“Trust me,” the salesperson told her. “When this thing starts to shriek, no one is going to stick around.”
While racing around downtown, she’d called her friend Amy, explained about the burglary, and asked if she could glom onto Amy and her boyfriend’s plans for the night. The answer was yes, of course. She tagged along on their dinner to a Thai restaurant. Kit had hoped the evening would be a distraction, but Amy was intent on warning her how burglars often targeted the same place twice, and trying to convince her to stay with them. By the time the couple dropped her off after dinner, she felt even more on edge.
No sooner had Amy and her boyfriend departed than Kit hung and set the alarms—on both the outer and inner doors to the office and on the main door to her apartment. Going through the process seemed to escalate rather than diminish her fear. What if it really was X who had broken in and what if he planned to return? Part of her regretted not taking either Baby or Amy up on their offers. But even if she stayed with one of them for the rest of the weekend, she’d have to return home at some point.
For the next hour or so she alternated between trying to watch TV and leafing aimlessly through decorating magazines. Baby called at 10:30 just to check in.
“I’m okay,” Kit lied and informed her about her purchase of the door alarms. “I just have to remember to turn them off before you and Dara get here. Otherwise we’ll all have heart attacks.”
“I’ve got a better idea for the future,” Baby said. “Fall madly in love with Dr. Holt and move in with him.”
Kit snorted. “You think he’s a catch?” she asked. “I guess I’ve been so preoccupied with everything, I was evaluating him only as a potential client.”
“Yes, I think he’s a catch. Handsome and successful. And he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
Kit laughed and said goodnight. Afterward, she considered Baby’s comment. Holt was attractive, and probably brilliant, but in light of where her most recent infatuation had landed her, she was hardly in the mood for another.
At midnight she crawled into bed, but it was after two before sleep finally overtook her. She slept fitfully and when she awoke, her heart was beating hard, as if her subconscious had spent the night in a state of watchfulness and agitation.
After making a cappuccino, she took it with her to the couch, where she sat with her legs tucked under her, forlornly watching through the window as the early morning light began to seep above the downtown rooftops and wooden water towers. She wondered if she would ever feel at ease in her home again.
For the first time she realized it wasn’t simply the break-in that had knocked her off her heels. The experience had tapped into memories from the year she was seventeen, when she’d felt unsafe in the world for the first time. It had begun one weekday afternoon, when she’d returned from school to find her father unexpectedly at home and visibly shaken. He’d seemed preoccupied through much of the winter, but she’d assumed it was related to normal work issues. The business he owned, a highly successful plumbing-fixture company, placed plenty of demands on him.
That day, however, her father explained haltingly that there were far more than normal business headaches causing his distress. A man her father had brought in as a new partner two years before had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company and fled the state. Not only was the business in ruins, but her parents’ personal assets, long intermingled with the business, were gone as well.
She’d nearly ceased breathing as she digested the news And though she knew she should be concerned about her parents, the first question she blurted out, one she couldn’t contain inside her, was, “What about college?” She’d been accepted early decision to Penn, where she’d planned to study art history. Because her parents were—or had been—fairly affluent, they were going to be paying full fare.
“We’ve already called the college,” her mother said. “They might be able to pull together a small financial-aid package for you, but there’s no way they can contribute everything. Honey, we’re sick about this, but we just don’t have the money.”
It felt as if she’d been standing on the deck of a boat with everyone else below ship, and