Chapter 44
There’s only one streetlamp on the entire street, and it’s three houses up from Henry’s.
He turns slightly, leans closer to the window, studies the house next door.
He looks for motion-sensing lights or cameras.
The woman who lives there is older, and she’s probably not made any improvements to the house in years.
Her aging gold car is parked outside, visible proof that money has been tight, that house projects haven’t been feasible.
Henry is almost positive she doesn’t have a security system.
She probably doesn’t even lock her doors at night or when she goes out.
In that house, the danger was always inside.
He’s looking at the lamp, trying to recall how far its brightness reaches, when his mother speaks to him for the first time in two days.
“Henry,” she says, and he ignores her. He’s been avoiding her ever since she brought up those girls. Vivian. Sarah. Candace. You didn’t get laid off. Did you, Henry? He didn’t appreciate that. Not at all.
But he had to come up for a bit of reconnaissance, looking for the wife, and here, instead, is his mother.
“Henry,” his mother repeats. “What are you doing?”
He spins around. He didn’t hear her approaching, and that bothers him. He likes to think he always knows when she’s around, that he knows precisely what she knows.
Yet he should have expected her, watching, lurking, thinking the worst of him. Isn’t that what she’s always doing?
“Nothing, Mom,” he says, and his voice cracks from lack of use. It’s Friday morning, and Henry hasn’t spoken aloud to anyone for at least a day.
“You’re watching her, aren’t you?” His mother tips her head toward the window, toward the unhappy couple’s house.
Don’t you dare, Henry wants to say. Don’t say her name.
Even though she didn’t.
“Watching her?” Henry sighs, a person who doesn’t have time for such ridiculous accusations. “What are you talking about?”
“Like the others? Henry.” She’s pleading with him. “We just talked about this.”
Henry turns from her again. He looks at the wife’s house, grand and unmoving. He looks at the streetlamp.
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, and then he looks straight through her. He ducks past her, and he’s gone.
She thinks she knows, but she doesn’t. She has no idea what he’s doing.
It’s not good. Not good at all. But it isn’t what she thinks.
She’s not like the others. He wouldn’t hurt her—that isn’t his plan at all.
He’s going to save her.