In an instant, Ben separated himself from my arms, peeling his hands from my hair and wiping his lips, removing any traces of me from his skin. One second, we were intertwined, knotted together, whole—and the next, he was gone.
“Yeah, out here,” he said, jumping up onto the porch without looking back. “Just getting some air.”
I heard the slap of a hand against his back. That same voice, swathed in worry.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Yeah, all good.”
I heard Ben walk back inside, his shoes on the hardwood, but knew, somehow, that the person who disrupted us was still there. I could feel him, lingering, just on the other side the wall. I pushed myself farther back into the bushes, feeling the branches scratch at my skin, getting tangled in my hair, and held my breath, waiting to be found. He took a few steps forward, and I watched the back of his head emerge as he walked toward the steps, hands punched into his pockets, before looking down at the ground—at my champagne glass, sweating in the heat, little bubbles exploding to the surface. Then he leaned down, picked it up, and inspected the smudge of lipstick on the rim.
I turned around and ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
NOW
Waylon and I spent the rest of the weekend recording. It’s starting to come more naturally now: those conversations that once felt scripted and forced flowing effortlessly, like we’re two old friends, hunched over coffee, making up for lost time.
It’s Monday morning now, and I watch as he shuffles around the kitchen with a mug in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. It reminds me of Ben and me, just barely over a year ago. The easy chaos of a weekday morning. The natural rhythm of two lives intertwined, growing together like vines: me, planting a kiss on his cheek as he brushed his teeth; Ben’s fingers grazing my back as I perched on the edge of the bed, lotioning my legs. Helping him shave those hard-to-reach nooks on his neck, my razor pushing into his soft spots.
“I’m going to swing by the station first,” Waylon says, wiping a smear of peanut butter from his lip. “See if I can catch Dozier first thing.”
“Sure,” I say, blinking away the daydream. “Sounds good.”
I told him about my neighbor this weekend, too. About the confrontation on his porch and my sighting of him at the vigil; the old man in the rocking chair with a direct view into my yard. I still don’thave any evidence, any proof, but I desperately need some other angle to focus on after seeing myself on that laptop screen.
Ineedto believe there’s another explanation, another answer, outside of the one that’s starting to swirl in my mind like an apparition taking shape in the dark.
“Call you after?” he asks. “Maybe we can meet for lunch?”
I smile and nod, waving him out of the house and exhaling slowly as soon as the door shuts behind him.
I walk over to the table now and open up my laptop, launching another baby monitor video and forcing myself to watch. I appreciate his help—really, I do—but there are still some things I’d rather do without him. Like these videos. I need to watch more of them, and I’d rather do it without Waylon watching, too.
My chest tightens now as I watch myself place Mason in his crib. I start to fast-forward and the clock ticks dutifully ahead: nine o’clock, ten o’clock, midnight, two a.m. I stare at the little crack of moonlight beneath the closed door, waiting for another movement. Another shadow. Finally, I let myself exhale as soon as the sun starts to come up, illuminating his bedroom, and the clock strikes six.
The video stops. I’ve made it to morning. Nothing happened.
I lean back into my chair, thinking. I just can’t shake that image from my mind: me, standing in Mason’s nursery, staring ahead at nothing. I was under the impression that my sleepwalking had stopped once I left for college. I remember being terrified when I moved into the dorms, imagining myself waking up naked in the hallway or hovering over some random boy in bed. Running a bath in the communal showers—silently slipping beneath the water, bubbles rising to the surface until suddenly, they stopped—or, God forbid, forgetting that I was sleeping nine floors aboveground and getting the urge to open up a window and climb outside. But none of that ever happened. It slowed down considerably once I hit my teens, like the doctor had said it would, and by the time I was out on my own, it seemed to go away completely.
Only apparently, it didn’t.
And then there’s the other thing that’s been bothering me; the other little detail that seems like nothing—but at the same time, seems like something, too. When Ben and I met, I looked like Allison—half a decade younger, sure, but the resemblance was there. I didn’t see it at the time. I was so entranced by her, by everything about her, that I couldn’t possibly recognize myself in her in any conceivable way. Her age intimidated me; her body intimidated me. She was awoman, and I, a girl. Fresh on the job, fighting a naive crush on my boss, inferior to her in every way that mattered—but now, after eight years of time, I look in the mirror and I can see it: brown hair, olive skin. The almond shape of our eyes and the lank hang of our arms by our sides, long and skinny, like we don’t quite know where to put them.
And now, whoever this new girl is looks likeme.
Ben clearly has a type, and I can’t decide if that makes me feel better or worse. Maybe this new girl is nothing more than a rebound, a quick fling to help him get over a failed marriage and a lost son… but then does that mean thatIwas just a rebound, too? A rebound from Allison? I guess it isn’t unusual to have a type—lots of guys have a type—but for some reason, it reminds me of those people who buy the exact same dog when their other one dies. Instead of trying to grieve and move on, try something new, they instead decide to just replace it entirely and recreate their former life. Pretend that nothing even happened.
I know that’s not fair, but at the same time, I can’t help but wonder now what he was thinking when we met each other that night at the oyster roast: he was unhappy, Allison was unhappy, their home life a wreck. He had been out on his own and found himself quite literally colliding with the younger, bouncier, perkier version of her. How it must have felt for him that night, looking at me and imagining that he was out with his wife, hishappywife, a wife who was interested in him again, flirting with him again, hanging on his every word. A wife who didn’t have to drown her dissatisfaction with their life inpills; a wife who met him for coffee and cocktails and threw secret winks in his direction.
So that’s what he had seen in me; I had always wondered. It wasn’tmethat he was attracted to. It wasn’t that at all. I had just reminded him ofher—only I was still shiny and new, a model upgrade, not yet broken by the torments of time.
Or at least, that’s what he thought.
I shake the idea from my mind and click out of the video I was watching, selecting another one. Then another. I work my way through an entire week, then decide to watch a few a bit closer to the time of Mason’s disappearance: two months before. So far, I haven’t seen myself again, and I start to wonder it was just a onetime thing. I’m halfway through another video—it’s just after one in the morning in this one, and Mason is lying on his back, breathing deeply—when I hear Roscoe perk up on the other side of the living room. He starts to bark, and I look up to see the shadow of a man approaching the front door.
“Coming,” I yell, hittingPausebefore standing up from the table.