Chapter 17
“Honey? Henry?” Tessa didn’t have enough hands to dial again, so she set her wineglass on the elevator floor and hit Recents. A booping noise indicated the call had gone through. “Hen?”
“Where’d you go?”
“We got cut off.” This was a terror of her own making, and it had only taken three weeks—which felt like three months—to wear her down. Some road warrior she was. “It works now. I’m on the twelfth floor, so we have a minute.” She paused. “Unless someone gets on.”
Henry was not under a sheet anymore, Tessa noticed.
The light was different, but she couldn’t tell where in the house he was now.
Funny how their new house still wasn’t familiar to her, its corners and crannies, how the light shifted as the time went by.
Even its sounds; the air conditioner, or traffic.
But Henry was somewhere silent now. And it was glary there, too.
The bathroom. Or kitchen. She’d awakened him, apparently, and—
“Tess?”
“So listen, when I got to the hotel after the event tonight—”
“How did it go?”
“Great. Perfect. Loved every second. But when I got to my hotel room there was a note under the door saying there was a package for me.”
“Bookmarks?”
“Well, I thought so, but I called the desk, and they said there wasn’t a package.”
“You need to go down to the desk and—”
“I did.” Floor ten now. “But they said there never was a package. Like, they don’t leave notes. It’s freaking me out.”
“They lost your stuff, honey. Idiots.”
“But what if…” Almost to her floor. “What if it was a trick to get me out of my room?”
Silence on Henry’s end of the line. In the oddly bright light, she saw he was frowning.
“Why?” he finally said. “I mean, that’s strange.” He paused again. “I mean, it could be strange. Or a mistake.”
The elevator doors opened. She stepped out, surveyed the long corridors stretching out both ways, dimly lit strips of tan-on-black carpeting, lined with numbered doors. Hers was about halfway down to the right. Tessa heard some kind of noise wherever Henry was.
“Hey. Sweetheart.” Henry was scratching behind one ear. “You want to call security to go in with you?”
There was a house phone on the long wooden table beside her.
She shook her head, gauging Henry’s reaction. “It’s too—I’m not sure too what. Embarrassing. Just stay on the line with me until I’m safely inside.”
“Okay, but how’s that gonna help?”
She had to laugh. “I know, if the crazed author-murderer is lying in wait, it won’t be that fabulous for either of us. You or me. But I feel better having you with me.” A wave of affection washed over her. “I always do. Always always.”
“Can you record our FaceTime?” Henry asked.
“Record—oh, no idea.” Tessa had to put down her wine to take her key card from her pocket, dumb not to have done it sooner. “It’ll be fine. We can laugh in about two seconds.”
She’d lowered her voice, she realized. And now she was three doors away. Light leaked out from under each of them, but none from under 1205. Which was strange, because she often left all the lights on, and the TV, too, so it wouldn’t be dark when she returned. But had she done that this time?
“I’m here,” Henry said. “Point the screen forward. So I can see the room, not you.”
“I don’t think the lights are on.” She was stalling, she knew it.
“Did you leave them on?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Look. Call security, or let’s do this. You don’t have to go in. Just open the door.”
“Right.” She heard the noises in Rockport again. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“I heard a noise. Are you okay?”
“Tess? Honey?”
She detected a flare of annoyance. And rightly so, it was pushing one in the morning for him, she had awakened him, and this was going to be nothing.
“Okay. I’m going in.”
She tapped the key card on the pad. The light went green. Her carryout bag flapped against the doorjamb as she turned the knob and swung open the door. She held up her phone, like a camera with Henry as the lens.
“It’s dark,” she whispered. A glowing night-light on a bathroom wall offered only feeble illumination to the rest of the square and shadowy space.
She could see the outline of the two beds, her flapped-open suitcase, the bendy aluminum lamp in the corner, the linen curtains, open to the Phoenix skyline.
The white-louvered closet doors were closed.
“Turn on the light,” Henry said.
His voice was lowered, too, she noticed. Now she’d succeeded in frightening him as well. There was not a sound, not a movement, not a rustle. The curtains were dead still.
She felt for the switch, pushed it. Only the light in the entryway came on.
“I have to go in to turn on the other lights.”
“You see anything? I don’t. Is that a closet?”
“I’m gonna open it. This is silly. There’s no bad guy in the closet.” She took a deep breath. Did it. Held up the phone. “See? No one in the closet. The beds have those wooden panels, you can’t get underneath.”
She panned the phone to the bathroom. The shower curtain was open, the tub empty.
“Never a dull moment,” she said. “Thank you, honey.”
“Look around again. I want you to be sure. Leave the door open as you do.”
She put down her bag, one twisty handle catching on her wedding ring. The wine was still in the hall. Holding the phone as her sentry, she went from light to light, turned on everything. Flapped at the curtains, kicked the boards under the beds.
“There’s nowhere else to hide,” she said.
“Did they take anything?”
They. Her laptop was still in its pouch on the desk.
And she had logged out and turned it off when she left, she was religious about that.
Her wallet? Before she’d gone to the lobby, she’d draped her handbag handle over a hanger in the closet and covered it with a coat, as if that would protect her from burglars.
She put down the phone on one of the beds, giving Henry a look at the stucco ceiling, and pawed through her handbag.
Wallet, credit cards, makeup, everything. All there.
“No. Unless I missed—no,” she said again. “Wallet, laptop, all my stuff, all here. It looks exactly like when I left it. I think.”
Her heart had slowed now, she only noticed it as it eased back to normal.
“Close the door?” Henry suggested. “I can’t see you now, only ceiling.”
“Sorry.” She leaned over the phone, waved at her husband in apology. She retrieved her wine, set down the phone, closed the door, locked the dead bolt and drew the chain. And picked up the phone again. “You have a crazy wife,” she said.
“I have a wonderful wife,” Henry whispered. “An imaginative wife. A story-creating wife. A brilliant wife.”
“Aw, thank you—”
“And tomorrow you can yell at them about the lost package. They probably ran out of official paper, or someone didn’t know the no-note system.”
She was so relieved to see his face. So relieved.
“Get some sleep, honey.” Henry yawned. “That’s what I’m about to do. Again.”
“I will,” she said. “And tomorrow, I want to FaceTime the kids. I need—”
“And, honey?” Henry interrupted. “I am always here for you. Always always .”
Tessa almost burst into tears; with the tension and the speculation and the ridiculousness, and with the insistent weight of her imagination.