see.”
He points behind me.
“Look.”
I turn and find my reflection in a mirror at the other side of the room. Even from here, my scar is visible, a streak of white lightning cutting across my face.
“Denham,” Paul says, stopping at my desk. “Got a minute?”
I glance up from my computer. “What’s up?”
“I’m about to ruin your life.”
“I got news for you, Paul.”
“Funny. Look, everything I’ve got on my calendar this week,” he says, “I need you to cancel and reschedule for two weeks from now.” I stare at him. “Well, most things. Anything involving ads or sponsorships, offer Lauren in my place. If they’re not willing to talk to her, tell them it has to be two weeks from now.”
“If they’re not willing to talk to me, tell them we don’t want their money,” Lauren calls from her desk and Paul grins.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“If you needed to know, you’d know.”
He slips into the office and when I look to Lauren, she’s smiling at her screen because whatever it is, she’s been told. It’s clearly above my pay grade.
“You know,” she says lightly, without looking at me, “while Paul’s doing his thing, you’re going to have to make my coffee.”
At lunch, my phone rings. Ripley’s Auto Repair. My car is ready; all I have to do is drive it out of there. It was Patty’s. A ten-year-old Buick she put in storage as soon as the doctors told her she shouldn’t be on the road anymore. She handed it over to me and told me I’d be a fool not to make use of it and I guess I was; I paid the storage fees and let it rot. It wouldn’t start when I tested it this weekend. An expensive mistake, but now it’s fixed.
I use my lunch break to pick it up, handing over the cash in exchange for the keys. I stand at the driver’s side so long, someone asks me if there’s a problem.
“No problem,” I say faintly.
I press my lips together and reach for the door handle, noticing the tremor in my hand. I fumble it open and get inside, adjusting the seat, putting the keys in the ignition. The sound of the engine coming to life, the feel of it—is terrifying. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I open them and push on the gas. I forget to put the car in reverse, slamming the brakes before I can crash into the garage wall and take Ripley out with it. It earns me some disgusted looks. I turn the radio on and try to focus on the music as I back out, onto the road.
The first car that pulls up behind me makes me want to stop completely and abandon the Buick at the intersection. I fight the instinct to close my eyes. My knuckles ache from their death grip on the wheel. By the time I’ve made it to my apartment, my body is wound so tight, I can barely get out of the car and when I’m finally able, I stand in front of it, staring at my warped reflection in its body, one hand clutching the keys, the other against my cheek, my scar, my heart fluttering weakly in my chest like I just did some brave and wild thing.
* * *
I wake up in the middle of the night gasping and soaked in sweat, a nightmare slowly receding to the corners of my mind. I grasp at its edges until I can conjure what shocked me back into consciousness: a shape at the end of my bed, slowly taking form, a man.
His hands reaching to me in the darkness.
I haven’t dreamt of him in a long time.
2013
Bea wakes alone, moonlight spread across her unclothed skin.
Goose bumps prickle over her body, she feels the air against her back, the absence of Lev, and she knows that something is wrong. It isn’t just that he’s not with her. It’s something else, something more, and she’s afraid of it. Her eyes flutter open slowly. She rolls over in their bed. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness and when they do, she finds him sitting at the window seat, facing her.
Lev, she whispers and he doesn’t respond.
His silence is powerful, intimidating at the best of times, but this … this reminds her of coming home two years ago to a quiet, dark house, to the swing in the front yard unmoving, and knowing deep in her