did, especially when she’d been housebound—was like reading a diary. She’d find faces of close friends that she’d sketched hours after she’d met them for the first time, and she’d find faces of people she’d forgotten all about. Looking at Alan’s likeness, she wondered if, ten years from now, she’d even recognize who he was. Or maybe it would turn out to be the drawing she’d done right after meeting her future husband. Probably the former.
She flipped to a blank page, closed her eyes, and tried to picture Carol Valentine, the older woman who had given her the tour of the apartment. She could remember her eyes, her forehead, her hair, and her neck, but couldn’t quite picture her nose and mouth. Instead of drawing her, she drew herself; she could remember the way she’d looked that morning in the mirror of the bathroom. Her hair, recently cut, tucked behind one ear. Her eyes a little puffier than usual from the long, dehydrating flight. But she gave herself a slight smile, a smile that ended up looking like the frightened smile of a nervous bridesmaid about to deliver a speech. It didn’t quite capture her mood, but she left it as it was. She almost never erased her self-portraits.
On the next page, she drew Sanibel, the doorman she’d just met. Instead of drawing just his face, she drew him standing next to his desk, and she added Sanders down by his legs. She was not used to drawing cats, and Sanders looked wrong, menacing when he was anything but.
She slid the sketchbook under the bed and stood. She was hungry again, went to the kitchen, and ate some bread and cheese, thought about opening some wine, then decided against it. The rain outside was now slashing against the windows, and she thought, randomly, of a painter whipping a spray of paint across a canvas. She stared at the kitchen windows for a while, deciding that she loved her new apartment, not for its obvious luxury, but for its high ceilings and oversized windows. She could breathe in this place. She decided to make tea, realized she hadn’t bought any, but then found a box of Red Rose in one of the high cupboards. She filled a kettle with water, put it on the gas stove, then went into the living room. One wall had built-in bookshelves, and she looked at some of the selections. Hardcover nonfiction, mostly, although there was one complete shelf of John D. MacDonald paperbacks. She plucked one out. Darker Than Amber. A Travis McGee adventure. The cover had a pulpy image of a sexy girl in a crop top. The pages were yellowed with age. These had to have belonged to Corbin’s father, Kate thought. Where were Corbin’s books? Did he have any? Below the Travis McGee books was a shelf of other paperback mysteries. She pulled out a Dick Francis—Bonecrack—that she didn’t think she’d read yet, and brought it with her to the long beige sofa under the largest window in the room. She lay down and read the first few paragraphs, then closed her eyes and fell immediately to sleep.
She dreamed of the park, the pond now whipping and rippling in the ferocious rain. She stood under one of the willow trees, its branches yellow. George Daniels was on the other side of the pond. Kate wasn’t surprised that he was in Boston—and she wasn’t surprised that he was still alive—because in her dreams he was always alive, and he was always coming after her. He spotted her hiding under her willow tree and began to swim across the pond. Kate had a rifle with her, and when George came out of the pond, dripping and smiling, she shot him several times, the bullets pocking his shirt but not doing much else. One of the bullets struck him on the chin, and he brushed it away like it was a horsefly. He kept coming.
She woke, neck and chest filmed in sweat, then smelled something bitter and acrid in the air. She remembered the kettle, leapt from the couch, the Dick Francis falling to the floor, and ran to the kitchen to shut the gas off. The kettle had boiled dry and was beginning to smoke. She opened one of the windows as far as she could and, using a hand towel, put the smoldering kettle on the windowsill. The rain striking it made sharp hissing sounds. Something about the near-disaster made tears spring to