Anderson sneers behind me. “Why don’t you leave Manderley?”
I check the intercom monitor. A tall man, broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, with a bold widow’s peak. It takes me a moment—I’m used to seeing him in living color—but then I recognize Alistair Russell.
“Now what might you be after?” I say, or think. I think I say it. Definitely still drunk. I shouldn’t have popped those pills before, either.
I press the buzzer. The latch clacks; the door groans; I wait for it to shut.
When I open the hall door, he’s standing there, pale and luminous in the dark. Smiling. Strong teeth bolting from strong gums. Clear eyes, crow’s feet raking the edges.
“Alistair Russell,” he says. “We live in two-oh-seven, across the park.”
“Come in.” I extend a hand. “I’m Anna Fox.”
He waves away my hand, stays put.
“I really don’t want to intrude—and I’m sorry to disturb you in the middle of something. Movie night?”
I nod.
He smiles again, bright as a Christmas storefront. “I just wanted to know if you’d had any visitors this evening?”
I frown. Before I can answer, an explosion booms behind me—the shipwreck scene. “Ship ashore!” the coastliners wail. “Everybody down to the bay!” Much hubbub.
I return to the sofa, pause the film. When I face him again, Alistair has taken a step into the room. Bathed in white light, shadows pooled in the hollows of his cheeks, he looks like a cadaver. Behind him the door yawns in the wall, a dark mouth.
“Would you mind closing that?” He does so. “Thanks,” I say, and the word slides off my tongue: I’m slurring.
“Have I caught you at a bad time?”
“No, it’s fine. Can I get you a drink?”
“Oh, thanks, I’m all right.”
“I meant water,” I clarify.
He shakes his head politely. “Have you had any visitors tonight?” he repeats.
Well, Jane warned me. He doesn’t look like the controlling type, all beady eyes and thin lips; he’s more a jovial lion-in-autumn sort, with his peppery beard, his hairline in rapid retreat. I imagine him and Ed getting on, laddishly, hail-fellow-well-mettishly, slinging back whiskey and swapping war stories. But appearances, et cetera.
It’s none of his business, of course. Still, I don’t want to look defensive. “I’ve been alone all night,” I tell him. “I’m in the middle of a movie marathon.”
“What’s that?”
“Rebecca. One of my favorites. Are you—”
Then I see that he’s looking past me, dark brow furrowed. I turn.
The chess set.
I’ve filed the glasses neatly in the dishwasher, scrubbed the bowl in the sink, but the chessboard is still there, littered with the living and the dead, Jane’s fallen king rolled to one side.
I turn back to Alistair.
“Oh, that. My tenant likes to play chess,” I explain. Casual.
He looks at me, squints. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Usually this isn’t a challenge for me, not after sixteen years spent living in other people’s heads; but perhaps I’m out of practice. Or else it’s the drink. And the drugs.
“Do you play?”
He doesn’t answer for a moment. “Not in a long time,” he says. “Is it just you and your tenant here?”
“No, I—yes. I’m separated from my husband. Our daughter is with him.”
“Well.” He throws one last look at the chess set, at the television; then he moves toward the door. “I appreciate your time. Sorry to bother you.”
“Of course,” I say as he steps into the hall. “And please thank your wife for the candle.”
He pivots, looks at me.
“Ethan brought it over.”
“When was that?” he asks.
“A few days ago. Sunday.” Wait—what day is today? “Or Saturday.” I feel annoyed; why should he care when it was? “Does it matter?”
He pauses, his mouth ajar. Then he flashes an absent smile and leaves without another word.
Before I tilt myself into bed, I peer through the window at number 207. There they are, the family Russell, collected in the parlor: Jane and Ethan on the sofa, Alistair seated in an armchair across from them, speaking intently. A good man and a good father.
Who knows what goes on in a family? I learned this as a grad student. “You can spend years with a patient and still they’ll surprise you,” Wesley told me after we’d shaken hands for the first time, his fingers yellow with nicotine.
“How so?” I asked.
He settled himself behind his desk, clawed his hair back. “You can hear someone’s secrets and their fears and their wants, but remember that these exist alongside other people’s secrets and fears, people living in the same rooms. You’ve heard that line about all happy families being the same?”