Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 121, No. 2. Whole No. 738, February 2003

Remodeling by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Under her mystery pseudonym Kris Nelscott, Kristine Kathryn Rusch has been getting lots of good press recently. Her series featuring African-American P.I. Smokey Dalton debuted with A Dangerous Road, which won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery and was nominated for an Edgar Award. The most recent series entry, Thin Walls (St. Martin’s/September 2002), received a starred review in PW. Ms. Rusch also has a new story collection: The Retrieval Artist (Five Star).

Outside Ada’s bedroom window, the car’s engine roared. No muffler. Her neighbors hadn’t had a muffler for forty-five days now, not that she was counting.

Rick was.

Ada could sense him beside her, awake but pretending not to be, his entire body rigid as he listened to the varoom-varoom next-door. The bed, which had seemed so comfortable moments before, was a trap, the covers heavy and too hot, the pillow too soft.

Suddenly, there was silence. Merciful silence.

She could hear the click-click of the second hand on the old-fashioned alarm clock they used, and then—

Brakes squealed, followed by a final varoom as the car backed out of the driveway. Radio, heavy metal from the 1970s, turned on full. She could just make out Alice Cooper, or was it Kiss? The bass line always sounded the same.

Fifteen seconds between the first barrage of varooms and the second. Then the fading roar of the engine as it rounded the corner, gone for the next twelve hours.

She didn’t move. She knew if she moved, Rick would launch into his tirade. Don’t know why people don’t respect each other. Don’t they know they have neighbors?

The second hand continued clicking — the sound too soft to be a tick — and she tried to calibrate her breathing to it, keeping it even. Forty-five days of the muffler. Then, before that, the eight-year-old’s new drum set. Or had that been at the previous house?

They were all blurring together.

She didn’t dare confess that. Twenty-one years of tirades, and nineteen new homes. First, apartments with paper-thin walls. She’d understood the tirade then. She hadn’t liked the thump-thump-oh, honey, oh!s any more than Rick had. Or the fights coming from the other apartment. Or the constantly ringing phone from the apartment below.

The townhouse had been slightly better. Only a few shared walls there, and not important ones — laundry room, closets. There, the problem had been the communal deck, the smell of charcoal wafting through the window.

Outside the bedroom window, a child shouted, then laughed. Another child answered, shrill. More laughter.

Rick’s tension grew. Ada wasn’t sure if she should continue to pretend to sleep or if she should get up and head for the shower. Because the next sound from below would be a loud conversation about all those things children cared about and no one else did, followed by the sigh of bus brakes and the wheeze of exhaust.

Ada threw the covers back. Rick jumped. He clearly hadn’t realized she was awake. She smiled at him, hoping to fend off the tirade, then swung her legs over the side of the bed.

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

Her right foot found the shag carpet that they couldn’t afford to replace.

“I’ve half a mind to write to the city and demand they do something about that bus stop. Can’t they stop the damn thing at an intersection? Does it...”

Ada leaned backwards, put a gentle finger on his lips, and then kissed him, more to shut him up than to start anything. He wouldn’t be interested anyway. He was already too tense.

“I’m going to the shower,” she said. “Care to join me?”

He threw his own covers back. “I’ll put on coffee. Maybe it’s quieter in the kitchen.”

But Ada knew it wouldn’t be. It never was.

Rick had a meeting downtown with the accountant. For the first time in weeks, Ada had no morning appointments and could take her time to get to the shop. Usually she left at nine A.M. sharp, either to meet with clients or to talk to the stores that recommended her interior decorating skills.

She took her coffee into the home office. It was on the tree side of their property. Spruce, maples, a few oaks. Through the window, it looked like they lived in a forest. The walls were thick — a bathroom and their bedroom between the nearest wall and the street.

She wanted to put their bed in here, but Rick had overruled her. He needed silence when he worked more than he needed anything else. And since he handled the books, the promotion, and all the other little details of her interior design business, he got what he wanted.

The doorbell rang, making her jump. No one rang the bell. No one came to the door, not even the mailman, who left all their packages in the large mailbox at the foot of the driveway.

Ada pressed a hand to her heart. It was racing. She made herself get up and head downstairs, wondering what had gone wrong this time.

She was nearly to the living room when the doorbell rang again.

“Coming!” she yelled.

She arrived at the front door slightly breathless, and pulled it open without looking through the spyhole Rick had put in.

A balding man with a football player’s neck and a sagging belly stood on her stoop. He looked familiar, but it took her a moment to place him.

Muffler Man, the neighbor. Ada had only seen him through a window, from a distance, or inside his car. She hadn’t realized how solid he was up close.

“Your husband in?” Muffler Man asked, and there was nothing friendly in his tone.

For a moment, she debated lying to him, but she didn’t know what that would gain her. He would know soon enough that Rick wasn’t here.

“He’ll be back soon,” she said. “You want me to let him know you called?”

Muffler Man stared at her as if she had spoken Swahili. His gaze moved up and down her face, then his eyes narrowed. “You give him a message for me.”

“Sure,” she said.

“You tell him I know what he’s doing. He’s not going to drive me outta here. You tell him I seen the pattern, and I know the truth.”

Her heart hadn’t stopped pounding. “The truth about what?”

“You just tell him,” he said, and stalked off her porch.

She stood at the door and watched him cross the yard, his boots leaving deep prints in the moist spring grass. His shoulders were broad, his arms thick and muscular.

Ada debated going after him, but she didn’t. She didn’t like confronting angry men. Fortunately, she didn’t have to do it often. Most of her interior design work was for female clients, and Rick rarely lost his temper. He just complained a lot.

Muffler Man didn’t sound like a complainer. He seemed like more trouble than that.

Ada closed the door, then locked it. After a moment, she went to the back door and locked it, too. Then she sat down at the kitchen table — butcher-block, bought for their fourth house, where it had looked lovely in the dining area — and shook.

Those were threats. Vague threats. The kind you couldn’t call the police over because you couldn’t exactly say what was menacing about the conversation.

She picked up the phone, started to dial Rick’s cell, then hung up. She didn’t need to interrupt his meeting with the accountant. Rick would find out soon enough.

And he wouldn’t be happy. He already hated these neighbors for their children and their pets and their refusal to buy a muffler. He didn’t need another reason to watch their house from the spare bedroom, to make a log of all their transgressions, to complain about the muffler every morning when he woke up.

Maybe she wouldn’t tell him. Maybe she would just let it slide, as she’d let so many other things slide for so many years. Maybe she’d pretend that it hadn’t happened at all.

The meeting with the accountant went well. The business was finally turning a profit, even with their salaries taken out every two weeks. Rick took Ada out to celebrate, and in the excitement she forgot about Muffler Man.

She didn’t think about him at all until the following morning, at seven-fifteen sharp. She could count the varoom-varooms, then almost predict the moment of squealing brakes as he backed to the edge of his driveway. Such a ritual, followed by the crank of heavy-metal music — Metallica this time — and the final varooming “screw you” as the car drove away.

“No bus this morning,” Rick said, startling her. “Is it a holiday?”

Ada shrugged, surprised that she hadn’t noticed the lack of sounds. “It’s just Thursday.”

“Probably some stupid in-service day.” He sighed and rolled out of bed. “Means there’ll be screaming and shouting in the yard, or the basketball slamming against the building all afternoon. How can someone who can’t afford to buy his kids video games afford a house, anyway?”

And with that, Rick padded to the bathroom, totally naked. He had love handles just above his hips. She hadn’t noticed that before. When was the last time she had really looked at him?

It worried her that she couldn’t remember.

The shop was quiet except for the mellow strains of a Mozart piano concerto. Outside, the rain whipped in the wind, making puddles on the city’s streets deep enough to clog drains. Good thing Ada already had her materials in the car. She wouldn’t want to take them outside in this weather.

She was looking forward to this afternoon’s job. She loved the early parts in the process: assessing the house, letting the customer start dreaming about the way her home would look when Ada finished. Most people didn’t know how new tile changed the feeling of a kitchen or how a single horizontal strip of wallpaper brought a bedroom’s details together.

Ada knew, though, and could explain clearly. People trusted her, said she made them visualize the changes long before they happened.

Sometimes, she thought if she had remained single, she would be rich by now.

She made herself shake off the thought. If she had remained single, if they hadn’t moved, if they hadn’t lost all their equity in the quick sale of the house on Dover — all things that couldn’t be changed. People never got do-overs. A life couldn’t be remodeled the way a house could.

Ada sipped the last of her afternoon cup of Darjeeling, then opened the finances file on the computer. She had to print out a final invoice for Mr. Goldstein. She’d drop it off on the way to this afternoon’s appointment.

The financial file looked different. Rick always set the computer on “icons” rather than “list” the way she preferred it. He must have stopped in the office after he saw the accountant and updated the files on site. Usually he updated files from home, using the computer network they had spent a fortune to set up six years ago. Now their systems were out of date, and they couldn’t afford a new one.

She pulled down her View options from the toolbar, made the change, and watched as the icons became a table of contents for the file. She scanned, looking for the Goldstein account and not finding it. In fact, this file looked different somehow. She saw Urbanick, a name she didn’t recognize. She frowned, wondering if Urbanick had been a consult she had forgotten about, and clicked open the file.

This file contained additional files: URCredithist, URMortg, UREmploy, URPersonal, and more, scrolling all the way to the bottom of the open window.

Had Rick gotten the accountant’s files by mistake? That didn’t make any sense. Even if Rick had, he wouldn’t have copied them to the hard drive. He would have simply put the disk in his briefcase and taken it back to the accountant the next afternoon.

Wouldn’t he?

She clicked open URCredithist, and found credit reports. She glanced at one, felt as she would peeping into someone’s bedroom, and was about to close the file when the top line caught her eye:

Her breath caught. Her address was 1323 SW Oak. Urbanick must have been Muffler Man’s real name. What was Rick doing, investigating the neighbor’s personal history? Looking for a way to get them to move?

She clicked back to the original window, saw that Rick had, indeed, downloaded these files the day before, along with the rest of the financial files.

The phone rang, and she looked guiltily at the clock on the computer’s desktop. She wasn’t late for her appointment yet, but she would be if she continued to explore these files.

She picked up the phone and found herself talking to a potential new client. While she went through the familiar spiel, she found a floppy, downloaded the strange files, and then closed them. She labeled the disk 1996, knowing that Rick would have no reason to investigate something that old, and then slipped it into the pile of backups they kept in the shop’s supply room.

By the time she had finished with the call, she had tidied up her desk, printed the invoice, and grabbed her purse. She was ready for her consultation.

But her enthusiasm for the new job was gone. Instead, she found herself worrying about the mystery files, her stomach so acidic that she had to take five Tums before it settled down.

For the third night in less than a week, Rick asked her to bring home pizza. Lately, she’d been doing a lot of the cooking after she got in, or she brought home takeout.

She had understood it when he was cramming, preparing the financials for the accountant. But that meeting was past. Rick should have had more than enough time to make something quick and healthy.

She’d meant to say something when she came in, but Rick hadn’t been anywhere around. She had had to put the pizza in the oven, and then she’d had to track him down when it was warm.

He had hidden himself in their office, huddled over the computer’s keyboard as if it held the secrets of the universe. She came into the room just far enough to see what he was doing and started. He was manipulating numbers in the Quicken program, using its mortgage calculator.

Her stomachache returned. “Are we going to move again?” she blurted before she had a chance to stop herself.

Rick whirled to face her. “Ada. I didn’t realize you were home.”

“I called for you. I put in the pizza. It’s done. Can’t you smell it?”

“Now I can.” He smiled.

“Are we moving?” she repeated, not willing to let this go.

“No.” His neck was flushed. She had embarrassed him, but she wasn’t sure how. “The news last night said prime was going down again. I was recalculating to see if new rates would benefit us.”

“Just because prime goes down doesn’t mean mortgage rates will.” She couldn’t believe she was lecturing him on money. He had always been the financial brains in the family.

“I know, honey, but it usually follows. So I figured, why not?” He flicked a couple of keys and the file closed. Then the screen went dark. “You said dinner’s ready?”

“I said the pizza was done.” She knew she sounded bitchy, but she didn’t care. He was lying to her. He was planning another move. He’d had enough of the revving car, the school bus, the neighbors next-door.

Ada studied him, actually seeing him for the first time in years. The dark good looks were gone. Crow’s-feet and a mouth downturned from constant disappointment had given his face a pinched look. His eyes, once his best feature, now seemed small.

“Ada?” Rick said, with an emphasis that let her know he was repeating himself. “Everything okay?”

She didn’t want to answer that.

“Let’s eat,” she said, and headed downstairs to the hideous orange kitchen. Then she leaned on the countertop, wondering how she had gotten to this place. Was her face as pinched as Rick’s? She was afraid to go to the mirror and find out.

The next day, Ada had a client lunch at the city’s newest upscale restaurant. She parked in the nearby lot, pulled up her hood against the seemingly endless rain, and stepped gingerly across puddles covering the pavement.

Suddenly a hand grabbed her arm. She turned, startled, and saw Muffler Man.

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” His grip was so tight that it hurt.

“Let me go.” She tried not to sound panicked, but her heart was racing.

“I told you to give him my message. Maybe he didn’t need it. Maybe you’re the problem.”

“Let me go,” she said, trying to back away.

“I’m not kidding, lady,” he said. “I am really tired of all of this, and I’m giving him one more chance to quit.”

“I’m giving you one more chance to let me go before I scream for help,” she said as forcefully as she could.

He looked at his hand as if it had operated without his permission. Then he released her.

She ran for the restaurant, dodging traffic as she hurried across the street. Once, she glanced over her shoulder, but he wasn’t following her. He was just watching.

When she got inside, she stopped and stared out the window. Hands touched her shoulder, and she jumped. She turned to see the maître d’ trying to help her remove her coat.

“Are you all right, miss?” he asked. “You want me to call the police?”

She looked out the window again. Muffler Man was gone.

“No,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

But she was lying. She wouldn’t be all right. Her arm ached, and she was scared.

This time, she would have to tell Rick.

“The minute it happened,” Rick said, “you should have called me.”

“I had an important lunch.” Ada ran a hand through her hair. She hadn’t called him because she didn’t want him to interfere with her life, her work, any more than he already had. She had waited until she had finished for the day, and even then, she had driven home instead of picking up the phone.

They were in the bedroom. Rick stood in front of the window, looking down. Their neighbor’s house was empty. Usually no one arrived home until seven.

“Was he following you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and she didn’t. She had no idea why Muffler Man had been in that parking lot.

“Well, is he stalking you? You said this happened before.”

“Here,” she said. “He came here. He was looking for you.”

“So he said.” Rick leaned his forehead against the glass. His biceps bunched as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

“I believe him,” Ada said.

“You’d believe anyone.”

Ada flinched. Did Rick really think so little of her, or was he lashing out in his anger at their neighbor?

“He said you had to stop—”

“I know what he said.” Rick moved away from the window. “I’m not doing anything. I’ve even stopped complaining. Maybe he thinks he can harass us like he thinks I’m harassing them.”

Rick paced to the bed, to the door, then to the window again, looking out as if he were checking to see if the neighbors had come home in the few seconds he was gone.

“It’s too late to call the police.” He pressed a fist against the frame. “You should have told me right away.”

“It’s not too late,” Ada said. “The maître d’ saw everything. They’d know we weren’t making it up.”

“And they’d wonder why you waited until now.”

“We tell them the truth — you told me to call.”

Rick shook his head. “Won’t do any good now. They’d have to catch him in the act, or near the act. Maybe I’ll have a talk with him.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Ada said, remembering how angry the man had been.

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Rick snapped. “You screwed this up enough. I’ll handle it from here.”

And with that, the conversation was closed.

Ada put a hand over her distressed stomach and made her way down the stairs to watch something mindless on television. Anything to keep her distracted.

Maybe she should ignore his request this time. Just because his mind was made up didn’t mean she had to live with it. She could talk to the neighbor — after all, he’d been approaching her. She could find out what had him so upset, and maybe she could change it.

Maybe. All she knew was she had to try.

The neighbors got home at seven-thirty, their arrival heralded by a basketball hitting the side of Ada’s house. She expected Rick to speed down the stairs and launch himself out the door, but he remained in the office, working on his computer. He seemed so involved that, for a moment, she thought of going to Muffler Man’s then.

But she didn’t. She wanted no chance of being caught. No chance at all.

The next day, she planned to visit the house at lunch — the wife was often home then, and Ada thought she might be easier to talk to — but the sheriff changed her plans.

He arrived at seven A.M., the flashing lights from his squad car sending pale blue and red squares across the bedroom ceiling. His pounding woke Ada up, but Rick was already awake. He was standing near the window, his body turned toward the side so that no one looking up could see in.

Voices rose below: Muffler Man’s deep and indignant, swearing he’d made payments and had checks as proof; the wife’s shrill and sharp, demanding that the sheriff wait for their lawyer; and the sheriff himself, claiming the problem was not his.

Ada thought Rick would be angry at the noise, at the interruption of his morning ritual, but he wasn’t. He was bobbing on the soles of his feet, his hastily donned gym shorts leaving nothing to the imagination, an expression of satisfaction on his face.

Ada grabbed her robe just as the beep-beep-beep of a truck in reverse echoed throughout the neighborhood and then she walked to the window which, to her surprise, was open. Rick never left the window open, claiming it let in too much noise.

“Not so close,” he hissed as she approached.

But she ignored him, facing the window head-on. A tow truck had latched onto the rear axle of the muscle car and was dragging it onto the street. The sheriff was supervising the truck. A deputy stood near the house’s door so that no one would interfere.

The rest of the neighborhood watched, from their doorways and windows. The children sat on the stoop as if their world had ended, and the wife was nowhere to be seen.

Muffler Man stood in the middle of the lawn, another deputy beside him. His fists pushed against his hips, and he looked more like a linebacker than ever.

He also seemed to know that Ada had reached the window. His gaze met hers and his lips moved. Even though she couldn’t understand what he was mouthing, she knew it had to be a threat.

“Serves them right,” Rick whispered. “Someone must have complained about the noise.”

“The sheriff doesn’t seize a vehicle because of noise,” Ada said.

“If it’s nonpayment, maybe they’ll move.” Rick continued to whisper. “Or get evicted.”

“It takes years to get evicted from your own house,” Ada said.

The tow truck dragged the car down the center of the block. The school bus stopped at the corner, waiting for the tow truck to go by.

“We didn’t even get any warning notices,” Muffler Man said to the deputy, but his gaze was still on Ada. She backed away from the window.

“It’s not our problem, sir,” the deputy said. “You’ll have to contact your creditors.”

Rick was smiling. Ada pulled the window closed. “You shouldn’t be so happy about someone else’s misfortune.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer family,” Rick said, and headed to the shower.

She was shaking. The files haunted her. The credit history, the personal files. Had Rick done something to get the car repossessed?

He couldn’t have. Muffler Man had to be lying, trying to cover up for failing to make his car payments.

The children were still sitting on their stoop, even though the bus had stopped at its usual place near the driveway. Muffler Man shook himself, as if waking from a nightmare, and walked to his children.

“It’ll be all right,” he said, his voice now muffled by the glass. “We’ll have this settled by the time you get home.”

Ada clutched her robe tightly. Instead of crawling back in bed to wait for the shower, she went downstairs to make herself breakfast.

The ugly orange kitchen looked even brighter in the early morning sunlight. Her plants, in the extended window over the sink, liked the strange light, but they were the only ones. Ada started the coffeemaker, then stirred some batter for waffles. Rick liked waffles and so did she, when she had time for them.

The shower continued its hum, echoing through the pipes. She stirred, and stared out the back window at what passed for their lawn.

Here she couldn’t hear the neighbors fight or the squeal of the bus wheels. Even with the radio off, all she heard was the scrape-scrape-scrape of her wooden spoon in the bowl, and the chirping of some tiny morning birds as they ate the seeds she’d left on her back porch.

A pounding on the front door so startled her that she almost dropped the bowl of batter. The pounding continued, hard and furious, and she knew without looking who was there.

She set the bowl of batter on the counter, and thought about getting Rick from the shower, but that would only make matters worse. Rick would gloat and Muffler Man, already unreasonable from his misfortunes, might respond violently.

She shoved aside a week’s worth of papers and mail on the far counter, searching for the mobile phone.

More pounding. She wanted to yell at Muffler Man to stop, but she didn’t. She didn’t want him to think of her in here alone. But the moment the shower shut off, Rick would be down here, yelling at her for not answering the door, and then laughing at Muffler Man for being such a fool.

Her hand closed on the mobile phone. She picked it up, shaking, and pressed it on. The dial tone sounded loud in the kitchen.

The pounding had stopped. She let out a small sigh and hung up, relieved she wouldn’t have to call after all. She didn’t want to make things worse.

Then the front door banged open. Muffler Man stood there, dwarfing the frame, a key in his right hand and a look of triumph on his florid face.

“Only idiots leave an extra key above the mantel,” he said.

She pressed the phone on, dialed 9-1-1 with her thumb. He crossed the living room in two strides, entered the breakfast nook, then the kitchen, and yanked the phone out of her hand before it rang once.

Muffler Man shut the phone off, then flung it across the room. “Where is he?”

She shook her head, moving backwards, feeling naked in her robe.

“Don’t play innocent, you bitch. You people are destroying my life.”

He backed her against the counter. She could reach the full, hot pot of coffee, and the knives beside the sink, but she wasn’t sure she was fast enough to use them as weapons without him turning them against her.

“We haven’t done anything,” she said. The sound of the shower still hummed down the pipes. Rick was oblivious.

“Haven’t done anything,” Muffler Man mocked. He was so close now that his belly brushed against her robe. “We never got any right-to-cure notices. We never even got late-payment notices. And my wife looked — she has a record of when she made payments on-line. I don’t know how you did it, but you made it so they thought we didn’t make any payments. And she’s checking now to see if you’ve been doing the same for the house.”

“I don’t know why you think we’d do something like that.” Ada’s mouth was dry. She thought of the files, hoping that her knowledge wouldn’t show on her face. She tried to move sideways, down the counter, but Muffler Man put an arm beside her, blocking her.

“Don’t you?” His eyes narrowed. “Your husband is the one who’s been complaining all the time. Too much noise. You know, I’ve been checking this out. He always complains about noise.”

“Get away from me,” she said. “This is my house. You have no right to be here.”

“There are more complaints on file under his name in this city than for anyone else, you know that? And when we moved next-door, he started in on us. We’re not doing anything wrong, lady. We don’t make a lot of noise. Your husband’s just sick.”

“Please,” she said again. She couldn’t stand having him this close. “Go away.”

Muffler Man leaned even closer, his eyes bulging out. She reached for the coffee pot, but he grabbed her arm. His fingers dug into her flesh, pinching the nerve endings against the bone. She cried out, then bit her lip, not wanting Rick to hear.

Somehow she knew it would be worse if Rick overheard.

She twisted, trying to get away, but Muffler Man’s grip tightened even more. Their gazes met for a moment, and in his she saw a fury so deep that it terrified her.

Then, without even thinking, she brought her knee up and slammed it into his groin.

He yelped with pain, let go of her arm, and doubled over, clasping his hands over his balls. She whirled, grabbed a large flowerpot, and smashed it on the top of his head.

The pot shattered. He staggered and fell, thumping against the floor so hard the house shook.

Upstairs, the shower shut off.

“Ada?” Rick’s voice sounded far away and worried.

Muffler Man scuttled backwards, blood and dirt running down his face. He managed to rise and totter out the open front door.

“Ada?” Rick’s voice was closer now.

She tightened the belt on her robe, felt her hands slip on the flannel, and looked down and saw her fingers were covered in filth. She stepped gingerly over the clay shards, bits of dirt sliding beneath her toes.

The dirt didn’t show up on the shag carpet, but the blood did — a little trail of it, leading to the front door.

She followed the blood as if it were breadcrumbs and when she reached the door, she slammed it shut, bolted it, and rested her forehead against it.

Outside, she thought she heard the faint wail of sirens.

“Ada?” Rick was behind her. She could smell the faint scent of Ivory soap. She turned.

He was wrapped in a towel, his chest hair still wet and matted, water dripping off his legs onto the dirt- and blood-covered carpet.

“Ada?”

He seemed hesitant, and she suddenly realized that he thought she had done this in some fit of anger, a psychotic break that hadn’t surprised him at all.

“It was the Muffler Man,” she said, and slowly sank to the floor.

The police arrived less than five minutes later. It seemed that a 911 operator was supposed to scan all phone numbers that came into the center, even if no one was on the other line. Then the operator tried to call back. If she got no answer, she dispatched a squad car.

Muffler Man had broken Ada’s phone. She couldn’t have answered, even if she’d wanted to.

Rick insisted that Ada press charges, and the police officers agreed. Ada had protested weakly that pressing charges might make the situation worse, but no one listened to her.

The officers arrested Muffler Man.

Ada felt no safer.

Rick wanted Ada to stay home, but she had to get out. She didn’t want to rehash the morning’s events. She wanted to be alone.

The shop was quiet. She kept the Closed sign up and the door locked. Instead of working out front as she usually did, she worked in the tiny supply room.

She hated the supply room. The fluorescents washed out color and made everything seem slightly dirty. When she examined fabric and paint swatches, she did so in the front, by the large windows that let in a great deal of natural light.

But she felt like hiding after that morning. Her hands were still shaking — and her mind wouldn’t quit racing.

She didn’t want to believe Muffler Man; she hated him for what he had done that morning, for the fear he’d made her feel. But hatred was such an easy emotion. She’d seen Rick succumb to it over and over again, and his hatred prevented him from seeing the complexities around him.

She’d been able to see those complexities. She could see them now.

Like Muffler Man’s kindness to his children, the way he would hug them when he came home from work, the fact that he never raised his voice to them or to his wife. He never even lost his temper — until he had come to Ada’s door just a few days ago.

Ada went out front, dug through her desk, and found the bottle of Tums. It was nearly empty.

She made herself chew two — the chalky cherry taste uncomfortably familiar — and then grabbed the disk she had labeled 1996. For a moment she stared at it, black and innocent in the palm of her hand. Then she closed her fingers around it and carried it to the laptop she’d set up in the back.

If she were being honest with herself — and she was, at least today — this was the reason she had come to the shop. Not the fear she’d felt at home, not her anger at Rick for making the morning’s attack about him instead of her, not even the horror she felt at the possibility the incident might happen again.

No, the reason she had come here was simple: She wanted to see if Muffler Man’s accusations were correct.

She scooted a metal folding chair in front of the makeshift desk, put the disk into the laptop’s drive, and called up the files.

She found a map to Charles Urbanick’s life: his credit history; the public records of his home purchase, his marriage, and a previous divorce (amiable, by all accounts); newspaper articles on his success as a Little League coach; and so much more.

But the file that sent a chill through her had nothing to do with Urbanick’s history. It had to do with his present.

In a folder marked “Plan A,” Ada found a Quicken file for a savings account Rick had promised to close a year before. The account ledger had monthly transactions, several deposits of set amounts — $1,500, $400, and some smaller ones, all less than $100.

She cross-checked them with the Urbanick files, and then put her head in her hands.

The sums matched the Urbanicks’ mortgage payment, their car payment, and all their credit-card payments. The repossessed car was only the beginning of their worries. Soon they’d lose their home and any credit rating they had.

Soon they would be out on the street, alone and without resources.

All because of Rick. He had been stealing from them, causing all their trouble, just like Urbanick said.

How long she sat in that back room with the pale fluorescent light, the uncomfortable chair, and the sleeping laptop screen, she did not know. Either the Tums had worked on the knot in her stomach or she had moved beyond the pain.

A hundred crazy thoughts ran through her head, all of them starting with the wish that she had let Charles Urbanick charge upstairs and take care of Rick. It would have been so simple — and she craved simple, because everything had suddenly become hard.

Or not so suddenly. She couldn’t believe how she had deluded herself, thinking Rick was someone she could trust, someone she could love. Those mornings, listening to the car’s muffler rev and hard rock blast through the windows, she had come to realize how much she had grown to dislike her husband and how unwilling she had been to acknowledge that.

Nineteen houses and a bright orange kitchen. Clients who were not allowed into her house because she couldn’t afford to have the showplace that interior decorators usually had. Dreams set aside, forgotten, or lost.

And Rick’s insistence on taking over the finances of her business, giving him the veneer of respectability — her respectability — to ruin even more lives.

The worst of it was, Ada had taught him this. In the early days of her business, she had shown him how to access credit files, how to use social security numbers to make certain a client was as solvent as they claimed to be, how to snoop into people’s lives.

When they’d taken the house on Oak, Rick had said no one would force them to move again. Ada had thought he was going to change, to suck it up and live with the noises that had bothered him.

She hadn’t expected him to strike back.

Ada put her head in her hands. She couldn’t ignore this anymore. She knew what she had to do.

She hadn’t really thought that all those sudden moves, all that uprooting, always following Rick’s whims, had merely been practice for this moment. But maybe she had been waiting for it — the chance to escape, to start fresh. Maybe she had known it was going to come all along — that at some point, her relationship with Rick would force her to lose everything she once cared for.

The problem was, she had lost everything a long time ago. She had only realized it now.

For the first time in years, she took action on her own initiative. She used the Internet to close all of her joint credit-card accounts. She had the bills sent to Rick. Her hands were shaking, but she didn’t stop.

It took only a few clicks of the mouse to delete her name from all of the billing records for the home phone and the other utilities. She canceled her cell phone, effective the next morning, and she closed all the store’s utility accounts. She drafted an e-mail letter to her current clients, recommending a rival interior decoration service, and set her e-mail program to mail the letter in the morning.

Changing that much of her life took less than an hour.

Then she called Gavin Markham, a client of hers who was also one of the best attorneys in town. She set an appointment with him for later in the afternoon, without explaining why she wanted to see him.

Finally, she made three copies of the 1996 disk. She put all three in her purse and stood.

Not much to take with her. Nothing really. Just the bank account information, her purse, and the laptop itself.

After she’d gathered her things, she closed and locked the door to her shop, refusing to let herself say goodbye. She hadn’t really felt at home here, just as she hadn’t felt at home in the orange kitchen or in the last five houses. When had she detached so thoroughly that she started skating through life, seeing nothing, having no dreams?

She wasn’t sure she wanted to answer that question.

After she left the store, she moved as quickly as she could. First she went to her personal bank, and moved all but fifty dollars from the joint savings account into the joint checking account. Ten thousand, six hundred and eighty-five dollars, waiting to be used.

Then she took all but a hundred dollars from the joint account where Rick had been storing Urbanick’s money. She left the hundred dollars so that no one would notify Rick that the account had been closed. She had the bank give her the rest in a money order, thousands of dollars taken from a family who had done nothing more than live their lives, without intending to bother a soul.

Finally, she went to the business’s bank and closed her shop accounts effective on Friday — letting the bank know about the outstanding checks and making sure the bank would pay them.

The rest of the store’s reserves she took in a personal money order, carefully folding it and setting it in her wallet.

Now her time was limited. Rick might try to use the accounts and he would figure out what she had done.

She had to be quick and she had to be smart.

Gavin Markham’s office was as familiar as her own. The Chagall print she’d snared for him at an estate auction was the focal point of the room. His mahogany desk, off to the side, seemed like an afterthought. A wall of windows brought in filtered daylight, and the plants in front of them made the place comfortable despite the expensive trappings.

Markham met her in his shirt sleeves. Files stacked on top of his desk meant she’d interrupted him in the middle of preparing for a case.

“What’s wrong, Ada?” he asked. “You sounded upset on the phone.”

And from the way he was peering at her, she must have looked upset as well. Maybe she wasn’t as calm as she was pretending to be.

She sat in the original Eames chair she had found at a flea market. Gavin sat on the edge of his desk, arms crossed. He clearly wasn’t going to treat her the way he would treat a normal client.

He was treating her like a friend.

His kindness made her hands shake. She took a few deep breaths, then reached inside her purse, removing two of the 1996 disks, her wallet, and her checkbook.

She slid the disks to him and explained what she had found. Then she took out the money order she’d made from the Urbanicks’ funds and handed it to Gavin.

“I want you to go to the police for me,” she said, “and turn in Rick. Then I want you to return the Urbanicks’ money, and contact their creditors. Everything is documented on this disk. I made one copy for you and another for the police.”

Then, without looking up, so that she wouldn’t have to see his reaction, she opened her checkbook and wrote him a check for ten thousand dollars. As she signed, she had an odd prescient flash: This would be the last time she would use her married name. In the future, she would have a new name, a made-up one, maybe, but one that would get her a fresh start somewhere else.

Her mouth was dry. She had loved Rick once. She wasn’t sure what had happened to that love, but it had been part of her. It still was, like the memory of summer sunsets and the promise of a bright future if she only followed all the rules.

“Ada?” Gavin said.

She looked up. He was watching her with concern.

She handed him the check. “This is your retainer plus,” she said. “Put it in some kind of account and take what you need for my case from it. I’ll let you know where I’m going so that you can send me the monthly accounting. I’m sure this’ll cost a lot, because I want you to start divorce proceedings, too — effective immediately.”

Gavin opened his mouth as if he were going to speak, but she wouldn’t let him. She wanted to get through this as quickly as possible.

“You’ll need to cash the check this afternoon,” she said. “I’ve taken it from our joint account, and I suspect that the moment Rick knows I’m gone, he’ll try to empty the accounts himself. So please—”

“I will. I’ll do everything you need.” Gavin folded his hands across his lap. “You’re planning to leave?”

She nodded. “I can’t stay here. Not when it comes out.”

“You’ll be the person who stopped him,” Gavin said.

Ada shook her head. “I’m the person who enabled him, all these years.”

“You had no idea how far he was going to take his obsession,” Gavin said.

“No,” she said. “But I should have.”

Gavin promised to handle her case, to make certain the police did not charge her when they went after Rick, and to make certain the Urbanicks’ financial reputation was restored. Gavin had her sign an official form, asking that the charges against Urbanick be dropped.

Ada left his office, knowing she had done everything she could.

When she reached the elevator banks, her cell phone started to ring. For a moment, she debated whether or not to answer, then pulled the phone out of her purse.

She answered as she got onto the elevator, riding it down to the parking garage.

“Ada?” Rick sounded panicked. “There’s something wrong with our account.”

Her heart pounded. “Our account?”

“The business account. I was going to move some funds—”

“You were going to move funds?” she blurted, the anger she’d been repressing all day slipping past her defenses. “What for?”

“That doesn’t matter, babe,” he said, just as he always had in cases like this. “What matters is that the bank tells me we’re short. You know anything about this?”

A lot, she wanted to say. But she had to remain silent. She didn’t want to tip Rick off. Gavin needed time to get the police involved.

“No.” She hoped the anger now sounded like panic. “You want me to go to the bank and check?”

“Could you?” Rick asked. “I’ve got a few things to do here.”

As if she were at his beck and call, as if the business she had just closed — the dreams she had just abandoned — were his and not hers.

“I’ll check,” she said, and hung up. She was shaking. He had no reason to move money from the business account.

But there had been a lot less in it than she had thought there should be, and their savings had seemed low, too. Her fault, for leaving the money in his hands. Her fault for trusting him.

From now on, she would trust only herself.

She reached her car, got in, and leaned against the steering wheel. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to continue. It would be so much easier to go home and let the events fall where they might.

But she had already started the ball rolling. And if she stayed, she would be blamed as much as Rick. Who would believe, in this day and age, that a businesswoman had closed her eyes to everything financial, had let a man ruin her life — and so many others — so effortlessly?

People would say that anyway, but she wouldn’t be around to hear it. And she would do her best to make restitution, returning to testify if she needed to.

She took a deep breath and realized that the shaking had stopped.

Progress. She was making a lot of progress.

She started the car and drove out of the parking garage. Her last stop was nearby, and then she was done.

One afternoon’s worth of work, and her life would be different forever.

Ada sold her car — their car — to a used-car dealer for a fistful of cash. She toyed with getting a new one, one that would be completely hers, but she didn’t want to put herself in any kind of debt, not when her future was so uncertain.

She wasn’t even sure she would go back to interior decorating. She might take a new job in her new home — wherever that would be. She was getting tired of improving the appearance of things without solving the problems underneath.

After she finished at the car dealership, she took a bus to the train station and bought a ticket with cash. She didn’t know how long it would take Rick to be arrested, and she didn’t want him to trace her.

For a while, she wanted to be completely on her own.

When they started calling her train, she grabbed her purse and her laptop and headed for the tracks. Halfway there, she stopped. She rummaged inside her purse for her cell phone and studied it for a moment.

It was her last link. More than the wedding ring she still wore on her left hand, it was the thing that bound her to Rick. Conversations she didn’t want, irritations she didn’t need, requests that were so inappropriate, she couldn’t believe he’d made them — or that she’d listened.

She threw the phone into a nearby trash bin and boarded the train, feeling lighter than she had in years.

Her ticket was coach, but she had the double seat to herself. As she stretched out on it, trying to keep her legs covered with the blanket she bought in the snack bar, she planned her next move.

She’d get off the train at the first interesting stop. Maybe she’d stay there, maybe she wouldn’t. She’d look around, though, and see if she liked what she saw.

Once she found a suitable home, she’d use the last of her business funds to rent a place, get a job, and figure out how to live her life with her eyes open instead of closed.

She’d keep expenses low. She’d still need money to send back to Gavin. She had a hunch the divorce would be complicated, and she wasn’t sure how the Urbanicks would react to her admission of what Rick had done.

It wouldn’t surprise her if they sued. She had to be prepared for everything, and she would face it all when the time came.

So would Rick. A jury was going to send him to the home he deserved — a place filled with nasty neighbors, constant noise, and lights that burned long into the endless prison night.

And there would be nothing he could do about any of it.

He wouldn’t even be able to move away.

Ada sighed. She was the one who was moving. For the very last time. She would find a place she liked and stay there until she was an old woman.

She would become a fixture in her neighborhood, a friendly woman who tolerated her neighbors’ idiosyncrasies the way they tolerated hers.

Voices echoed in the darkness behind her, and a conductor came by, checking on passengers in the middle of the night. Ada closed her eyes and listened to the clack-clack of the train moving along the track, the wail of a baby three rows back, and the short grunting snores of a man across the aisle.

The sound of people living their lives.

Enjoying their lives.

Just like she planned to enjoy hers.

Copyright © 2002 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.