The Perfect Stranger

Chapter 5

I left school early on purpose. Fourth period was my free block, and although, technically, I was supposed to stay until at least fifteen minutes after dismissal, I figured no one would mention it today. Emmy still hadn’t called, and I wanted to catch her before she left for work. Something had wormed its way into the back of my head, unsettling, unshakable. I needed to see her.

Our home was a ranch on the outskirts of town. Emmy had fallen in love with this house before I made it down; she said it looked like one of those quaint grandparent houses, said we’d be like two old ladies and we’d get rockers for the porch and take up knitting. I saw it first through her eyes – something calm and idyllic, another version of Leah Stevens, a person I had yet to meet. When I came down in the summer, I fell in love with the house, too. It was surrounded by all greens and browns, the sound of birds singing, leaves swaying in the breeze. It was a small part of a larger landscape, and I felt part of something real for the first time. Something alive.

Farther from the stores and restaurants that lined the industrialized area, the house was closer to the lake, sitting in the woods to the southwest of the water, entrenched in the land with history, street signs that carried the last names of the kids in my classes. The lake had a tiny sand beach, occupied mostly by geese, and a lifeguard stand in the summer.

Everything else surrounding the lake was woods and logs and stone. You had to move a few blocks outward, either south or east of the lake, before you hit the gas stations, the strips of roads with shops and cafés, the empty lots under construction; and a few more miles east before you hit the business district or the school.

Best part, Emmy had said, it’s already furnished. That had its own charming appeal. It wasn’t like the apartments in Boston, where all traces of the previous inhabitants would be wiped clean before new tenants arrived. Here, everything felt like it had history, and we were a part of it.

Some days, if Emmy hadn’t lit a candle or left a lotion open, I’d get a whiff of its ghosts. Mothballs and quilts left in the attic, lemon-scented pine cleanser used the day we moved in. Bleach in the corners of the bathroom to strip the mold and mildew.

The sliding door at the entrance was locked, as I had left it. Emmy must have returned sometime during the day and locked it when she left again. Two nights ago, I’d briefly woken to a light on in the living room, thinking, Emmy, and drifting back to sleep.

I stepped inside, and the first thing I noticed was the silence. And then that scent – or, rather, the lack thereof. There had been no candles or incense or vanilla honey lotion. She had not cooked bacon or left the windows open during the day, while I’d been out. All that remained was the stale remainders of the house itself.

How long was too long not to see someone? Someone who was living in the same house but was an adult with her own life? And a somewhat unpredictable one, at that.

I couldn’t decide. Three days. No, four. Three, if the rent was due. Which it was.

She’d had a tough time with steady work out here – there weren’t jobs in the nonprofit sector like she’d had in D.C., and she had no interest in sitting in a cube all day, like some mouse in a wheel, she’d said. So she took what she could in the meantime, until she found her place.

Our hours overlapped, so we saw each other only mornings, or evenings, if I got back early. She drove this old brown station wagon that she said she was borrowing–Leasing? I’d asked. Borrowing, she’d repeated. But she drove it just half the time. Sometimes it would still be in the driveway, tucked around the corner of the house, and she’d be gone. Or sometimes she’d have Jim pick her up.

He’d been in our house a few times, but I’d seen him only from behind. Once as he was leaving the bathroom in the morning. Another time through the sliding glass doors as he walked toward his car. Broad-shouldered with sandy blond hair, slightly bow-legged, tall. He didn’t seem to notice me watching him either time. The only time we made eye contact was through the front windows of our cars, Jim pulling out of the drive just as I was turning in. He had a narrow face, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days. Neither hand was on the wheel as he worked to light a cigarette. I took him in, in increments: thin lips, hollow cheeks, age showing around his eyes; the torn collar of a T-shirt, hair falling to his chin, his head shifting to mine as we passed. The hour of the day made me think he didn’t have much of a traditional job.

Sometimes I felt that Emmy’s situation with Jim was the same as the one with her job: to help pass the time until something more stable came along.

Emmy was probably at Jim’s place, I thought. But I also thought of Davis Cobb, picked up for assault, suspected of stalking, and now I wasn’t quite sure.

The light on in the living room at night. The sliding glass doors that you could see directly through.

A stream of statistics I once researched for an article echoing back to me: the five types of stalkers. Rejected; resentful; intimacy-seeking; incompetent; and predatory – the planners. The ones who lie in wait until something tips, and they strike.

Davis Cobb, on the other side of my glass door as I slid it shut in his face.

I SAT ON THE steps of the front porch until twilight. We’d never gotten those rockers. Where did Emmy work, exactly? God, I wasn’t sure. I once asked her if it was the inn near the town center, with the wraparound porch and white-painted shutters. But she’d only laughed and said, “Nowhere that fancy, Leah. Next town over. The Last Stop No-Tell Motel.” Only she’d dragged out the syllables of Motel, to match the cadence and rhythm.

We lived our separate lives, with separate routines, in separate circles. She had herself all set up by the time I made it down here, and I didn’t want to be needy. I barely had time for it, really – I was taking teacher certification classes online in the evenings and on weekends to meet the requirements of the district’s emergency-permit teaching program that I was currently taking advantage of.

And now I was faced with the fact that I didn’t know exactly where to find her. I wanted to drive around the surrounding towns and look for her car, but I also didn’t want to miss her.

I walked the entire tiny house, looking for any sign of where she could be. Stopped at the entrance of her room and peered inside. I crossed the barren wooden floor and ran my fingers across the hand-sewn comforter tucked up to the pillow. Then I pulled it back and slipped into her sheets, in case she came in. If I slept in her bed, she’d shake me awake and ask me why I was here and what was the matter. She’d pull down the bottle from the top of the fridge and pour us some vodka, and we’d face the demons.

I rolled onto my stomach, faintly smelling her shampoo. Pictured a dark swath of hair cut to her collar, bangs swooped to the side. Her eyelashes lighter than expected up close, her mouth slightly open as she slept.

I conjured her into being as I drifted asleep.