Chapter 27 - The Woman of the House

For two weeks, I pretended to take the sleeping pills. Every night, Brian watched with hopeful eyes as I faked a swallow, and every morning when he asked me how I slept, I’d lie and tell him “never better.” For two weeks, he left the house with a spring in his step, believing the medicine was working and we had finally put all that “Angela business” behind us, but the truth was I was barely sleeping and the moment his car pulled out of the driveway, I was slipping out of the house to meet Frances so we could stake out Jonathan’s house.

Frances said we had to learn his schedule and nail down his routine before we could look for the diary. Even though Jonathan’s house was considered the edge of town, it was only a short drive away from mine. A couple right turns were all that separated the lavish homes on the lake and the tract housing in Jonathan’s subdivision. Every morning I’d park the car about half a block away, and from there we’d watch the comings and goings of the remaining Walsh family. And every morning, I pushed away the feeling of déjà vu. The narrow street, gravel driveways, cornhusks, tire swing, and unkempt lawns all felt familiar to me. Not from the stakeout, or from visiting Jonathan at his house weeks ago, but from something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on. Every time I tried to close my eyes to see the memory on the edge of my brain, it evaporated as soon as it started to come into view.

During the week, Teddy and Sara leave for school at 7:30 a.m. The bus picks them up just down the street. Jonathan is long gone by then. He’s out the door by 6:30 a.m. He stops to get a coffee at the gas station before he gets on the highway and heads to his office a few towns over. We know because we followed him. The kids are home by 4:00 p.m. with Jonathan following shortly thereafter. In between, the house is empty for eight and a half hours. There’s no gardener or cleaning person. Jonathan’s is the last in a row of houses that look just like his, and since the backyard borders a farm, the property is quiet.

For the first couple of days, we watched their routine without incident. When there wasn’t anything to see, we talked. Frances told me about the secluded cabin in the woods she’s lived in for the last decade or so. Her only neighbors are the birds in the trees, which is just how she likes it. I told her about what it was like living in Chicago, how I missed the sound of the train rumbling by.

It wasn’t until day three that a familiar green pickup truck pulled into the driveway of the house next door to Jonathan’s.

“Shit.” I slouched down in the driver’s seat.

“What?” Frances asked.

“It’s Vick,” I said.

“Who?”

“My gardener.”

“What’s he doing here?”

Frances and I watched as the old man stepped down from his truck, pulled a pair of keys out of his pocket, and went inside the house. When he came out, he wasn’t alone. A woman in blue scrubs was walking next to him, pushing a sickly-looking woman in a wheelchair. Helen. Vick had told me he’d be leaving early to take her to a doctor’s appointment. Vick and the nurse lifted Helen from the wheelchair into the truck, and a minute later they drove off.

—

“It should be easy,” Frances says the morning of the planned break-in. “We’ll have plenty of time to find the diary.”

“You say that like you’ve done this before,” I say with a nervous laugh.

It’s 7:30 a.m. Sara and Teddy board the bus, and I watch as it pulls away.

Fear courses through my body. I can feel it beating in my chest and flowing through my veins, making my breath short and my forehead damp with sweat. Frances seems calm and collected. Unlike me, she doesn’t look physically nervous or scared. Her frizzy hair is pulled off her face and tied in a ponytail at the base of her head. I grip the steering wheel and try to take a deep breath while Frances stares out the windshield. I wonder if she’s afraid of getting caught? If she is, she certainly doesn’t show it.

“Let’s go over it again,” Frances says once the school bus is completely out of view. “We’ll use the key under the flowerpot on the porch to get in. We’ll go upstairs to check the bedroom and closets first. Then we’ll go downstairs. If we hear anything, we go out through the back and hide in the cornfields, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. I try to focus on Frances and what she’s saying, but I can’t stop thinking about Brian. What if he finds out that I broke into Jonathan’s house? He’d leave me. In an instant. And where would I go? What would I do? He might even want to see me punished and send me to prison, or worse, have me committed. And then what would happen to me? I’d end up just like Mother.

The walk from the car to the house feels like a mile even though it’s only about half a block. Frances and I keep looking over our shoulders to make sure no one sees us, but there’s no one around. By the time we reach the porch, I’m already out of breath. I stand watch while Frances reaches under the flowerpot and finds the key. With one sweeping motion she stands, puts the key in the lock, and flings the door open.

The screen door slams behind us, making us both jump. Inside, the house is still. A sweatshirt is hanging over the railing, there’s a cereal bowl full of milk sitting on the coffee table in the living room, and pieces of a puzzle are scattered on the floor. The house, and the items inside, seem frozen in time.

Frances and I share a look. She nods toward the stairs. I go up first. The staircase is narrow and winding. When we reach the top, we see there are two bedrooms on the left and one on the right, with a bathroom in between them. Together, we peek into the rooms on our left. One door is closed with a sign taped to it that says “Keep Out.” When I open the door, it’s clear this is Sara’s room. Clothes cover almost every surface, even the small desk in the corner. Teddy’s room is across the hall. The floor is a minefield of LEGO pieces with a half-constructed airplane sitting in the center. There’s a framed photo of Angela on his dresser, the same one that was in the article about her disappearance. Frances comes up behind me.

“Come on,” she says.

Together, we head toward the bedroom on the right side of the stairs. The sheets are bunched at the bottom of the bed, unmade. I can still see the indentation where Jonathan slept. A pile of dirty clothes sits on the chair in the corner. A lamp without a lampshade is on the nightstand next to the bed. Frances opens the nightstand drawer. Besides a lighter and some cardboard coasters from Bob’s Bar, it’s empty. Frances points to the dresser against the wall while I slip a coaster into my pocket. The dresser has six drawers. The first is full of unmatched socks. I shuffle my hands through them, feeling for a diary, but come up empty. The next drawer is full of his boxers. I open drawer after drawer, moving my hands through Jonathan’s T-shirts, sweatpants, and sweatshirts. I turn back to Frances and shake my head. We both eye the closet in the corner.

The closet door creaks open. It’s a small walk-in. Frances reaches up and pulls at the dangling chain above us, flooding the closet with light. I expect to find the closet as messy as the rest of the room, but it’s not. Where clothes should be, there are boxes. I run my fingers along the marker scribbled across the side of one of them. I recognize the messy handwriting; it matches the writing on the abandoned boxes in the boathouse. Jonathan’s.

Frances and I move between the unpacked boxes, shifting them left and right, reading the labels and deciding which one to open. I move past “Teddy winter clothes” and “Sara elementary school,” and linger on “Angela clothes.” This box isn’t taped shut like the others. The flaps are folded closed, like someone has been in here recently. I pull at the cardboard carefully until the box opens. The smell of sweet perfume wafts up. Unlike the clothes in Jonathan’s dresser, Angela’s clothes are all folded neatly. I hesitate, afraid to disrupt the sweaters inside, but Frances gives me a nudge. I pick up the red sweater at the top and hold it up to me. It would fit perfectly.

Before I can put the clothes back the way I found them, Frances taps me on the shoulder and puts her finger to her lips. Then I hear what she heard. The floorboard creaks. It’s soft and subtle, but it’s there all the same. I get up from the floor and shoot Frances a look, asking what we should do. Her eyes are wide, but unlike me, she doesn’t seem panicked. The floorboard creaks again. Frances and I both hold our breath, our hearts beating in rhythm. Frances motions for me to peek out of the closet to see who it is.

Slowly, I take a step toward the closet door. I grip the side of the frame with my left hand. My palms are damp. I look back at Frances, who nods. With my body pushed against the wall, I peer out. I expect to see Jonathan standing there with a shotgun in his hand. He seems like the type who would own a shotgun. He wouldn’t hesitate to point it at me and fire, taking off the side of the doorframe and part of my head with one single shot. But when I look around the corner of the closet, I don’t see Jonathan. My shoulders relax in relief.

“It’s just a cat,” I whisper to Frances. Frances joins me in the doorway and sees the black cat sitting in the middle of Jonathan’s room, its tail sliding back and forth on the wood floor in amusement.

“Come on, let’s keep looking,” Frances says under her breath. We both turn back to the boxes. “Hey, check this out.” Frances points to a box labeled “Books.” We move the other two boxes aside and open it. It’s mostly children’s books. Frances thumbs the spines, her eyes scanning the titles. Then she stops.

“What is it?” I ask. Frances points out a leather-bound book. She wiggles it free like a Jenga piece until she’s holding it between us. There’s no title. She opens the stiff cover. On the first page, written in black slanted cursive is a name: Angela Walsh. Frances turns the page, then another and another, but they’re all blank. We flip through the journal in search of Angela’s handwriting, but there’s nothing. All the lined pages are empty.

Before I can sigh in disappointment, Frances points her index finger down toward the first floor.

“It’s probably just the cat,” I mouth. Then the screen door downstairs slams. We freeze. The closet looks like a bomb went off inside of it. Frances and I bend over in unison and frantically start putting items back inside boxes as boots thud up the stairs one by one. Frances grabs my arm and motions for me to forget about the clothes. She’s right, we don’t have time. The boots stop when they reach the top of the stairs.

“What do we do?” I whisper to Frances, but she ignores me. Her eyes are glued to the open closet door in front of us. I know what she’s thinking: It will squeak if we try to close it. The boots start walking down the hallway toward us. I swallow a lump in my throat. My damp hands are trembling at my sides. Then the bathroom door outside Jonathan’s room closes.

“Now,” Frances whispers. We tiptoe out of the closet and into the bedroom. Frances shuts the closet door behind us, the creak inaudible over the steady stream of piss splashing into the toilet water. In six steps we’re at the top of the stairs. Frances goes down first. Behind us, the toilet flushes. She isn’t moving fast enough. The sink turns on, then off. We’re not even halfway down the stairs. I have no choice; I double back up the stairs and duck into Teddy’s room just in time for the bathroom door to swing open.

The boots move down the hall. I peer out of Teddy’s room and see they belong to Jonathan. I can’t tell what he’s doing once he’s inside his room. It sounds like he’s shuffling through the clothes in his dresser, but I can’t be sure.

I try to stay calm, but pressure is building in my chest. The walls inside Teddy’s room close in on me. What is Jonathan doing home? How am I going to get out of here? I think of Alice in Wonderland with her leg sticking out of one window and her arm poking out of another. Soon, the whole house will shrink, squeezing me from the outside in.

I go to the window. Thankfully, Teddy’s room looks out over the backyard. Frances is at the edge of the cornfield, looking up at me. She motions for me to come down. I look behind me then shake my head. Then I hear a thud. And another. Jonathan is taking his boots off. The mattress springs whine under his weight. This is good. All I have to do is wait for him to go to sleep and then I can sneak down the stairs and run out the back just like Frances.

I hide behind Teddy’s door and wait. Once again, the house is still. Soon, I hear Jonathan snore. It’s deep and guttural. I step out from behind Teddy’s door, but something stands between me and the hallway. The cat. When we make eye contact, it meows. “Shoo,” I say, waving my hand, but it doesn’t work. It only makes it meow louder. I step toward it, hoping to scare it away, but it reveals its fangs and a hissing noise comes out of the back of its throat. Jonathan’s snoring stops. The cat looks up at me from under its thick eyelashes, knowing what he’s done. The house shakes as Jonathan walks from his bedroom down the hall. I think about jumping out the window, but I’d never make it. I’d break a leg, or two, in the fall. I slink back behind the door and push my back up against the wall, hoping to disappear.

“What’re you doing, kitty?” Jonathan says in a high-pitched voice. He’s standing on the other side of the open door. If he looked through the crack, he’d see me standing there paralyzed with fear. I put my hand over my mouth and hold my breath. Jonathan steps over the threshold, into Teddy’s room. He takes a deep breath, then another. “What’s that smell, kitty?” The old house adjusts itself under his weight. I lower my hand and breathe through my nose. I can smell it too. White amaryllis. It’s the perfume Brian got for me on our wedding day. My heart is in my throat. This is it, I think. I can’t lie myself out of this situation. I’ve broken into a man’s home and gone through his things with the intention of stealing his missing wife’s diary. Heat creeps up my neck and into my face. I clench my fists so hard I feel my nails dig into the fatty parts of my palms.

“Come here.” Jonathan scoops up the cat before he heads back down the hallway, toward his room. The door closes behind him.

My upper body collapses like a rag doll. My hands fall to my shaking knees that are barely holding me up. I don’t have time to catch my breath. I do my best to sidestep the creaking floorboards and dip out of Teddy’s room. The stairs are in front of me, but then I blink and I’m at the bottom of them. I know I should go out the back door, but the front doorknob is in my hand instead and the next thing I know I’m running. I don’t know where my feet are taking me except away. Away from that house, away from that man, and away from the mental health institution I’ll end up in if I get caught. An arm reaches out and grabs me.

“Hey!” I yell, almost losing my balance.

I’m pulled into the cornstalks at the edge of the property.

“What the hell happened?” Frances asks. Her ponytail has come undone. She runs a hand through the wild hair around her face while I pant with my hands on my knees.

For a moment we just stand there, breathing heavily. My face is hot and my body is shaking with a mix of fear and adrenaline. I want to be mad at Frances. I want to yell at her for putting us in that situation. But it was my decision to go into that house just as much as it was hers.

Our eyes meet. Laughter bubbles out from both of us, as if on cue. Soon, we’re holding on to each other, our forearms stacked on top of one another, our heads thrown back as we laugh at what we just got away with. Even though we didn’t find the diary, we didn’t end up in jail. “How do we get out of here?” I ask, picking at a nearby husk.

We’re far enough away from Jonathan’s house that he can’t hear us, but we’re too close to linger for long. Behind us, the rows of corn get thicker and thicker. It would be too hard to navigate our way through them.

“It’s not that far,” Frances says as she turns on her heel, expecting me to follow.

A few moments later we’re at the edge of the cornfield, right in between Jonathan’s and Vick’s houses. We’re both hunched over, low to the ground as we stare at my car parked down the street, calculating the risk. There are no trees to hide behind or bushes to shield us if we run between Vick’s and Jonathan’s properties toward the car. But we’re sitting ducks if we stay here.

“This is our best bet,” Frances says. I nod.

Together, we step out from the cornstalks. We move quickly between Jonathan’s and Vick’s houses. Grass brushes up against our ankles. Frances avoids fallen leaves and sticks. The only sounds are from the wind and our ragged breaths. The car gets closer and closer. We’re ten steps away from the street. Then, three. Just before I make it to the asphalt, I look up at Vick’s house. The curtain in the window closes abruptly, but not before I see a woman in a wheelchair. Her head is covered in a colorful headscarf and her face is slender with skin that looks like it’s barely attached to her bones.

“Come on,” Frances hisses from the passenger side of the car.

My feet are stuck. As the curtain goes still, a dark realization takes hold: Vick’s wife, Helen, just watched us run out of the field. Something tells me she wasn’t sitting at the window by mistake. Something tells me she’s been watching us for as long as we’ve been watching Jonathan. And if she saw us running out of Jonathan’s house, she probably saw us going in.