16. Kai
Kai
The first time, I followed her because she had left my office in a state that worried me.
That explanation had been professionally questionable but at least recognizable as concern.
The second time, I told myself I wanted to make sure the dissociation hadn’t carried into the following evening.
By the third, even I had run out of language flexible enough to make what I was doing sound remotely clinical.
Now I simply go. That shouldn’t feel like a habit but by now it does.
I finish work later than planned on Friday, go home, eat something I barely taste and spend an hour attempting to read an article that has been open on my tablet for three days.
At ten-thirty, I realize I have absorbed approximately none of it because my attention keeps wandering toward the window, then the clock, then eventually the motorcycle keys on the counter.
There is no debate. That may be the clearest indication yet that whatever line I crossed with Julia did not remain behind me after the first step.
By eleven, the motorcycle is hidden where it has been hidden enough times that even pushing it through the uneven ground between the trees has begun to feel familiar.
I leave it farther back than I did during my first visit, where the density of the woods swallows most of its shape, and walk the remaining distance until the house becomes visible through bare branches and the darker silhouettes of pines.
Her living room is lit. The television is on.
Julia is curled into one corner of the sofa wearing gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt large enough that I suspect it once belonged to someone considerably bigger than she is.
I stand in the darkness and watch her. There is something almost offensively ordinary about it.
She isn’t performing for anyone. There is nobody else in the house to make laugh, impress or reassure.
She shifts positions every few minutes because she apparently cannot sit comfortably in one place for longer than half an episode, reaches blindly into a bowl beside her without taking her eyes from the television and occasionally pauses whatever she is watching so she can disappear into the kitchen.
I learn quickly that Julia likes being in the kitchen even when she has no practical reason to be there.
She opens the refrigerator and stares inside without taking anything out.
Rearranges something on the counter. Pours water and forgets to drink it.
Wipes an already clean surface with one hand while reading something on her phone with the other.
At one point she opens a cabinet, takes down a mug, changes her mind and puts it back before selecting another identical mug from the shelf beside it.
There is no point to any of it. I find it fucking fascinating.
At work, Julia moves with purpose. Every action belongs to whatever comes next.
She walks quickly, speaks decisively and treats time like something people are constantly trying to steal from her.
At home, she drifts. She wanders barefoot between rooms. Leaves her hair twisted carelessly on top of her head until strands escape around her face.
Changes into clothes that seem chosen entirely according to softness rather than appearance.
And apparently considers bras an unnecessary burden the moment she crosses her own threshold.
I discover that detail Friday night when she reaches above her head for something in the cabinet and the oversized sweatshirt shifts with her body.
My eyes remain where they have no business remaining.
The fabric is thick enough that there is nothing genuinely revealing about the sight, but that does very little to make it less compelling.
She looks comfortable. That is what gets to me.
There is something deeply intimate about seeing someone completely unguarded without their knowledge.
Not undressed or posing, or trying to be desirable, but simply existing inside the only space where she expects nobody to be looking.
The doctor in me knows exactly how fucked up that thought is. Ghost doesn’t care.
The division between the two has become increasingly obvious whenever I come here.
Kai still argues. Kai notes distance, privacy, professional ethics, criminal implications and the spectacular implosion of a career that took almost twenty years to build.
Ghost looks through the glass and sees Julia.
That’s the entire argument. He wins most nights.
On Friday, I stay until after midnight. I go home feeling as though I have learned something.
Saturday is worse or better, depending on which part of my brain is allowed to vote.
I arrive earlier than usual because there is another car in Julia’s driveway when I pass the house the first time.
That bothers me immediately. The reaction is ridiculous enough that I circle the block before parking farther away and returning on foot, already irritated with a person I haven’t identified.
Then I see, who I presume is Tessa, through the kitchen windows.
Recognition takes several seconds because I have never met her, but Julia has described her often enough that there is no realistic alternative.
The woman inside moves through Julia’s house with the easy entitlement of someone who has been welcome there for years, opening cabinets without asking and drinking wine while standing barefoot in the kitchen.
A friend. Not the asshole Michael. The relief is immediate.
The fact that I experience relief at all is another entry in the rapidly expanding catalogue of reasons I should no longer be treating Julia, but I settle into the familiar position among the trees regardless.
The kitchen gives me a better view tonight because nearly every light is on and the two women spend most of their time moving between the island and the counters.
Music plays inside, although I can’t hear enough through the glass to identify it, and Tessa appears to be talking almost continuously.
She talks with her entire body. Hands moving, shoulders shifting, head thrown back whenever she laughs.
Julia is quieter by comparison, but only slightly, and whatever restraint she carries through the world has loosened enough that I can see the difference even from here.
They’re making pizza. Poorly. Or at least Tessa is.
Julia places a smooth round of dough on the counter and turns away for perhaps ten seconds.
When she looks back, Tessa has apparently decided the dough has committed some personal offense and begins attacking it with both hands.
Julia’s face is extraordinary. She tries to hide it.
God, she tries. Her mouth remains politely neutral for approximately three seconds while she watches Tessa flatten, fold and then inexplicably punch what had already looked perfectly functional.
Then Julia closes her eyes. Even from thirty yards away, I can see the pain.
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
The sound is quiet enough and muffled by my helmet to disappear into the trees.
Inside, Tessa continues mutilating dinner.
Julia eventually takes the dough away from her with the resigned patience of someone removing scissors from a child and appears to explain something with both hands.
Tessa responds by drinking wine. Reasonable.
I should leave. Instead, I stay long enough to watch flour end up on the floor, cheese disappear directly from the cutting board into Julia’s mouth and the two of them laugh so hard about something near the sink that Julia has to brace one hand against the counter.
This version of her is different from the woman in my office.
Not better, just less edited. She wears black leggings and a cream sweater that hangs loose over her body, hair down tonight instead of pinned into the controlled styles she wears to work.
There is nothing overtly seductive about any of it, which somehow makes her more attractive.
She looks like home.
The thought appears without permission. I shut it down immediately. Or try to. Ghost considers it perfectly accurate.
Eventually they carry food and wine into the living room, and I reposition far enough along the tree line that I can see only portions of them through the front windows.
I can’t hear their conversation and that becomes its own form of torture.
Tessa says something that makes Julia nearly choke on her wine, and several minutes later Julia’s expression becomes serious.
Her gaze drops toward her lap while Tessa watches her with an attentiveness that tells me the conversation has changed.
Therapy? Thursday? For one irrational second, I wonder whether Julia is telling her about the assault.
Then another possibility arrives — the letter.
My letter. I straighten slightly without realizing I’ve moved. Did she tell Tessa?
Julia speaks for a while. Tessa reaches across and puts her hand over hers.
Something tightens in my chest. I want to know.
The entitlement of that thought isn’t lost on me.
Apparently secretly observing a woman through her windows has not satisfied whatever diseased need for access I have developed.
Now I resent conversations I can’t hear.
They shift back into laughter not long afterward, and for a while I lose whatever thread I imagined I was following.
Then something changes again. Julia blushes.
Not dramatically. There is no cartoon flush spreading across her entire face, but even through glass and distance I see the color rise along her cheeks while Tessa says something with the unmistakable expression of a woman deliberately causing trouble.