Funeral for a Friend

13

Andrea awoke with a start in the middle of the night.

She always slept lightly, attuned to any unfamiliar sound. The bedroom was black except for the red glow of the clock on her nightstand, which told her it was nearly four in the morning. She stared at the ceiling, eyes wide open. Her ears pricked up, listening for whatever had awakened her. Her heart hammered in her chest. It didn’t take much to bring the memories back.

A noise. A smell. A touch on the shoulder. And just like that, she’d be back in the darkness. Under him. Struggling.

It never went away.

You are not seventeen years old.

She climbed out of bed in her white silk pajamas. The master bedroom was at the back of the house, with windows on the rear wall facing the lake and windows on the adjacent corner looking down on the neighborhood basketball courts. Sometimes kids hung out there overnight. She swept aside the curtains but saw no teenagers in the park below her.

The bedroom felt colder than usual. She liked it warm, and she typically kept the heat on even during the summers, but she found herself shivering. When she went to the doorway, a draft sneaked up the stairs. Somewhere in the house, a window or door was open. That was never how she left it.

Then, below her, the downstairs floorboards shifted. Someone who was trying to be quiet gave themselves away. She wasn’t alone.

He was back.

Andrea felt all of her emotions drain out of her. The panic left her entirely, and something robotic took over her mind like a strange, dead calm. She backed away from the bedroom door, conscious that she was making noise herself. She wanted him to know that she was awake. If he heard her, if he knew she was listening to him, then he would leave.

It always worked that way.

He never hurts you.

But Andrea took no chances. She opened the drawer of her nightstand and found her 9 mm pistol. She always kept it fully loaded, magazine in place. She pulled out the gun, which was heavy in her hand. The feel of it gave her strength. She had to use effort to drag back the slide and load a cartridge, but the click told her she was ready to shoot.

She carried the gun back to the doorway and stared into the gloom at the bottom of the stairs.

“I’m armed,” she called. “I have a gun. You need to go.”

If he was there, he held his breath, not making a sound. She flipped on the light switch, and bright light filled the foyer, making her squint. She anticipated a thunder of footfalls as he escaped, but the house was silent.

Andrea cradled the gun with both hands, her right index finger along the barrel. That was how Denise had taught her. She took the steps one at a time, stopping to listen. The air from outside got colder. Near the base of the stairs, she could see the front door, which was closed and locked. No one was waiting for her. The draft came from the other side, the back door in the kitchen. She got to the last step, swung left, and slipped her finger around the trigger.

She could see all the way to the rear of the house. It was empty. He’d stolen away while she was getting her gun. Still ready to fire, she continued to the end of the hallway and confirmed that no one was in the kitchen. The back door was ajar, letting in a whistle of wind.

He’d left a package for her on the kitchen table, the way he always did.

Andrea took the gun outside and descended the warped back steps in her bare feet and stood in the wet grass. The wind tore up the hillside and rattled the trees. She couldn’t see much, but she knew he was still out here. Somewhere, he was watching her, because she could feel his eyes like fingertips on her neck.

“I know it’s you,” she called. “It’s been a while. I didn’t think you were coming back. Why now?”

She walked up to a rusted fence behind her property. Across a stretch of green grass was a cluster of trees. That was where he was, somewhere in those shadows.

“Who are you? Why do you do this?”

There was no answer. There never was. She turned away and walked back inside the house. She slammed the door behind her and locked it, although locks couldn’t protect her. Somehow, he always knew how to get inside. She emptied the cartridge from the gun and laid it on the kitchen table, and at that point, she finally broke down. Her knees buckled, and she slid to the floor. Tears fell down her face. Her shoulders jerked as she sobbed, letting out all her fear.

When she was done, she wiped her face and got up again.

The foil box waited for her on the kitchen table. It was like all the others before, silver, with a yellow bow on top. Her fingers trembling, she took it and removed the lid. She knew what she would find inside. A suncatcher to add to the collection he’d created for her. This one was round, with a white dove in the center, its wings spread. The bird flew in front of a yellow sun, which gave out beams of light that broke into pieces of red, blue, green, orange, and purple glass.

The suncatchers had arrived many times in the past seven years. She’d never seen who it was; she’d never been able to catch him in the act. In the early days, he’d been discreet, leaving the boxes outside, on a doorstep, on the railing of her back porch. It had seemed like a game then, surprises from a secret admirer. Later, he’d grown bolder and darker, breaking inside her house to leave his tokens behind. That was when she was alone and divorced.

She had more than twenty of the suncatchers now. Instead of smashing them, instead of throwing them away, she kept them. At some point, she’d begun to hang them on her kitchen window. She couldn’t even explain to herself why she did that. Maybe she wanted him to see them and realize she wasn’t scared of his nighttime visits.

Or maybe it was something else.

It had been nearly a year since the last one arrived. That was the longest gap without receiving one, and she’d assumed he was done, or gone, or dead. Strangely, she’d almost missed him.

But now he was back.

The timing couldn’t be a coincidence. He’d come back right after Ned Baer’s body had been found, which had a strange symmetry. The very first of the suncatchers had shown up the summer that Ned Baer arrived on her doorstep. Someone had been sending her a message. He still was.

She took the suncatcher out of the box and held it in her hands, and then she looked for the note. There was always a note, written on a fold-over card in block handwriting.

It was the same message every time.