7. Nora
— ? —
Nora
Adrian keeps finding excuses to be where I am.
The first time might have been coincidence. We both reached for the coffee pot at the same moment, hands brushing in a way that made him jerk back like he’d been burned.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were-”
“It’s fine.” I poured my cup and stepped aside. “After you, Mr. Walker.”
“Adrian.” His voice was strange. Tight. “I keep telling you.”
“Adrian.”
He poured his coffee without looking at me. Without looking away from me. Both things somehow true at once.
The second time was in the hallway outside Lily’s room. I was carrying a stack of books, her favorites, the ones I remembered from before, and he was just… standing there. Like he’d been waiting.
“Does she like those?” He nodded at the stack. “The books?”
“She seems to.”
“Her mother used to read to her every night.” His voice cracked on the word mother. “The same books, over and over. She had this voice she’d do for the dragon-”
“I should get these to her before bedtime.”
“Right. Of course.” He stepped aside. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I-”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” He caught my arm as I passed, then dropped it immediately, like the touch had shocked him. “Something about you - I can’t-”
“Goodnight, Mr. Walker.”
The third time is now.
The stairs. Three in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, so I came down for tea, and he’s sitting on the bottom step with a glass of whiskey and looking like sleep is a country that revoked his passport.
“Eve.”
“I was just-”
“Getting tea. I know. The kettle whistles differently when someone else uses it.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I know every sound in this house. Every creak. Every whistle. It keeps me up at night.”
I should walk past him. I should go back to my cottage and lock the door and forget that my husband is sitting in the dark waiting for someone who doesn’t exist anymore.
Instead, I sit down on the step beside him.
“Bad night?”
“They’re all bad nights.” He takes a drink. “Some are just quieter than others.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“With the nanny?” He laughs again. “What would I even say? That I can’t stop thinking about a woman who’s been dead for two years? That every time I close my eyes I see her face in the river? That my wife, my current wife, looks at me like I’m a stranger, and most days I feel like one?”
“That sounds… difficult.”
“It’s not difficult. It’s purgatory.” He turns to look at me. In the darkness, his eyes are almost black. “And the strangest part is, since you started working here, it’s gotten worse. Not better. Worse. Like you’re-”
“Like I’m what?”
He’s close now. Too close. I can smell the whiskey on his breath, and something else underneath - something familiar that I can’t name. The space between us has collapsed to inches.
“Like you’re haunting me,” he whispers. “Like you’re someone I’m supposed to remember and I can’t - I can’t quite-”
“That’s ridiculous.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “We’ve never met.”
“I know.” His hand comes up, hovers near my face, doesn’t touch. “I know we’ve never met. But when you argue with Brielle, the way you raise your chin, and when you laugh - there’s something in the sound that-”
“Daddy?”
Lily’s voice from the top of the stairs.
Adrian jerks back. I’m on my feet before I consciously decide to move.
“Sweetheart.” His voice has gone normal. Father-normal. “What are you doing up?”
“I heard voices.” Lily is standing in the doorway of her room, clutching a stuffed bear I don’t recognize. “Why are you sitting so close to my nanny?”
Nobody answers her. The stairwell holds all three of us and the thing she just noticed.
“I wasn’t-” Adrian runs a hand through his hair. “I was just-”
“He was telling me about the house,” I say smoothly. “I got lost trying to find the kitchen.”
Lily looks between us. Five years old and already learning to doubt adult explanations.
“The kitchen is that way.” She points. “You’ve been here a month. You know where the kitchen is.”
“You’re right.” I climb the stairs toward her. “I must have been sleepwalking. Come on - let’s get you back to bed.”
She takes my hand and lets me lead her back to her room, but not before she looks over her shoulder at her father, still sitting on the stairs.
“He looks at you weird,” she whispers when we’re inside her room. “Like he used to look at my old mommy.”
“He’s just tired.”
“Grown-ups are always tired.” She climbs into bed and pulls the covers up to her chin. “Will you stay until I fall asleep?”
“Of course.”
I sit beside her bed in the dark, listening to her breathing slow, feeling my heart pound against my ribs.
Below us, the stairs creak under my husband’s retreat - Adrian, running from whatever almost happened.
And the treacherous thought arrives anyway: the last man who stood that close to me in the dark was Theo, in a pantry that used to be mine, and my body knew the difference immediately.
The difference is going to get me killed.
And under the door of the master bedroom, a strip of light that wasn’t there before.
Someone else was awake.
Someone else heard everything.
***
Over breakfast, Brielle is different.
It’s subtle, she’s always been good at masks, but there’s something new in the way she watches me. Something calculating. Something hungry.
“Sleep well?” she asks over breakfast, her eyes never leaving my face.
“Like the dead.”
“I imagine the cottage gets very quiet at night. All alone out there.”
“It’s peaceful.”
“Mmm.” She sips her tea. “I couldn’t help noticing - my husband seemed restless last night. Walking around at all hours. Did you happen to hear anything?”
She was listening. She was awake the whole time.
“Nothing unusual, Mrs. Walker.”
“Strange.” She sets down her cup. “I could have sworn I heard voices.”
“The house makes a lot of sounds.”
“Yes.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Yes, it does.”
She knows. She doesn’t know what she knows - doesn’t understand the shape of the danger sitting across the breakfast table from her - but she knows something is wrong. She can feel it in the air the way you feel a storm coming.
Good.
Let her feel it.
Let them both start to wonder what’s lurking in the dark corners of their perfect stolen life.
I smile back at her, and I make sure my sleeve is pulled down over the birthmark, and I wait.