I Need You to Read This

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Francis has been avoiding the computer since she arrived this morning, keeping herself busy by puttering around the summer house, cleaning the counters, anything to distract herself from the message that popped into her inbox late last night. Driven by nervous energy, she’d found herself outside, pausing only momentarily to look out at the deep-blue ocean at the far side of the lawn before turning toward her fallow garden beds. There isn’t much to work with now that it’s fall. She surveys the beds. A few dry stalks left over from some late-blooming asters tremble in the wind. There’s no urgent need to pull them but she kneels in the dirt anyway. Gardening has always helped her make complicated decisions about her writing. Maybe it can help her now too. She doesn’t bother with gloves, pushing the sleeves of her thick Fair Isle sweater up her arms and plunging her fingers into the cold soil. She always thinks best when her body is occupied by something else.

But now that the sun has nearly set, she feels the tug of her little office room. In thirty-five years, Francis has never been late with a column. Returning to the house, she drops into her chair and moves her mouse so that her computer hums to life. The monitor brightens and she sees the letter there in her inbox, down at the bottom of the screen, and feels a sick twist in her stomach. She looks away quickly, moving her eyes to the top of her inbox, where the unread messages stack up in bold font.

Francis scrolls through the subject lines. Despite the Herald ’s assurances that she reads each and every message sent to her, it is rare that she actually gives most more than a cursory look. There are topics too well trodden to revisit. By now her readers already know what she’d say about a noncommittal man (walk very quickly in the opposite direction), a sibling rivalry (therapy), or a go-nowhere job (probably stay put for now unless something better is available).

One email with the subject line reading simply I’m lost intrigues her. She clicks open the email and begins to read the story of a woman whose marriage of forty-three years has recently fallen apart, sadly coinciding with the deaths of both of her parents. Francis sits and considers her predicament for a moment, allowing herself to truly feel the woman’s life as though it is her own. Her chest aches for the woman. And yet, being so lost, so incredibly rock bottom, comes with a kind of freedom if you are able to harness it. Isn’t there something almost delicious about being able to start fresh? It’s like that Janis Joplin song, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose . Rarely in life do you have the opportunity to start completely from scratch. She shakes herself free from that train of thought. It isn’t the right question, not for this week. Reluctantly she closes the message, guiltily shutting out the woman and her loss, and returns to the inbox.

In just the last few minutes several new letters have come in, pushing the email, the one she came all the way up to the beach house to try to avoid, to the very the bottom of the screen, nearly off the page. Sunday is her busiest day for new questions. It is a natural time for reflection after the rush of the early weekend but before work picks up again—the time of week when people seem to feel the most depressed and dissatisfied with their lives. Francis, on the other hand, loves Sundays, the pleasant rush of new letters coming in, the feeling of being needed and helpful. She doesn’t let herself linger on the idea that other people’s pain is her pleasure.

She is about to settle in and read another letter when she hears a faint scraping noise behind her, coming from the front of the house. Francis stands up, startled, and spins around. She looks for the most likely culprit but finds the cat asleep on its favorite chair. She cuts through the pantry into the kitchen and peers out the kitchen window at the empty driveway.

There’s a flash of someone passing by the window. Something yellow like the hood of a jacket blurring through the near-dark. Francis’s heart pounds as she walks back into the hall. The front door to her house hangs wide open. That’s odd. She knows she didn’t leave it like that. She looks around for signs of another person but hears and sees nothing.

She steps tentatively out onto the front porch in her slippers. The wind rushes up from the beach, smelling of the ocean just barely tinged with woodsmoke and the bite of approaching winter. She stands still, her body tense, her ears prickling. The Atlantic churns darkly at the edge of the lawn. She thinks she can see the bluish flicker of the television in Bertie Robertson’s house, her neighbor down the road. She should go over there, she thinks. Have some company. She suddenly regrets coming up. Francis had thought she’d feel safer here, that she’d be able to gather her thoughts. But she hasn’t come close to having any clarity. If anything, the solitude has only made her feel more agitated and uncertain.

“Hello?” she calls out. “Is someone there?” Her voice, unused for hours, catches. It comes out hoarse as a whisper. She makes her way down the front steps. The grass is cold on her ankles as she steps into the yard, walking to the edge of the house. Be brave, Francis, for goodness’ sake. She steels herself as she leans out and peers around the side.

A dark shape on the ground below the window startles her, but quickly she recognizes the coil of her garden hose. The light from her study shines out onto the lawn. She notes how her office would be completely visible to any interested person looking in. She’d always meant to buy curtains, but the years had dulled her motivation. Besides, who cares enough to watch an old woman on her computer? A car passes on the road behind the house. She finds her breath slowing. Everything is fine. She shakes her head. Honestly, Francis.

She turns and heads back to the porch. Sometimes there are just sounds that cannot be explained, she tells herself. Still, when she goes inside, she makes sure to twist both locks on the door. She’ll have trouble going to sleep tonight now. She often does these days, even without a scare. If that is even what it was? Just as likely, she thinks now, that it was just someone walking their dog, or a vacationer cutting through her yard to get to the beach the way the tourists always do in summer. It doesn’t take much to scare her, it would seem. She pushes away a vision of the flash of yellow at the window. It could have been a trick of her mind, a bird or a leaf in the wind. After she gets some work done, she’ll make some tea, possibly watch something on TV. She’ll leave the letter and its disturbing contents for tomorrow and keep a light on in the hallway tonight.

Comforted by the plan, she makes her way through the house toward the still-bright computer screen in her study. Approaching the desk, she can see that the email has fallen off the home page now, and she breathes a deep sigh of relief. She feels better not seeing it, knowing it’s buried. Why not do one better and get rid of it altogether? she thinks. Better to have it gone, to pretend she never saw it at all.

She begins to pull her chair out to sit but something catches her eye and she stops short. She sees herself reflected in the window. There is her chaotic hair, even wilder in the humidity, her fuzzy cardigan. Her eyes travel past herself farther back into the room, where she sees the reflection of something behind her. It takes a moment for her to place the outline of a figure in a coat, its hood pulled up. Her chest seizes up at the shimmer of something above her. A startled scream escapes her throat before everything goes silent.