But it wasn’t Jake saying the husband had shot her that got to me. It was what happened next that really got under my skin. It happened so fast, it was like subliminal advertising: something the conscious mind can’t perceive but gets picked up by the subconscious. I didn’t notice it at the time. I thought about it later, at night, after Jake was asleep. I lay there in bed beside him and it came to me, what was bothering me so much. What my subconscious had seen was a smile that played on the edges of Jake’s lips when he said how this man had shot his wife, as if something about that made him happy.
I didn’t know what made me do it, but I got out of bed that night. I leaned over and made sure Jake was dead asleep, and then I crept from the bedroom. I moved unnoticed down the stairs and into Jake’s office. Silently, I lifted the painting from the wall. I went into Jake’s safe, to be sure our gun was still there, and it was. Only then, when I knew where our gun was, could I sleep.
I leave the woods now. On the other side of the trees, the land opens up into a field. The playground is in the field, though the playground, when I come to it, is completely empty, as if it’s been evacuated. There are no happy, laughing kids running across the rope bridge and sliding down the slides. There are no despondent teenagers smoking weed in the little hidey-holes. There is no one. I would have expected someone to be at the park, but there’s not and I blame it on the weather. The day has gotten darker in the short amount of time I’ve been out. It isn’t the setting sun—it’s too early for the sun to set. It’s the incoming storm. The wind has picked up. I walk around the path, in the same direction as the wind, so that it pushes from behind, sweeping me along the sidewalk. I have to fight to keep from going too fast. The swings at the park move in the wind as if driven by ghosts. The carousel spins. It’s subtle. I don’t know that I would have noticed the carousel spinning if not for the raspy creak of it as it goes round.
The path around the park is hoop-shaped. Trees surround it. I follow the path, wanting to go home, to be home, but realizing there is no point in turning around because the path is spherical. The distance would be the same whether I turned back or kept going, so I may as well keep going. There is only one way in or out of the park, and that’s through the woods and the chain-link fence. Eventually I have to go back the way I came.
I pass through the trees again. They darken around me. It takes longer than I remember to get through the woods.
I come out of the trees. At the same time, the car I saw earlier labors down the street going the opposite way as before, as if searching for me.
My mouth goes dry. It’s hard to swallow. It’s hard to breathe.
I ask myself what exactly I’m afraid of, who I think is in that car. I can’t answer. I have no reason to feel afraid, and yet I am. I walk so fast along the sidewalk now, in the direction of my house, that I’m practically running.
The sky suddenly opens and the rain comes, falling in my eyes, making it hard to see.
A car engine vibrates from beside me. I refuse to look—what I want to do is scream—until a voice calls out, “Excuse me,” and I’m so completely caught off guard because the voice is a woman’s. I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect that. I turn slowly back to find that the car has stopped on the street beside me. The driver’s window is open and this woman is leaning her head out into the rain with a kind but remorseful smile.
The rain comes down sideways, getting into her car.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m totally lost. I was wondering if you can tell me where Circle Drive is.”
I stand there on the sidewalk, getting wet. My breathing is heavy and my heart races.
She’s only looking for directions. I feel silly for being afraid. Of course she’s only looking for directions. Who did I think she was? What did I possibly think was going to happen? What did I think she was going to do to me?
“On the other side of Hobson,” I breathe. My voice is shaky and this woman can’t hear me because of the rain.
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, what?” she calls out, putting a hand to her ear.
I say it again. “On the other side of Hobson. You have to go back to the stop sign. Cross Hobson,” I say, louder now. I point in the direction I mean for her to go. The woman nods, like she knows what I mean. She says thanks. The car window goes back up, and she leaves, windshield wipers whipping back and forth across the glass though her headlights are still off. She turns around in my neighbor’s drive before backtracking to the stop sign at the end of the street. I stand there, watching her, trying to catch my breath. I should have told her that her headlights were off.
I run the rest of the way to my house, glad to get out of the rain.
I open the garage and step in, grateful when the door sinks closed and I’m alone in the garage.
I try to breathe, to process what happened. I sink down to the step.
Who did I think was following me?
What am I afraid of?
I take a second to catch my breath before letting myself back into the house. “That was quick,” my mother says about my walk, and I blame the weather. “You’re out of breath, Nina,” she says when I speak.
“It started to rain. I had to run home.”
“You’re wet. Let me get you a towel,” she says. Beneath my coat, I’m not drenched, but my shirt is spotted with rain and my hair is damp, but I think it must be my wet shoes squeaking on the floor that give me away. I step out of them, carrying them back into the mudroom.
“No, it’s fine,” I say, wiping up the wet footprints on the floor. “I’m going to go change into something dry. I’ll be right back,” I tell my mother, climbing the stairs for the master bedroom, “and then I’ll start dinner.”
I get upstairs. I close the bedroom door. I sit on the bed with the laptop. My heart still beats hard. I sit there on the bed for a minute trying to collect myself. Outside, the rain becomes a driving rain, pelting the windows. I take a quick look to be sure the windows are closed and they are.
I go to my Facebook page. Our friends Anna and Damien have announced their pregnancy on social media now. They’ve used one of those felt boards to do it. On the felt board are the words Coming Soon. Anna holds the board beside her growing belly, while Damien stands beside her, with his arm around her shoulder. Anna is radiant, glowing, wearing this stunning, rust-colored, tiered silhouette minidress, and I feel a stab of jealousy because I don’t know if the woman in this picture, happy and pregnant, will ever be me. I’m thirty-eight now. These days, they call that a geriatric pregnancy. In other words, I’m getting too old to be having kids. It makes me feel like I’m ninety years old. Jake and I are clearly not at a place to be starting our family, not when he won’t speak to me, I don’t know that I trust him and I don’t know where he is. Damien looks adoringly at Anna. She looks the same way at him. They’re so much in love, it shows. Jake has never once looked at me like that.
I go to the neighborhood’s Facebook page. I look for replies to my own post. I need to see Jake’s face. I need to know why he was here.
In the comments to my post, someone has told me that sometimes a package is mistakenly marked as delivered, though it hasn’t been.Give it another day, he suggests,and then report it. That’s not helpful.