Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Marilee’s the one to free me.
I have to wait until she leaves work, hours I spend in front of Gilmore Girls , sweatshirt zipped over the bodice of my dress, blanket over the skirt. Episodes play on, bleed into the next, and suddenly, it’s winter in Stars Hollow when I could have sworn it was just the end of summer. I haven’t really been watching. My eyes keep darting to my door, checking for flashes of pink hair in the windows. Or maybe not pink anymore. Jackson said the dye was easily rinsed. Other Rosie could look like anyone now.
When Marilee arrives, she doesn’t ask questions. I think she sensed my shame through the phone—the strained, whispery way I spoke—so she simply gets to work. She’s brought the crochet hook we use at the salon, a tool that simplifies the task. As soon as the final button is undone, I breathe like someone emerging from underwater. Then Marilee hustles out the door, her goodbye a bit too chipper, her secondhand embarrassment evident in her blush.
I toss the dress into my closet. I slide on clothes that feel more luxurious than satin and lace ever could—yoga pants that hug my legs, a shirt so soft it’s buttery—and head to my parents’ house to pick up Bumper for his walk.
They don’t seem to suspect anything. Dad’s watching TV, Mom’s scrolling on her iPad. But they greet me with wary, watchful looks, as if worried I’ll spring something new on them, announce I’m on my way to the police station for another round of questioning.
“Did you take those pills I left for you?” Mom asks.
I bend down, bury my face into Bumper’s fur. “Yeah, thanks.”
“And they’re helping?”
I can still feel the buttons studding my spine.
“Yeah, thanks,” I say again, and when I straighten, winding Bumper’s leash around my wrist, I consider asking if they saw any shadows last night as someone passed their house to get to mine. But they don’t even know about Other Rosie—that’s one of the details I spared them when relaying my connection to Morgan—and to explain now would only compound their horror, have Mom insisting I call the police. And then I’m right back where I dead-ended last time, faced with explaining to Jackson that I slept in a wedding gown.
I take a different route with Bumper, the opposite direction from Morgan’s house. He keeps planting his feet, insisting on turning back to the path he’s used to, and I feel that tug in a deep, visceral way.
“No,” I tell him. “Come on.” I rub the scruff on his head and he relents into a reluctant trot. I keep my headlamp turned on, a third watchful eye to ward off anyone else’s.
It isn’t long after I drop Bumper off that I see my parents’ lights go out. I peek through my living room curtains, scanning their house and the driveway between us. They’ll be heading upstairs now, off to bed, and there’s a coziness to that—the certainty of sleep—that feels impossible to me. I check my lock for the fourth time since getting home. I check each room and closet again. I’m alone here, and it’ll stay that way—a mantra I repeat to myself as I mix my next dose of meds.
One last glance at the door, and I shut off the lights in the living room and kitchen. Then I head to the bathroom, hopeful that the ritual of face washing and teeth brushing will lull me into something like rest. I bend over the sink, splash water onto my cheeks, and when I stand upright again, I catch myself in the mirror—still wearing the dress.
I gasp and it’s gone. I’m back in a shirt that’s not even white.
The gray cotton shouldn’t have glitched to beaded lace. But I saw it. A lingering vision from earlier today. Or evidence I can’t trust my own mind. After all, I’m still not positive it was somebody else who buttoned the dress.
I meet my gaze in the mirror, toothpaste frothing over my lips as I think it through. It would be such a risk, Other Rosie entering my apartment. What if I’d woken up? What if I’d clawed at her, called the police? And if she wants me to go down for Morgan’s murder, it makes more sense for her to take something from my apartment—something she could plant in Morgan’s house—than to leave proof of her presence behind.
I reach around my back for the hundredth time, miming the act of buttoning the dress. I’ve gone back and forth all day: I could do it; no, I couldn’t; it’s difficult but possible; it’s difficult because it’s impossible. Now, with my muscles more relaxed, I see once again how I might have done it. I consider, too, that if it had been someone else—someone trying to threaten or simply scare me—they’d likely have buttoned it all the way to the top. But the dress was still open a little, as if the person fastening it grew too tired to finish, then slumped right onto the bed.
That’s not much comfort, either—that I’ve done some things I don’t remember.
Back in my bedroom, I plug my phone into its charger, pull back my blankets, then shuffle across the carpet to the light switch by the door. Before I can turn it off, something lures my attention past the threshold, toward the kitchen, where the darkness seems to shift. I squint into it, then slide my hand up the wall outside my bedroom until it reaches the switch out there. I flood the room with light—and stumble back a step, blinking against another glitch.
Black mask, black clothes, a knife; someone at the door .
But this image doesn’t change. And I know it’s real when the person charges forward.
I can’t even suck in a breath before their knife slashes at me. I lurch out of the way, rocket toward the door, and am yanked back so hard I crash onto the kitchen tile. I don’t have an instant to recover before the blade plunges toward my chest. My arm leaps up by instinct, and the knife slices across my skin.
We both look at the blood—them through their ski mask, me through stretched-wide eyes. I don’t feel the pain of it yet, but the color is so shockingly red my mind spurts toward Morgan, dead on his kitchen floor.
I push up against the intruder, and they push back with one arm, knife arcing in their gloved fist. It grazes my shoulder, and as they pull back to stab me again, I grab their wrist with both hands, hold it away from me, and twist in opposite directions. It’s a desperate, juvenile move, the kind of injury my sister and I would give each other as kids, but I squeeze so tightly they let out a huff of surprise before the knife clatters to the floor.
We scramble at the same time, skidding through my blood—them for the weapon, me to stand up—but we’re tangled in each other; our flailing limbs send the knife skittering away. As they reach for it again, I run for the door—which is still locked. I only have time to flip the dead bolt before an arm clamps around my neck, dragging me backward, wrenching me down. Then I’m jammed between their legs, my back pressed to their chest, their breath pulsing against my ear.
My throat grates against the choke hold, releasing a sound like static. I try to rake at their arm, but my muscles slow as if moving through sludge. As my attacker squeezes tighter, my eyes pop. My skin feels like cellophane wrapped around my skull.
The air thickens, too solid to sip. As my vision narrows, black dots spattering the edges, I see a scuff on my attacker’s black boot that looks like half a heart. Even in my dimming consciousness, I’m reminded of the friendship necklaces Nina and I wore in middle school. The gold heart sawed in half. Each piece jagged and incomplete without its companion.
My mouth gasps for air that doesn’t come. I hear thumping then—my heart, Daphne’s—and the arm lets go.
I crash back as they jump up. Oxygen rushes into me like water. I curl against the tile, coughing, sputtering, while the attacker pounds across the kitchen, out the door—and collides with someone on the landing.
“Oof— What— Hey!” A woman’s voice.
That thumping again. Quicker than before. Because it wasn’t my heart I was hearing. It was the clomp of feet up the stairs.
“Oh my god—Rosie!” the woman calls from the door, her voice muffled by my coughing. As she rushes in, drops beside me, I’m not sure if it’s Mom or Nina or—
Edith. My eyes spring wide when I see her. Her hair dangles over me; her own eyes bulge with alarm.
“What happened?” Her hands hover over my body, assessing the damage.
I grab her arm. “They—” But I can’t get more out. That single word scrapes my throat.
“It’s okay,” Edith says, her sleeve smudged with my blood. “First, just— Where are the towels?”
I let my head fall back instead of answering. She scurries out of view and returns with a dishcloth, which she wraps around my wound. Red blooms through the white, and my heart is actually thumping now—hard and fast, belated adrenaline. The cut on my arm throbs to its beat.
“I don’t think you, like, severed an artery,” Edith says, holding the towel tight. “But you definitely need stitches.”
“Their knife—” I force out, gesturing to the blade that slid beneath the kitchen table.
“Shh, it’s okay,” she says again before placing my hand on the cloth. “Put pressure on this. I’ll call 911.”
Edith rummages through the tote slung over her shoulder, and I focus on the rhythm of my lungs, swelling and compressing like an accordion, wheezing out some still-strangled notes.
Beside me, Edith mumbles into her bag: “Where is it, where the hell is my phone, why do I keep so much stuff in here.” She pauses, eyes lifting to lock onto the wall, then palms her face. “I left it in my car!” She drops her hand, which has left bright red smears on one cheek, like only half of her is blushing. “It’s fine, I’ll use yours instead.”
She scans the kitchen, the living room, for my phone. I lift my bloody arm toward my open bedroom, but the thought of her car, her phone left inside it, makes my limb fall limp.
“How did you get here?” I ask, voice gritty. I prop myself up on my elbows, pushing through my weakness, fighting a wave of dizziness.
Edith stands up, still combing the counter, the end tables, for a phone. “What do you mean? I drove.”
I shake my head. That wasn’t what I meant. “How did you know where I live?”
And why is she here, at this exact moment? Right when I needed her. Right as my attacker sprinted away.
She stops searching to look at me. “You put your address on the note.”
“What note?”
Did I message her something I don’t remember, right around the time I might have been buttoning my own dress? But no. I didn’t button my dress. I was right to suspect Other Rosie; my intruder proves that, slipping inside without me hearing a thing. Except my door wasn’t open tonight. My keys weren’t in the lock.
“The note you slipped under my door telling me to come over.”
My thoughts skid on her answer. My hand loosens on the towel.
“I didn’t leave you a note. I don’t even know where you live.”
Edith frowns. “What?” She watches me a beat longer, waiting for me to explain something I can’t. “But— I have it right here. Hold on.”
She fishes through her bag, shoving items aside, pulling out a glasses case, a crushed granola bar, sunblock. With a grunt of frustration, she kneels on the floor, dropping those items beside her. I look into the bag myself, as if I’ll instantly find the note that’s eluding her, but the piece of paper is lost in a clash of objects. Makeup bag, wallet, hair spray, charger, Tylenol—
“Ah! Right here!” Edith plucks out the note, thrusting it into the air, the paper already spotted with her fingerprints.
It should nauseate me: more of my blood. Whirls of rusty red. But I hardly even look at the note, don’t bother to scrutinize its words. I’m stuck, instead, staring into Edith’s bag at the bottle of hair spray, which was nudged a little when she grabbed the paper. And now that I see the name of the product, the color of its label, I see it isn’t hair spray at all.
It’s hair dye.
And the shade is Pretty in Pink.