Chapter 22
The moment I’m back in the car, my bag vibrates on the passenger seat. My phone is buzzing.
The fright jolts through me, because I know that’s Serena calling.
Probably because I finished work almost an hour ago.
I scramble to accept the call.
The moment I hit the button, the lies spill out of me, “I was held up. I just finished—and I’m almost at Ms Brown’s.”
I put the call on speaker, then slot the phone into the holder that’s stuck to the dash.
I turn the car back towards town.
Her tone is distant, distracted, and I apparently worked myself up for nothing, “I figured you stayed late. But I hoped to catch you before you left—I just noticed you didn’t take the list this morning.”
My teeth bare in a grimace.
Fuck.
I didn’t look.
Serena sticks shopping lists to the fridge every night for me to take in the morning. But each time I wake up, even after all this time, I’m slow.
My mornings used to be catered to me.
I could stay in bed and Abigail would bring me breakfast and all my coffees, all my favourite roasts. And at Bluestone, the coffee machine was always on and powered up, ready to deliver a freshly brewed liquid heaven.
Not here.
Not in this new life.
I give a lame excuse. “Sal wasn’t meant to go to Ms Brown’s today, so I was running late for work. I forgot to take the list.”
It’s true. But Serena decided this morning, when I was already behind, that she needed more rest, and so that meant I had to drop him off at Ms Brown’s.
Serena’s sigh is long. “You didn’t get the shopping then?”
There’s a clatter on the other end of the call before the screen shifts, and a video request comes through.
I hit the accept button, but I don’t watch her face come up, not as I pull on Fair Street, and Ms Brown’s house comes into view.
I stop a few houses down and pull over.
Serena holds up the shopping list to the camera.
“The store shuts in an hour,” her echoed voice tells me what I already know, because I literally work at that store. “We need most of this tonight. Sal doesn’t have milk for his breakfast cereal, no bread for his lunch sandwiches, there’s no coffee—”
No coffee.
That is a disaster.
We buy instant, granulated rubbish that tastes more like dishwater than coffee, but my body is hooked on the caffeine, and I do get desperate.
I huff a drawn-out grated sound. “Ok. I’ll get the shopping done now, then come back for him. It’s too hard getting him in and out of the car seat.”
I also need Sal to stay out of this part.
“I’ll text you the full list,” she says.
The video flips around, and I can make out the truth of her face, one she hasn’t illusioned today, which means she hasn’t left the apartment all day. Not even to do laundry.
Serena rattles on, “And maybe pick up a toy for him, if there’s something new in-store. Are the magazines in yet?”
My fingertips drum on the steering wheel. “They came in this morning.”
Every month, Sal gets those plastic-packaged kid’s magazines that always have a bonus toy in them. And when we’re on the move, we tend to pick fast food places that give out little toys, too.
Keeps him happy.
Or complacent.
Either way, it distracts him for a little while, and that’s peace and quiet.
Serena props the phone against the microwave.
The new angle is a wide scope of the apartment, except the bathroom and bedroom area.
Serena moves out of sight, and I hear some rummaging around.
“We have pizza bases—but no sauce.” Serena’s voice is accompanied by the clattering of cans and rustling of plastic. “I promised Sal we would have pizza tonight and watch a movie. It’s your day off tomorrow, and I need to go into the city to pay the fee.”
So a pizza-and-movie night was Serena’s way of bribing Sal out of a tantrum. He always hates when she leaves for the day.
“I’ll check what they have in the frozen section. I’m sure there’s pizza.”
I sound just as enthused as I look in the small square of my face on the screen. Not my face, not really, just another illusion in a line of many.
I avoid looking at it too long.
It’s not something I’ve ever gotten used to.
“And potato chips.” She’s just adding to the list now. “Dip. Some chocolate—he likes Twizzlers, too. The sherbet ones.”
I know.
I’m raising him, too.
Serena tugs out of the pantry—leaning into view of the camera, but her face is pinched with a frown. “Do you hear that?”
I stop picking at the peeling leather of the steering wheel. “Hear what?”
Serena moves away from the pantry, her steps silent, and her whisper barely audible, “Someone’s coming up the corridor—”
She jolts—and so do I.
Because the door shudders with a firm knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
There’s a pause between each one, and I feel the tremor of the door in my bones.
Serena, turning her back on me, starts to run her hands over her head. She begins to pull on an illusion—
But she doesn’t get past her hairline.
Not before the door bursts open, like it’s been booted in from the other side.
Serena staggers back.
Eyes wide, I stare at the doorway over Serena’s shoulder—and though I’m separated by a video call, not in the apartment itself, I shrink into the seat as though I am there.
Mr Younge swallows up the doorway.