The Watcher

44

She’s in her sickbed, propped up on the pillows I stuffed behind her back, and her whole body is in pain. The medicine she takes now isn’t real medicine, not anymore. That phase is over. Now she just takes pills for pain relief, to take the edge off. None of us knows how much it’s helping. Papa has grown hard-set, hardly says anything at all. Sometimes it feels like he’s somewhere else, even though I hear him banging around in the kitchen. My sister came home from London after the doctor advised us to gather the family. Mama never complains, but I see her grimacing when she can’t stop herself. It gets me every time. We don’t talk about it, but we both know it. My father and sister know it, too, of course. There’s not much time left now.

Mama reaches for me, indicating that she wants me close. Her body is emaciated. Her face is like a mask, stretched over her skull. I carefully get onto her bed and crawl over next to her, cautiously so that I don’t put too much weight on her or hold her too hard. Soon I’ll never have another chance to hug her. Even though I try to stop them, the tears well up in my eyes. Mama pats my hand.

“You miss me already?”

I don’t want to cry, don’t want to make it harder for her, but it’s too late. The tears are pouring down my cheeks now. All I can do is nod.

“You know that I’ll always be with you.”

I understand that Mama means well, and yet something within me resists.

“Don’t say that,” I mumble. “Don’t say that, because it’s not true.”

“But it is true, Elena. It’s not mumbo jumbo. It’s not about beliefs or religion. It’s about us and all the things that connect us. I’m in your thoughts, whenever you want, for as long as you want. As long as you remember me, I’ll exist.”

The dream is a memory, one of the last I have of Mama, and when I wake up my cheeks are wet from tears. I bring my hand up to wipe away the tears, but instead there are red, sticky streaks on my fingers. It’s not tears, but blood that’s running down into my eyes. Then I spot Veronica. She’s standing over me, and immediately everything comes back. This isn’t a dream. I’m not sleeping. I’m… She’s—

No! The scream forms deep within me. No, I don’t want to! An image flashes through my head—the image of me standing, leaning forward in the darkness at the top of the stairs in the town house. I remember how I wished I were far away, wished for the end. But I’m not done yet, not done keeping Mama company. I thought it was done, that the past was over, that I’d completed what needed to be finished, but I was wrong. There is more to do. There are things I need to say to other people, things I need to do for them. My sister, Peter, Leo… I squirm, make an effort to sit up, but fall back. I’m weak, but I want to live. I feel that with all my body now. Finally I manage to get some sound to come out of my throat.

“Please,” I say, “don’t kill me.”

I make yet another attempt to stand up, supporting myself with my hand on the wooden deck, and this time I make it into a sitting position. Veronica backs away. Maybe she’s preparing for another attack.

“Please,” I beg. “Please don’t kill me, please. I don’t want to…”

I pull my shoulders up to my ears to protect my head and press one hand to my throbbing forehead. That’s where the blood is coming from.

“What… what are you saying? Are you crazy?”

“I’m a friend,” I continue. “I’m a neighbor. I know your son, Leo. He asked me…”

I look up to appeal to her sympathy. She’s pressed against the door, with one hand on the handle as if she can’t decide if she should stay out here or go in. Her face is completely pale, and she looks… wait now… She looks scared. Not enraged, not murderous, but scared—terrified, actually. But maybe I’m just imagining that. Maybe strong emotions all look similar. Maybe they contort facial expressions in a similar way? Veronica pushes down on the handle, and the door to the cabin slides open.

“Wait!” I yell. “Don’t do it. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.”

But she goes in and closes the door behind her. The strength drains from me, and I fall back against the wooden deck, bloody and shivering. I roll to the side and listen, trying to hear what’s going on inside the cabin. I can’t hear a thing, no screaming, no banging. It’s completely silent, almost as if Veronica is the only one in there, as if the cabin was empty when we got here.

I close my eyes and don’t look up until I hear the door open again.

“You said you were… Who are you, actually?”

She twists the end of her high ponytail between her fingers, and her anxious eyes dart between me and the deck. When I follow her gaze, I see that the blood has trickled down and is smeared across the planks. It looks really macabre.

In a faint voice, I repeat what I said a few moments before. Veronica comes a little closer.

“Leo mentioned a neighbor who… Are you the author?”

I nod and wince. My forehead is burning and throbbing and there’s blood everywhere.

“Please,” I mumble again. “Don’t hurt me. Don’t kill me.”

“Why do you keep saying that? Are you crazy?”

Her voice has gone up an octave.

“I called the police. They’re on their way.”

The police? She called the police?

“I want you to tell me why you’re here now. Why did you follow me and try to jump me like some kind of freaking lunatic?”

For a few seconds there she seemed a bit calmer. Now she seems revved up again. Her eyes are wandering, and her voice is unsteady.

“Leo was worried,” I manage to say. “I’m just trying to help out. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.”

She shakes her head and makes a face as if what I’m saying is the strangest thing she’s heard. I press my sleeve to my forehead, doing what I can to stanch the flow of blood. Even though I’m lying down, I feel dizzy.

“What happened?” I mumble.

“You’re asking me what happened? You are asking me what happened? Oh, that’s precious!”

She crosses her arms in front of her chest.

“I didn’t notice you until I pulled onto the side road, but you must have been behind me for significantly longer than that, right? You scared me, do you get that? So much that I snuck out of the car and hid in the bushes. But you didn’t drive by. You parked and…”

Her voice broke. Yet again, her eyes scan from the wooden deck beneath me to my face and then back to the bloody planks. One of my eyelids is starting to stick shut. If I’m not mistaken, the blood is starting to clot.

“It was just a push,” she says. “But I guess it turned out to be pretty hard what with the adrenaline rush and everything. You fell and hit the railing, and I think… I think you have a gash over your eyebrow.”

She’s holding something in her hand. I see it gleam as she gesticulates. But it’s not a knife. It’s a key. That must have been what she was fumbling with, what she had dropped when we first confronted one another. Somehow I manage to raise myself into a sitting position. I don’t dare stand up. I’m not sure my legs would hold me. Veronica doesn’t take her eyes off me, and I see the faces she’s making. The words she just said catch up to me, the frightened glint in her eyes as she described how she’d tried to hide from me, run away from me.

And suddenly it’s just there, the realization that this whole thing was a mistake. Philip and the redhead aren’t at the cabin. The reason the place looked so deserted, without any lights on, the reason I couldn’t see any other car besides Veronica’s outside is that no one else is here, only the two of us. My chest tightens, and the dizziness comes over me again.

“I’m sorry. I promised Leo that I would… but I… I should have known better.”

I think I need to lie down again. I realize that I might faint otherwise, but I can’t move. I press my sleeve to my forehead, trying to dab at my head with the parts of the fabric that aren’t soaked through yet. I’m so cold now that I’m shivering.

Veronica is stamping her feet as she stands there.

“There’s… We have a first-aid kit in the cabin. I could go get—”

“That’s not necessary,” I manage to say. “I think the bleeding is stopping.”

She squints down at me.

“This business about Leo being worried. What do you mean by that? What is he worried about?”

“He mostly wanted to know that you were OK. And where you were going.”

Her face stiffens.

“The plan was for his dad to tell him that we… that I was coming here. But apparently he didn’t get the message. I did leave a note.”

I nod cautiously, avoiding moving too much or too vigorously. I speak as slowly as I can, since my voice is distorted by my chattering teeth.

“Like I said, he just wanted someone to check on you and make sure you were OK.”

Her face relaxes now.

“He has a good heart, my son.”

Seconds tick by. The police should be here soon. I hope they have a warm blanket with them.

“You’ve seen each other a few times?”

I nod again. And then, as if to explain away or play down our interactions, I add that he evidently wants to become an author, too.

“Yeah,” Veronica says. “So I understand. He has a very active imagination, Leo does. Too active for his own good sometimes.”

She hesitates for a few seconds. Then she straightens her back and looks me straight in the eye.

“Come inside for a bit,” she says in a tone that won’t take no for an answer. “That wound needs to be cleaned. There’s no way around it.”