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“She gave it to you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s good.” I don’t know why this is good exactly. But I like the idea of evidence being back in Lily’s possession.
What I still can’t figure out is how it ever got in Jake’s car.
NINA
Christian and Lily live on a dead-end street. Theirs is the last house on the block. I’ve parked in the cul-de-sac at the end, where there are no homes, only trees. There is no through traffic either, which means I’m the only one here. I turn off my car and sit, staring through the dark copse of trees at their home. The porch light is on. It casts a yellow glow on the porch, making it warm and homey and snug, though I have no intent of going to the front door and knocking.
I sit there in the darkness watching. I know they’re home because I saw movement on the other side of the blinds, though I couldn’t identify them. It was just shadows passing by the windows.
There was only one other time in my life that I considered Jake might be cheating on me. It was early in our marriage. We were out to dinner when Jake and I ran into a colleague of his at a restaurant. The woman was one of the surgical techs at the hospital. She was beyond beautiful; she took my breath away and was the only person in my life that I ever remember making my husband tongue-tied. Even I had never had that effect on him. I remember at the time, Jake saying something along the lines of how he liked working with this woman because not only was she competent and conscientious at what she did, but that she was nice and easy to talk to, which came as a crushing blow because she wasn’t just a pretty face, although she was that too.
Jake swore he wasn’t flirting with her that night at the restaurant. He said he was only being nice and I let it go, but I never knew if I believed him. The irony was that even though I thought Jake might be cheating on me, I didn’t feel angry with him. I felt angry with her. I wondered how any woman could be so horrible as to pursue a married man, and I thought of that woman who had stolen my father from my mother and me and practically ruined our lives. I remember that I went to Jake’s hospital once. I sat in the parking lot in my car, waiting for this beautiful surgical tech to leave and when she did, I followed her to an apartment where she lived, and then I sat and watched from that parking lot, fantasizing about ways to ruin her life. I thought of many. I never acted on any of it. It was therapeutic enough just to imagine all the awful things I could do to her if I was so inclined.
My anger is exponentially worse because Lily is supposed to be my friend.
Has Jake left me for Lily? Or did Christian find out and do something to Jake?
I’m sitting in the front seat of my car. The time on my phone reads nine twenty-eight when the front door of Christian and Lily’s house unexpectedly opens. I sit more upright in my chair. Christian appears in the doorway, looking out. He lets his gaze run over the street and I think at first that I’ve been caught. I watch as Christian steps out of the house. He’s alone; Lily isn’t with him. He turns back to the door to pull it closed behind him, and then he’s practically floodlit in the porch lights. Because of the lights, he’s easy to see, wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, holding a plastic bag in his hand and, as I watch, he steps from the porch with the bag, making his way toward the trash cans at the end of the driveway.
I sink low in my seat as Christian approaches. My car can’t be thirty feet away, though it’s shrouded in darkness. The porch lights don’t reach this far so Christian is far less conspicuous here, no longer spotlighted. Now he’s a mere silhouette. I can only make out the contour of him, blending into the darkness of the street.
Christian doesn’t go to the garbage bins to throw the bag away as I expected. Instead, he walks straight past them and I watch, entranced, as he comes to the street, turns and walks along the edge of it with the plastic bag suspended from his hand. I sit motionless, watching through the windshield as Christian grows smaller with the distance. He walks so far that eventually I can’t see his silhouette. My curiosity gets the best of me and I decide to follow him. I wait in the car a few more seconds, and then I press the switch on the interior lights so that they don’t turn on when I open the door. I don’t want to be visible. I slip from my car, pushing the door gently closed and setting it back into place. I don’t slam it. I stand immobile after I do, making sure Christian didn’t notice me getting out of the car.
Darkness wraps its arms around me. The night air is cool. You can smell fall in the air, the earthy scent of things dying.
I tread softly in the direction that Christian went. Christian and Lily’s neighborhood is wooded. Tree branches hang over the street, moving like arms. The homes are old and there are no sidewalks and very few streetlights, which leaves long stretches of blackness where the light doesn’t reach. The street itself is uneven and potholed. I have to be careful where I step, so that I don’t trip and fall. I’ve lost sight of Christian up ahead. Still I follow, listening for footsteps, hearing only the movement of fallen leaves as they scatter across the street in the cool breeze.
Suddenly I’m startled by the low creaking sound of a screen door opening from somewhere behind me. I wheel around as the door slams emphatically closed. I wonder if it’s Lily, if Lily saw me or if she’s come outside looking for Christian. I stand in the middle of the empty street. My eyes take stock of the homes behind me. It’s not Lily. A house back, someone has stepped outside. I wouldn’t know it, except that I see the flare of a match and then an amber glow like from the end of a burning cigarette.
I turn back around. I keep walking, catching a flash of Christian in the distance as he climbs a small hill. The land here is rolling, because of the proximity to the river. Christian is about thirty or forty feet up, suddenly manifested in the halo of light that comes from a streetlight. He’s there, and then he’s gone again, devoured by darkness, descending the other side of the hill.
I pass quietly across the street. I walk along the opposite edge of it, in the grass, taking long strides to catch up, so that my breathing becomes heavy and audible from exertion. I try to suppress it, to hold my breath, to remain invisible and silent.
I catch another glimpse of Christian when the light hits him. I watch from a distance as he comes to a stop, standing at the end of someone’s driveway. He takes a quick assessment of the street. He’s reached his destination.
I watch as Christian moves toward this neighbor’s garbage bin, which, like Christian’s, is parked at the end of the driveway. I’m at a loss. I watch, confused, as he opens the lid and sets the plastic bag he’s been carrying inside. He then gently lowers the lid. He sets it closed, so that it doesn’t make a sound. He reassesses the street, and then leaves, heading back the way he came. He wastes no time in getting back to his house, walking faster now than he did to get here. He walks past me without even knowing it. I become inanimate as he does, holding my breath, waiting until Christian is gone, and then I pass quietly across the street.
I go to the house where Christian just was. I go to the garbage bin and lift the lid. I use my phone’s flashlight to search inside. The bin is practically full to capacity, so that I don’t have to reach too far to find Christian’s plastic bag.
I take the plastic bag out and set the lid of the garbage bin slowly closed. The bag is knotted at the handle. I pick at the knot, but when the knot doesn’t easily give, I take the bag back to my car with me.
Back in my car, I work at the knot. I lose patience after a while and tear through the plastic with my fingernails. I reach inside the hole I’ve made to pull items out. It’s dark in my car. I don’t want to turn on the car and risk making myself any more visible than I already am. I try to make do with the negligible light. It’s hard to see. I have to feel with my hands, running my fingers over fabric, relying on touch to make out the shape of things. Lying on my lap are items of clothing. I feel buttons and lace. I hold them up one at a time to the inadequate light from the touch screen, which came on when I opened the door.
My eyes, my mind can’t process at first what I’m seeing.
Just as I start to make out the reddish-brown stain on the fabric, the quiet drum of knuckles on the driver’s window makes me scream.
CHRISTIAN
Ithink someone is following me as I make my way home.
I don’t know what it is exactly that makes me think this, if it’s some sixth sense or if it’s something I hear or subliminally see. The night is mostly silent. It’s still. If you’re quiet, you can just make out the sound of someone walking along the river, on the other side of houses. There are voices and then a high-pitched giggle. Kids. You can hear traffic in the distance, too, though it’s far-off and subdued. A rabbit darts across the street in front of me as a dog barks, and then there is something else, something closer, slight and subtle but nagging and persistent.
I don’t know what that is.
