the anniversary, after Jonah had gone to bed, he did bring out the file. He didn’t, however, brood over it as he had before. Instead he flipped through the pages, this time without a pencil or pen, and he made no marks at all, almost as if he were turning the pages of a photo album, reliving memories. In time, he pushed it aside, then vanished into the living room.
When I realized he wasn’t coming back, I left the tree and crept around to the porch.
There, even though he’d drawn the shades, I saw that the window had been left open to catch the evening breeze. From my vantage point, I could glimpse slivers of the room inside, enough to see Miles sitting on the couch. A cardboard box sat beside him, and from the angle he faced, I knew he was watching television. Pressing my ear close to the window’s opening, I listened, but nothing I heard seemed to make much sense. There were long periods where nothing seemed to be said; other sounds seemed distorted, the voices jumbled. When I looked toward Miles again, trying to see what he was watching, I saw his face and I knew. It was there, in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth, in the way he was sitting.
He was watching home videos.
With that, recognition settled in, and when I closed my eyes, I began to recognize who was speaking on the tape. I heard Miles, his voice rising and falling, I heard the high-pitched squeal of a child. In the background, faint but noticeable, I heard another voice. Her voice.
Missy’s.
It was startling, foreign, and for a moment I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. In all this time, after a year of watching Miles and Jonah, I thought I had come to know them, but the sound I heard that night changed all that. I didn’t know Miles, I didn’t know Jonah. There is observation and study, and there is knowledge, and though I had one, I didn’t have the other and never would.
I listened, transfixed.
Her voice trailed away. A moment later, I heard her laugh.
The sound made me jump inside, and my eyes were immediately drawn to Miles. I wanted to see his reaction, though I knew what it would be. He would be staring, lost in his memories, angry tears in his eyes.
But I was wrong.
He wasn’t crying. Instead, with a tender look, he was smiling at the screen.
And with that, I suddenly knew it was time to stop.
After that visit, I honestly believed that I’d never return to their house to spy on them. In the following year, I tried to get on with my life, and on the surface, I succeeded. People around me remarked that I looked better, that I seemed like my old self.
Part of me believed that was so. With the compulsion gone, I thought I had put the nightmare behind me. Not what I had done, not the fact that I had killed Missy, but the obsessive guilt I had lived with for a year.
What I didn’t realize then was that the guilt and anguish never really left me. Instead they had simply gone dormant, like a bear hibernating in the winter, feeding on its own tissue, waiting for the season yet to come.
Chapter 29
On Sunday morning, a little after eight, Sarah heard someone knocking at her front door. After hesitating, she finally got up to answer it. As she walked toward the door, part of her hoped it was Miles.
Another part hoped that it wasn’t.
Even as she reached for the handle, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say. A lot depended on Miles. Did he know that she’d called Charlie? And if so, was he angry? Hurt? Would he understand she’d done it because she’d felt she didn’t have a choice?
When she opened the door, however, she smiled in relief.
“Hey, Brian,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Sure ... come in.”
He followed her inside and sat on the couch. Sarah sat next to him.
“So what’s up?” she asked.
“You ended up calling Miles’s boss, didn’t you?”
Sarah ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah. Like you said, I didn’t have a choice.”
“Because you think he’ll go after the guy he arrested,” Brian stated.
“I don’t know what he’ll do, but I’m scared enough to try to head it off.”
He nodded slightly. “Does he know that you called?”