Chapter 32 - The Woman of the House

Brian and I stand in the driveway, waving as the officers get into their car and drive off. We don’t move until they’re out of view. Then Brian turns toward me, slowly.

“What the hell was that?”

“This was all just a big misunderstanding,” I say.

Brian’s jaw tenses, making his chin look even more square than usual. I can see the anger bubbling up inside him, making his fists clench and the vein in the middle of his forehead throb. “Then why did they come here?” he asks through gritted teeth.

Seeing Brian this upset scares me. I put a hand on the side of his arm to stroke it, but he flinches and pulls away. “You heard what they said,” I say cautiously. “They thought I was the last person to see her alive.”

I can feel his question coming. I see it churning in his head as he decides whether or not he’ll let it leave his lips.

“Were you?”

“Was I what?” I need to hear him say it.

Brian swallows hard. “Were you the last person to see her alive?” Brian’s eyes scan my face, looking for the answer to the real question he wants to ask, the question behind his question.

The earth feels like it’s shifting beneath my feet as I try to figure out how we got here. The day we moved in, Brian carried me across the threshold while I yelped with excitement. Now, just a few feet away from that same threshold, Brian is asking me the unthinkable. Did I commit murder? The fate of our marriage hangs on this question, my answer. With our dream home looming over us, its dark blue siding blotting out the sun, I bite the inside of my cheek and try to regain control of my heart racing in my chest. Brian loves me, but he doesn’t love me enough to endure public scrutiny on my behalf. I take a deep breath, knowing that if Brian and I have any chance of staying together, he needs to think Helen’s death was natural. He needs to know I had no part in it.

“No. No, I wasn’t the last person to see her alive. That’s why I told the police about how I saw the nurse come back.”

“Rose,” Brian starts. He needs to hear me say it.

“Helen was alive when I left that house.” My voice is resolute.

Brian lets out a sigh of relief.

The longer you know a person, the easier it is to lie to them. Knowing someone means understanding what they’re capable of believing, their threshold for the truth. And I know Brian better than anyone. He cares too much about what other people think of him, so he’ll ignore the evidence staring him right in the face and support whatever it is that upholds the image that he’s so carefully crafted for himself. He wants to believe he married a good girl from the suburbs, that my mother volunteers abroad, and that my father loved me dearly before he was taken from the world too soon. He wants to believe the visions of the woman in the house are caused by lack of sleep. He wants to believe I had nothing to do with Helen’s death. He wants to believe me, so he will. And why shouldn’t he? I’ve been diligent in my lies to him. I’ve stacked them like bricks, slowly placing one on top of the other, careful not to disturb the ones below. And they’ve held up. All the lies I’ve told, they’ve held up. I’ve come a long way from aimlessly riding the “L” so I could put off being alone in my studio apartment. I’ve come too far to turn back now.

“I have to go,” I say as I walk toward the car.

“Go? Go where?” Brian takes a step in front of me, blocking my way.

“I have to go find Frances and make sure she’s okay.”

“Now?”

Yes. I have to warn Frances about how I lied and told the cops I saw a nurse at Helen’s house the day she died. It’s only a matter of time before Ryan and Shepard find out Frances was with me that day, so if I can just get to her first then maybe she’ll corroborate my story.

I take Brian’s hands in mine to soften the blow of the lie I’m about to tell. “Helen and Frances were close. Helen was like a grandmother to Frances. I really should check in on her.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling away from him. I start the car, back out, and drive away, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the driveway.

The main strip of town is deserted. It’s the awkward time between lunch and dinner, so the one restaurant on the water is vacant and it’s too early for the bar to be playing music. Even though the sun was shining just minutes ago, it’s fallen behind a cloud, casting the town in a dull shade of gray. I look out toward the lake, which is just as vacant as the land surrounding it. There are no boats cruising along the surface, Jet Skis flying by, or sailboats blowing in the breeze. The water is alone with itself. It’s strange to see it so bare, so exposed, but I guess this is how it’s supposed to be, how nature intended.

I drive past the ice-cream stand, toward the coffee shop. After a left turn followed by a quick right, I’m headed down a narrow road that slices through the woods on the edge of town, in search of Frances’s cabin.

For about five minutes I follow the tree-lined road. Then, just as the road curves around a bend, a gravel drive appears on my left. My car bumps along the drive for a couple hundred yards or so before I find myself in front of the brown wooden cabin Frances described.

Despite the trees being bare in preparation for winter, the cabin is still shaded by the thick, intertwining arms of the branches overhead. When I get out of the car, leaves crunch beneath my feet. It’s the only sound disrupting a quiet that seems to stretch for miles.

I make my way to the front door and knock.

“Frances? Frances, it’s me, Rose,” I say into one of the darkened windows. I cup my hands around my eyes and try to see in, but the curtains are drawn. “Listen, it’s about what happened the other day. We need to talk.”

Silence responds.

Just before I turn to walk down the porch steps, I try the handle of the cabin’s door, and to my surprise, it gives way in my hand.

It’s as cold inside as it is outside.

“Frances?” I say into the darkness.

I try the light switch on the wall next to me. The power has been cut off. Where a couch, TV, and chairs should be, the room is bare. In the kitchen, the cabinets are empty. The fridge isn’t buzzing to keep cold. The only sound is my breathing.

Upstairs is more of the same. There’s no bed, no clothes, and no personal items. I open every door and look inside every drawer for a hint of Frances, but I find none. Besides a rat that scurries over my foot when I peer inside one of the closets, I’m alone.

Outside, I walk around the perimeter of the house. In the back, there’s a fire pit with darkened coals inside. I picture Frances in her oversized coat sitting on the ground next to it, drinking her vodka while she stares into the flames. Just this afternoon, Frances was standing in the back of the church, listening to the same sermon I was. Maybe the cops spooked her. Maybe she thought she had to run from what she did. I sink onto a tree stump, succumbing to the weight of my loneliness.

Something stirs in the bushes to my left. It’s more than leaves blowing in the wind. I jump up from the tree stump and strain my neck to get a better look.

“Who’s there?” I yell out to the shrubbery. “Frances?”

Then I hear footsteps. The trees obscure my view, but I can hear them getting closer with each passing second. Just before I’m about to run back to my car, a dog jumps out from the bushes and wags his tail at my feet.

I let out a sigh of relief.

“Milo! Milo, come here!” a man’s voice calls out in the distance.

“Over here!” I yell back while Milo sits at attention by my side.

Soon, a man with an orange vest over his barn jacket emerges from the trees. “Sorry about that,” he says. “Milo usually doesn’t run off like that.”

“That’s okay,” I say, petting the dog between the ears.

“We’re mostly alone out here. He must’ve picked up your scent and got excited,” the man says.

“What about the woman who lives here?”

He adjusts the baseball cap on his head. “I don’t know a woman. I always thought this place was abandoned.”

“Abandoned? My friend told me she lived here, but I must be in the wrong place. Are there any other brown cabins nearby?”

“Not besides mine. This land is protected by the county, so the only cabins here are the few that have been here for years. And I don’t think anyone has lived here in a long time.”

Milo bounces back over to his owner, kicking up leaves in his wake. The man must be mistaken. There has to be another cabin in the woods, one where Frances is holed up with her binoculars looking up at some bird on a branch.

“Right. Thanks,” I say before turning away.

“Hey, you might want to be careful walking around here,” the man calls out from behind me.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s hunting season.” He motions to his orange vest.

I nod. Somehow the thought of men with guns creeping around the forest doesn’t scare me as much as being alone in my own house.

As I walk back toward my car, the man yells after me. “Hey, good luck finding your friend.”

I don’t respond. Instead, I just quicken my pace.

—

I drive up and down the streets of Lake Moss in search of Frances. The longer I look for her, the more confused I become. If Frances never lived in the cabin I was in today, why would she say that she did? What was she hiding from me? She said she killed Helen for me. At the time, I was shocked by what she had done, but maybe I should have been more appreciative. Who knows what Helen would have told Vick, or Brian for that matter. I think about Frances standing over Helen with a crazed determination in her eyes. I thumb the scratches along my arm and wonder if she ever stood over my sleeping body in the same way. The truth is, I don’t know if Frances was the one haunting me, but I do know she did me a favor by killing Helen—maybe the biggest favor anyone has ever done for me—and I thanked her by running out the door. Now, I’ve lost the only real friend I ever had.

The street names blur together. My eyes are heavy as the streetlights slant. I turn down Maple only to realize I’ve been up and down this street twice now. I take a left on Lawn but somehow end up back on Chestnut, and when I turn right, I’m back on Maple.

I pull up next to the lake and put the car in park so I can think about what to do next. My phone buzzes in the cup holder. Brian.

Where are you???

My fingers hover over the keyboard for a moment.

I’m sorry, but Frances is upset. She and Helen were close. I’m going to stay with her for a while.

Lie. Lie. Lie. Three dots appear after I hit send, then they disappear, going back to wherever they came from. I rest my head on the steering wheel. My phone slips from my fingers. I have to rest my eyes. Just for a second. Then I’ll find Frances. She’ll be back. She always comes back. My head is buzzing. No, the floor is buzzing. I’ll get it in a second. Right now, I’m too tired. I just need to sleep…