I insist. “For now. The fact is, it was done, and the problem is that no one believes me. I don’t even think Bina believes me. I don’t think you believe me.”
Silence. I find I’ve drifted up the stairs, entered Olivia’s bedroom.
“Don’t tell Livvy about this,” I add.
Ed laughs, an actual Ha!, bright as tin. “I’m not going to.” He coughs. “What does Dr. Fielding say?”
“I haven’t talked to him.” I should.
“You should.”
“I will.”
A pause.
“And what’s going on with the rest of the block?”
I realize I have no idea. The Takedas, the Millers, even the Wassermen—they haven’t so much as pinged my radar this last week. A curtain has fallen on the street; the homes across the road are veiled, vanished; all that exists are my house and the Russells’ house and the park between us. I wonder what’s become of Rita’s contractor. I wonder which book Mrs. Gray has selected for her reading group. I used to log their every activity, my neighbors, used to chronicle each entrance and exit. I’ve got whole chapters of their lives stored on my memory card. But now . . .
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Well,” he says, “maybe that’s for the best.”
After we’ve spoken, I check the phone clock again. Eleven eleven. My birthday. Jane’s, too.
47
I’ve avoided the kitchen since yesterday, avoided the first floor altogether. Now, though, I’m once more at the window, staring down the house across the park. I pour a ribbon of wine into a glass.
I know what I saw. Bleeding. Pleading.
This isn’t nearly over.
I drink.
48
The blinds, I see, are up.
The house gawks at me, wide-eyed, as though surprised to find me looking back. I zoom in, pan the windows with my gaze, focus on the parlor.
Spotless. Nothing. The love seat. The lamps like guardsmen.
Shifting in the window seat, I swerve the lens up toward Ethan’s room. He’s gargoyle-perched at his desk, in front of his computer.
I zoom further. I can practically make out the text on the screen.
Movement on the street. A car, glossy as a shark, cruises into a spot in front of the Russells’ walk, parks. The driver’s door fans out like a fin, and Alistair emerges in a winter coat.
He strides toward the house.
I snap a photo.
When he reaches the door, I snap another.
I don’t have a plan. (Do I ever have a plan anymore, I wonder?) It’s not as though I’ll see his hands rinsed in blood. He won’t knock on my door and confess.
But I can watch.
He enters the house. My lens jumps to the kitchen, and sure enough, he appears there a moment later. Slaps the keys on the counter, shrugs off his coat. Leaves the room.
Doesn’t return.
I move the camera one floor up, to the parlor.
And as I do, she appears, light and bright in a spring-green pullover: “Jane.”
I adjust the lens. She goes crisp, sharp, as she moves first to one lamp, then the other, switching them on. I watch her fine hands, her long neck, the sweep of her hair against her cheek.
The liar.
Then she leaves, slim hips shifting as she walks out the door.
Nothing. The parlor is empty. The kitchen is empty. Upstairs, Ethan’s chair sits vacant, the computer screen a black box.
The phone rings.
My head swivels, almost back to front, like an owl, and the camera drops to my lap.
The sound is behind me, but my phone is by my hand.
It’s the landline.
Not the kitchen landline, rotting downstairs in its dock, but the one in Ed’s library. I’d forgotten it entirely.
It rings again, distant, insistent.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe.
Who’s calling me? No one’s called the house phone in . . . I can’t remember. Who would even have this number? I can barely remember it myself.
Another ring.
And another.
I shrivel against the glass, wilt there in the cold. I imagine the rooms of my house, one by one, throbbing with that noise.
Another ring.
I look across the park.
She’s there, in the parlor window, a phone at her ear.
Looking right at me, hard.
I scuttle from my seat, grip the camera in one hand, retreat to my desk. She holds her gaze, her mouth a terse line.
How did she get this number?
But then how did I get hers? Directory assistance. I think of her dialing, speaking my name, asking to be connected. To me. Invading my house, my head.
The liar.
I watch her. I glare.
She glares back.
One more ring.
And then another sound—Ed’s voice.
“You’ve reached Anna and Ed,” he says, low and rough, like a movie-trailer announcer. I remember him recording the