Page 68 of Letters From A Stalker

My motorcycle has been sitting beneath the porch light for several hours, dark metal reflecting the glow from the house. I pull on my gloves, fasten the helmet and start the engine, waiting until the vibration settles beneath me before easing away from the curb.

Home is west. I turn east. At this point, there is no internal debate worth documenting. Julia’s neighborhood has become familiar enough that I no longer need navigation. The black envelope presses against my chest every time I lean into a turn. By the time I reach Julia’s street, it’s after eleven. I kill the engine before the last turn and coast as far as I can before using my feet to guide the motorcycle toward the familiar line of trees.

Her house is quiet. A light remains on in the hallway downstairs, and another softer glow comes from somewhere deeper inside, but the living-room television is dark. I can’t see Julia. I stood beside the bike for a while anyway. For the first time since I began coming here, I don’t need to see her. I know she’s home. Her Ford is in the driveway. I take the envelope from inside my jacket. The black paper looks almost blue beneath the weak spill of light from the street. My thumb passes over the raised red seal on the back before I turn it over.

Two words are written across the front. Little Ember. I stare at them for a moment. The name still feels like hers in a way Julia doesn’t. Not because Julia is wrong, because Julia is the woman everybody else sees — competent, controlled, funny when she wants to be, helpful almost to the point of self-erasure. Little Ember is the thing underneath. The heat she keeps banked so low she has convinced herself it barely exists. I know better. The letter says more than I should know. Not enough to expose me, but enough to frighten her, and I’m aware of that too. There is no medical justification tonight, no vulnerable patient I’m worried about getting safely home, no concern I can stretch until it almost resembles ethics. I am standing in the dark outside a woman’s house with an anonymous letter in my hand because I want something from her.

I want to enter her life somewhere Dr. Blackwood can’t. The honesty of that should stop me. Instead, I slip the envelope inside my jacket again, leave the protection of the trees and cross the road. Her porch light reacts to my movement before I reach the steps, spilling warm illumination across the path and forcing me to pause until I’m certain nothing inside the house changes. No footsteps, no upstairs light, no shadow moving behind the glass. I continue to climb the porch slowly. Her house looks different from here than it does from the woods. More personal. The swing at one side still carries cushions she hasn’t taken in for the season, and a pair of shoes sits near the door beside a planter that probably should have been declared dead several weeks ago. For a moment, I pictured her standing here tomorrow morning — hair still damp from the shower, work bag over one shoulder, already thinking about something waiting at the office. Then she’ll see it. I crouch and take the black envelope from my jacket. The red wax catches beneath the porch light.

I step away from the door, cross the porch and disappear back toward the darkness before the motion light has time to turn off. Behind me, the envelope remains where I left it.

The first thing I have given her that she never asked for. And as I wheel the motorcycle far enough down the road to start the engine without making my presence known, I realize I’m no longer wondering whether there will be a second.

13

Julia

Monday morning begins with the kind of silence that should immediately tell me something has gone terribly wrong. There is no alarm vibrating against the nightstand, no half-conscious attempt to bargain with myself for another five minutes and no distant sound of the coffee maker downstairs because, despite owning one with a timer, I have never once managed to remember to set the damn thing the night before. There is only pale morning light creeping around the edges of the bedroom window and the suspiciously rested feeling of someone who has slept far longer than she had any right to.

I open one eye, reach blindly for my phone and bring the screen close enough to my face to read it. 7:18. For several seconds, I simply stare at the numbers while my brain tries to convince itself they must belong to another time zone. Then reality arrives all at once.

“Oh, fuck me.”

I throw the covers back hard enough to send the comforter halfway onto the floor and get out of bed with considerably more enthusiasm than coordination. One foot catches in the sheet, my shoulder clips the edge of the bedroom door on the way to the bathroom and somewhere between brushing my teeth and turning on the shower, I realize I have absolutely no memory of silencing my alarm. Apparently, once in a blue moon, sleeping Julia has become technologically proficient. Excellent.

My usual morning routine requires somewhere between fifty minutes and an hour depending on how cooperative my hair decides to be, which means today I have approximately half that and no room for standards. I shower quickly, twist my hair into a low knot while it is still slightly damp and apply enough makeup to suggest I slept accidentally rather than voluntarily, losing forty-three minutes of my life. The black trousers I planned to wear are wrinkled, so I abandon them for another pair and pull on a dark green sweater that has the enormous advantage of looking presentable without requiring an iron.

By the time I make it downstairs, one earring is still in my hand and I am attempting to fasten it while walking toward the kitchen. My stomach growls.

“I know.”

Breakfast can happen on the way, coffee cannot. There are limits to human adaptability. I shove a pod into the machine, fill the reservoir and press the button while digging through the refrigerator for anything portable enough to eat in the car without creating a traffic hazard or leaving me with stains on my shirt. Behind me, the machine makes a low mechanical complaint, sputters once and goes silent.

I close my eyes. “No.”

I press the button again. The light blinks at me. Nothing happens.

“You cannot possibly choose today to develop a personality.”

I lift the lid, check the pod as though I possess any meaningful technical knowledge about coffee machines. I close it again and press the button harder, because years of human innovation have taught us that if an appliance refuses to cooperate, increasing the emotional intensity of your finger is obviously the next diagnostic step. The machine produces another dying noise. I stare at it. It stares back in the only way an inanimate object possibly can, which somehow still feels smug.

“Fine. Die. Fuck you.”

Daniel will bring me coffee anyway. He usually does on Mondays, partly because he loves me and partly because years of working together have taught him that caffeinating me before nine is less an act of friendship than preventative workplace maintenance. I grab my bag, shove my phone inside and head toward the front door while trying to slide one foot into my shoe without stopping. My hand closes around the knob, I pull the door open quickly, and nearly walk straight into Mrs. Pritchard.

“Oh!” The word escapes both of us at almost the same time.

The smell reaches me before I properly see what is inside. Warm bread, toasted sesame, something cinnamon-sweet and enough garlic to make my starving stomach immediately reconsider every life choice that led to skipping breakfast.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” she says, her smile widening as she takes in my bag sliding off one shoulder, the shoe I am still not entirely wearing and whatever expression is currently happening on my face. “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

“No, no, not at all. I’m just apparently competing in some kind of speed-dressing event I wasn’t told about.”

She laughs and lifts the basket slightly. “I made too many bagels.”

The phrase too many is relative when it comes to Mrs. Pritchard. Last winter she made enough chicken soup to feed half the block after deciding one pot did not look substantial enough, and several months ago she delivered cookies in a tin that could have doubled as an emergency shelter.

I glance into the basket. There have to be at least fifteen bagels inside.