if she’s said it: This is where that led.
“After all I’ve done,” she says quietly, letting go of her shirt. “After everything.”
She turns and walks back into the kitchen. I slump back onto the couch and block the number.
* * *
One night I demand a horror movie for no reason in particular; maybe I want something to jolt my system, to flick me out of this murky river of ugly, marbled feelings. I choose poorly and then panic when the bad guy pulls out a gun, creeping around the farmhouse while its inhabitants quiver with fear. I sniffle during a quiet moment and Tessa launches into action, turning off the movie, rushing to the bathroom, and returning with a box of tissues. She pats one against my eyes and cheekbones, a tender gesture that makes me cry harder.
“Too close to home?” she says after a few seconds.
I nod.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
I shrug. “Can’t decide, which means I probably should.”
She squares her listening face at me.
I suck in a breath. “I just can’t believe I…I can’t believe I hurt you,” I manage.
She rubs my shoulder.
“It’s really scary to feel like you’re not in control of yourself, you know?” I say, and she nods, even though she doesn’t know. “One minute you’re feeling sorry for yourself and the next minute you’re in a hospital having hurt your best friend. Again.”
“You don’t remember anything else?”
I shake my head. “It’s just out of reach, like when you try to remember a dream later in the day.”
“Well, listen.” She pulls back her arm and mashes her hands together. “I was there, and Lindsay, you were not trying to hurt me. You’d just told me you loved me. Seriously, you were on your last leg and you said, ‘You’re a good person.’ And it really…hearing that changed something in me. I looked you in the eyes and I decided you just had to make it, dammit, because where would I be without you? Who would I even be?” A pretty tear snakes over her cheek. “You know I’m here for you, right? I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, least of all yourself.” She squeezes my arm. “I won’t ever tell anyone anything you told me about Edie. Ever, ever, ever. And I’ll make sure Damien doesn’t, either. We’re past that. Okay?” I keep my eyes on the couch cushion and nod. “Remember that,” she continues. “Remember that. Remember that.”
This jingles something in my memory, something unsavory, and I’m still for a moment, trying to catch it. Then I look up and Tessa is smiling at me, bright-eyed, and she lunges in for a hug.
* * *
A few nights later, I’m dicking around on my computer when I stand and knock a bottle of water onto the keyboard. An entire bottle, just squarely on it like the G key is a bull’s-eye. I screech and lunge and promptly flip the entire thing upside down, and water pours out from between the buttons, a waterfall. I whimper and turn it off and jerry-rig a way to bury the keys in a beach of dry rice. Then I pop two of my sleeping pills—Tessa’s left a dosage in my cabinet, in a tiny baggie—and go to sleep.
The next morning, I hit the power button, expecting little, and find that while the keyboard’s unresponsive, the screen—and possibly the hard drive—seems mostly fine. At the repair shop, a woman with a half-shaved head tells me they can open up the keyboard and check for water damage underneath. I’m annoyed with myself but unsurprised; this is far from the worst thing I’ve ever done, left to my own devices.
I get a call a few hours later, from the same bored-sounding woman, it seems.
“So this is weird,” she begins. “Did you install a keystroke tracker on your computer?”
“No. Did you?”
“What? No, I’m saying there’s a keystroke tracker on your laptop. Which I came across as soon as I popped off the keyboard. Like a hardware one.”
It takes another few seconds for it to clunk into place. “A keystroke logger.” I know why I know what this is. Tessa installed one, years ago, to monitor her potentially cheating husband.
“Right, installed on your laptop. I mean, damaged by the water, obviously. But it’s going to cost more if you want us to replace that, too.”
Suddenly everything’s fuzzy, TV static sprinkled over my brain.
“Are you able to tell who it’s…whom it’s transmitting to?” I ask evenly.
“I mean,