Chapter Four—Julie #2
“You look exhausted,” she says.
“That’s my defining feature this week.”
“How much did you sleep last night?”
“Enough.”
Meg gives me the same look I used on her for most of our childhood. “How much?”
“Five hours, maybe six.”
“After not sleeping Sunday or the last couple of days?”
“I slept Sunday until somebody decided to stand beside my bed.”
Her hand stops on the counter.
I wince. “Bad joke.”
“I just hate thinking about you being scared in your own house.” Meg folds the dish towel and lays it beside the sink. “You know you can come stay with me.”
The offer makes me smile. “Dalen would sleep in the hallway outside your apartment before he let me stay there alone.”
“He can come too. My couch is very comfortable if you’re four feet tall.”
I laugh and wrap my arms around her. “We’re okay here.”
She hugs me back, then squeezes me once before letting go. “The offer stands.”
Dalen returns while we’re finishing the kitchen. He leans against the doorway with his sleeves rolled up and watches us for a moment.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“That face means something.”
He looks at Meg. “Your sister interrogates facial expressions.”
Meg shrugs. “She always has.”
“Because both of you are terrible liars.”
Meg scoffs. “I’m an excellent liar.”
I point at her. “That’s exactly what a terrible liar says.”
She throws the dish towel at me. I catch it against my chest and laugh.
For the first time since Sunday night, I don’t think about the person beside my bed for almost an hour.
Meg leaves shortly before nine. I follow her to the foyer, where she puts on her coat and searches through her purse for her keys.
“Call me tomorrow,” I say.
She finds them and gives me a look. “You call me.”
“Bossy.”
“I learned from you.”
She hugs me before opening the door. Dalen is behind me when she steps onto the porch, and I wait until she reaches her car.
“You know she’s twenty-seven,” he murmurs.
I elbow him without looking away. “Find new material.”
He laughs and kisses the side of my head.
Meg waves from her car before backing out. I close the door, lock it, then check it. Dalen waits behind me without comment.
Upstairs, I change into pajamas while he finishes an email at the small desk near the windows. My phone is charging on the nightstand, and I look at it more often than I want to admit.
Nothing happens.
I brush my teeth, wash my face, and crawl into bed. Dalen joins me a few minutes later and reaches for his glasses.
“I talked to Meg yesterday.”
I look over at him. “At your office?”
He nods. “She brought you moisturizer.”
I groan. “I remember. Three. She’s insane.”
Dalen smiles briefly, but something about his expression keeps me from making another joke. “She said you called her Monday and sounded tired.”
I frown. “I probably did sound tired.”
“Do you remember calling her?”
The question catches me strangely. “Why?”
“I’m asking.”
I try to think through Monday. Security people. The necklace. Patricia’s house. Charlie glaring at me over the island. “I don’t remember, but I talk to Meg almost every day.”
Dalen nods, then puts his glasses on the nightstand. “She also told me something about your mom. She said your mom used to wake up thinking someone was in the room when she wasn’t sleeping.”
My stomach knots. “Meg told you that?”
“She was worried about you.”
A flash of anger cuts through the fear that’s been living under my skin for three days. “She had no business telling you that.”
“No, she didn’t.”
That takes some of the wind out of me. I pull my knees up beneath the blanket. “Mom had a breakdown after our dad left. A bad one.”
Dalen waits.
“She was depressed. She barely slept. Sometimes, she stayed in bed all day, and sometimes, she wandered around the house all night. She got worse before she got help.”
“Did she think people were in the house?”
I hate the question even though he asks it gently. “Sometimes. She heard things. She’d wake me up because she thought somebody was downstairs. Once, she made me call the police because she was convinced someone was trying to get through the back window.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve or thirteen.”
Dalen swears under his breath.
“Meg was little. She doesn’t remember most of it.”
“You handled that by yourself?”
I half-shrug. “Somebody had to.”
He grimaces, and I know he’s angry on behalf of a kid who hasn’t existed for decades. I touch his arm. “She got treatment. She improved.”
“You still shouldn’t have had to deal with it.”
“I know.” I do now. “It’s in the past. I’m not her.” I say it firmly.
Dalen covers my hand with his. “I’m not going to make assumptions based on something that happened to your mother decades ago. I wanted you to know Meg told me.”
The knot in my stomach eases enough for me to lean against him. “I’m going to yell at her tomorrow.”
“Do you want me to warn her?” He smiles.
“No. I want the element of surprise.”
His chest moves beneath my cheek when he laughs.
I sleep better that night, and Thursday passes without anything strange happening.
By Friday morning, I’m beginning to believe the new security has ended whatever started this.
I still check the locks, but I don’t wake every time the house makes a noise.
Dalen stops looking at his phone every ten minutes.
Work gets busy enough to help. I spend Friday afternoon at my office going through samples for a new project while Laurent works at the desk across from mine.
My phone lies beside a stack of wallpaper books, screen up because I’ve apparently become a person who needs visual confirmation that nothing threatening has appeared.
Laurent reaches across the table and steals one of my fabric swatches.
“That’s mine.”
“It’s ugly.”
“Give it back.”
He holds it farther away. “I’m saving you from yourself.”
I reach for it, and my elbow bumps a framed photograph beside the samples. The frame tips, but I catch it before it falls.
It’s an old picture of Meg and me with Mom, taken at a lake the summer before everything got bad. Mom stands between us with an arm around each of our shoulders. I’m probably eleven. Meg is seven or eight and missing a front tooth.
I smile, then notice something wrong.
Mom isn’t in the middle anymore.
I pick up the frame. The photograph has been removed and put back behind the glass upside down.
Laurent notices my expression. “What?”
I turn the frame toward him.
He stares at it. “Was it like that before?”
“No.” I keep several family photographs in my office. I arranged them myself when we moved into this space, and I dust them often enough to know exactly how they sit.
I turn the frame over and open the back. The photo slides into my hand.
On the other side is another picture. I stare at it. Someone has placed a second photograph behind the first.
It’s from the same summer. Mom is sitting on a picnic table with Meg in her lap while I stand several feet away near the edge of the frame. I haven’t seen this picture in years. I don’t even know where it came from.
Laurent moves closer. “Julie?”
My phone starts ringing on the desk, and I flinch hard enough to nearly drop the photograph.
Dalen’s name fills the screen. I pick it up and answer.
“Hey,” he says. “You busy?”
I look at the two photographs in my hands. “Yes.”
Something in my voice catches his attention immediately. “What happened?”
I keep staring at the second picture. “I think someone’s been in my office.”