the napkin out of Rachel’s food. “Of course we talk about you, Rachel.” she said. “We love you.”

  “And what happened to not interrupting?” Ann glowered. “Honestly.”

  Rachel took a deep breath through her nose. “Please continue.” She took another savage bite.

  Lynn began again. “We think that perhaps Lee—”

  Rachel made a choking noise and began gagging on her half-swallowed bacon. Eyes watering, she reached for a fresh napkin and coughed into it.

  Ann sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and closed her eyes.

  Lynn leaned forward on her elbows and steepled her long fingers. “Rachel. Listen. You and Lee have a very special connection. I wasn’t around when he was in high school, but I know what happened, what you meant to him. How you looked out for him and supported him. That’s something I’ve always really respected about you—how much you invest in your students. Especially the ones who don’t have good parents.” Lynn paused.

  Rachel stared, close-lipped and unblinking. She would not interrupt again. She would sit there and chew her bacon until the skies fell around their ears.

  “But like it or not, Lee’s not a kid anymore,” Lynn continued. “He’s a genuine, grown-up man, with a car and a college degree and a job. He’s one of your colleagues, and you need to respect that.”

  Rachel flared up, forgetting the resolve of only moments before. “But he still needs—”

  “Of course he does,” Lynn soothed. “Everybody does. That’s not my point.”

  Ann pointed her fork at Rachel. “Interrupt again, and I’ll put you in a headlock.”

  Rachel glared, but she shut her mouth.

  “The point is,” said Lynn, “no matter what Lee needs, or no matter what you think he needs, he may not need it from you. When you were his teacher, your mothering role made sense. Now he’s your colleague and a bona fide adult man. You need to stop mothering him. That’s all.” Lynn picked up her fork and resumed eating.

  Rachel opened and shut her mouth a few times before anything came out. “But—his mother…”

  Lynn nodded, swallowing. “Sure, his mother never raised him properly or gave him the care and love he deserved, but even if she had, Lee would still be an adult. And when real men grow up, there comes a time when they feel their mothers should stop telling them what to do and start trusting them to live their lives and make their own decisions. That’s all we wanted to say.”

  “Huh,” Rachel said.

  Ann cleared her throat. “Of course, there is another theory. And that’s where the roses come in.”

  An
other look passed between Ann and Lynn, a look that made Rachel sit up and take notice.

  She flicked her gaze back and forth between the two as she attempted to read the secret behind their expressions. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  “We also have a theory about how you’d feel about the second theory,” Ann said.

  “I’m not going to like it,” Rachel decided. She braced for the worst.

  “There seems to be at least some evidence,” Lynn said slowly, “that Lee, well… that he—”

  “That he stopped seeing you as a mother figure a long time ago,” Ann summed up coolly. “And, in fact, may never really have seen you as one.”

  “What did he see me as, then?” Rachel asked, her fork stopped halfway to her mouth. Little bits of runny egg dribbled onto her plate.

  Ann wiggled her eyebrows, leering, her lips curling up into a suggestive smile. Lynn had the grace to look uncomfortable, most likely embarrassed for Rachel’s sake. Rachel leaned back in her seat, patently horrified.

  “You guys,” she said. “Stop.”

  “Surely this isn’t the first time someone’s said something about you and Lee,” Ann scoffed.

  “Of course it isn’t. But those have been students and people who don’t know us.” Rachel felt wounded to her very core. How could these two, the people closest to her in the world, misunderstand an important aspect of her life on such a fundamental level? Rachel set down her silverware with a clatter and folded her arms. She had lost her appetite for the day. In fact, she would probably never eat again.

  “Your eggs are getting cold,” Lynn told Rachel quietly.

  Ann waved her fork in the air. “And stop being so absurd.”

  “I’m ten years older than Lee is. He’s in his twenties. And I was his teacher.”

  Ann shrugged. “You’re not his teacher anymore, and you haven’t been for a long time. Besides, he’s a grown-up now. So it’s not like it’s illegal.”

  Rachel reached for her glass and tipped back her head, only to realize that Lynn had drunk all the water. She set the cup down with a thwack.

  Lynn signaled the waiter and asked for a full pitcher of water. “Stranger things have happened.” She raised her eyebrows. “Look at me. I married a man five years younger than I am, and we’re as happy as clams.”