here and there with stacked tiles, or large unopened boxes of Sheetrock. I moved forward into the foyer toward the front of the house, the plastic bags whispering along the floor. Something batted at my head and I jerked involuntarily, looking up at a pair of dangling wires where a light fixture would go.
I walked toward the south-facing kitchen, its wide windows helping me to navigate, hoping that one of the windows would look out onto the front driveway. There wasn’t one, so I turned back, moving in what felt like slow motion through the grainy light. The air in the house was as cold as it was outside, and smelled of sawdust and glue. I found the front door, twice the height of any normal human, and peered through one of its side windows. All I could see was the large Dumpster, something fluttering from its edge in the breeze, but no car yet. The window stretched from the floor to the ceiling, so I sat cross-legged and waited. I was an hour early.
I told myself several times during that hour that I could simply get up and leave, retrace my steps along the cliff walk, get back into my car and drive back home to Winslow. I had done nothing illegal yet, done nothing that would implicate me in any crime. I was untouchable. But I also told myself that if I did that, if I got up and walked away, I would be living in a world in which Miranda Hobart was allowed to get away with murder. Ted was dead. Eric Washburn was dead. And both might still be alive if it hadn’t been for Miranda.
I heard Brad’s truck before I saw it. He’d turned his headlights off, but the large pickup was crunching along the gravel driveway. He parked between the Dumpster and the house. It was still bright outside under the cloudless sky, and I could see Brad in the driver’s seat and Miranda on the passenger side. They were a little early by my watch, and Miranda stayed in the truck for about a minute. I wondered what they were talking about. When she opened the door the truck’s interior light popped on, and I watched Brad, an unlit cigarette in his lips, quickly put his hand over the light while Miranda swung down out of the truck onto the driveway. She walked toward the house, in that hip-swinging way I remembered, her hair tucked under what looked like a newsboy cap. As she neared the door, I stood and took a step backward into the deeper darkness of the house. My heart thudded a little faster in my chest, but I also felt an electric charge running over my skin.
I listened to a key being inserted, the lock snapping open. The door swung inward, Miranda taking a half step into the house, then pausing. The wind outside had picked up. I knew that she was letting her eyes adjust to the darkness as I had and that, for the moment, she couldn’t see me. Her face was gray in the light, her eyes opened wide in an attempt to see, and her lips slightly parted. I looked at her hand on the doorknob. She also wore gloves.
“In here,” I said.
She turned, and I turned on the penlight, pointing its beam at the floor so she could see where I was standing. As soon as she located me I flicked it off.
“Lily?” she said.
“Come in. Your eyes will adjust.”
She shut the door behind her. “Isn’t this dramatic?” she said, and Faith the college girl came flooding back to me. Sarcastic, slightly loaded, talking to me in the dim lights of some St. Dun’s party, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“Did Brad tell you what I wanted?” I asked.
She took a step forward. She wore a three-quarter-length coat, and her right hand was in its large pocket. I instinctively touched the stun gun, which was in my front pocket, its end protruding.
“He did,” Miranda said, stopping about a yard in front of me. I wanted to move backward a little bit, but I didn’t want her to hear the rustle of the plastic bags on my feet. “I was surprised.”
“Surprised by what?”
“Well, surprised by everything. Surprised you’re here. Surprised you knew Ted. But mostly surprised that you want money from me. It just doesn’t seem like you. Does it have something to do with your father?”