No One's Home Page 17

  Hunter narrowed his eyes at his father as the man stomped out of the room. Once the door was closed, the boy stood and rummaged through his closet.

  DeAD GiRL BAD BeNNY

  BAD BAD BAD

  He found his old wired keyboard in a crate, buried under discarded video games and a photograph of a little boy perched on the lap of an older sister. He paused a minute at the photo before shoving it back in its box. He plugged the keyboard into the back of his machine and sat back down with renewed determination. Fuck him.

  In the search engine, he typed, “Signs of pill addiction.”

  Down the hall in the master suite, Myron took what was left of the white pills, then stashed his son’s keyboard in the back of his sock drawer. He wouldn’t discuss the altercation with Margot. He scowled as if he could hear her nagging, Are you sure taking his computer was the best thing to do? Her doubting voice cranked so many gears inside him that he nearly sprang apart. He collapsed onto the bed and waited for the pills and cable TV to wash his guilt and tortured thoughts away.

  An hour later, a sound nudged him awake. “Margot?” he mumbled, but her side of the bed was empty.

  He heard the sound again and sat up, woozy. It was coming from his bathroom. Myron put his sweaty feet on the cold wood floor and padded silently in the dark toward it.

  In the ghostly glow of the white marble, a figure stood at his sink—the shape of a girl. Myron stopped breathing, frozen in the doorway. Bare legs. Long pale hair. White gauzy slip. A wisp of smoke. “Margot?” he whispered.

  He squinted at the female shadow and took a cautious step into the doorway. The shape of her slipped into his closet with the softest laugh he’d ever heard. A breath escaping through the slightest of smiles.

  Not Margot.

  “Hey!” He fumbled for the light switch that wasn’t there. It had been installed on the other side of the wall, but his foggy brain couldn’t manage the math. “Who’s there?”

  He followed the shadow to the other end of the bathroom, peering through the doorway of his closet. Walking in its wake, he caught the scent of Margot’s perfume and something else. Something sweet and smoky.

  “I’m not kidding.” Myron took an unsteady step forward in the dark, feeling the wall for the light switch. “Who are you? And what the hell are you doing in my house?” His voice slurred with sleep and the pills he’d taken.

  He tried to blink his eyes clear in the faint light streaming in through the window sheers behind him. A shape moved between his suits. Closer. Then gone again. Vanished into the shadows.

  “Who are you? What the hell are you doing in here?” he asked, still fumbling along the casing for the damn light switch.

  The door at the far end of his closet creaked open into the hallway. The shape of a girl caught in silhouette in the doorframe stopped and turned to Myron. He froze, transfixed. Is this a dream?

  He found the switch and snapped it on in a painful burst of white. The sudden brightness stabbed his eyes, forcing them to blink and focus and see. There was nothing there.

  Margot’s voice jarred him fully awake. The sound of it was coming from her yoga studio, and she wasn’t talking to him. Myron stepped out into the hallway to find the door to the yoga room standing open and a soft blue glow beckoning him closer. He stumbled toward it, and her voice grew louder.

  “Feel the stretch from your shoulders all the way to your feet,” she said softly. “Doesn’t that feel good?”

  He stopped in the doorway to find his wife’s laptop open in the center of the room.

  “It’s important to breathe,” Margot cooed at him from the computer screen with her knees knotted over her head. “Breathe from your spine, letting your muscles go on the exhale. You’re doing well. Two more breaths . . .”

  Myron scanned the room for the intruder, not quite convinced he’d seen one at all. Margot? Then his eyes shifted back to his wife on the screen as she curled into another uncomfortable pose. He crouched down and examined the video and found another link open. Clicking on it, Margot’s flushed face appeared larger on the screen.

  “Is that for me?” she asked him, smiling coyly.

  “Why? You want it?” Another voice came from somewhere off camera. Myron sank down to the floor, transfixed at the image of his wife smiling that smile at some stranger. Batting her eyelashes like she did when she wanted something from him. Whatever he’d seen in the closet slipped away as her naked body filled the screen.

  “It doesn’t matter what I want,” she purred. “I’m a married woman.”

  32

  The next morning, Hunter heard his father’s phone ring down in the kitchen. He sat up in bed and listened.

  “This is Dr. Spielman . . . No, I haven’t had a chance to look at it . . . I’m sure it is convincing . . . Of course, a jury is going to be moved. Listen, aren’t you the one that told me a sad story isn’t enough? . . . Look. I’m heading into my office. Let me call you back.”

  Hunter grimaced at the sound of his father’s agitated voice. He’d stayed up half the night, debating what to do about his father’s accusations, Roger and the stolen pills, and the dead girl in his house. He packed up a backpack stuffed with his weed and a few changes of clothes and threw it onto his shoulder. He’s going to kill me. I can’t stay here.

  A scratching noise behind him stopped him at the door. Frodo and Samwise were clawing at a toilet paper roll. The frayed cardboard rustled against the wood chips. Their tiny claws scraped the edges.

  “Shit,” he whispered. He grabbed the box of gerbil food and deposited it in several piles throughout the maze of tubes and the three aquariums. Enough food for a week. “Sorry, guys,” he said and ran a finger over each of them through the glass. “I’ll be back once I figure out what to do.”

  Down in the kitchen, Myron muttered softly to himself over his morning coffee. “They can’t prove malpractice unless they prove acts outside the standard of care . . . The nurse said she checked the stitches, dammit!”

  He didn’t notice his son slip out the side door and down the driveway with a backpack on his shoulder. He drank his coffee at the sink and then headed to work.

  Two hours later, Margot padded into the kitchen half-asleep and hungover. She stood in her robe, glaring at the dark rings Myron had left on the marble next to the coffee maker.

  In the middle of her annoyance, there was a knock on the front door.

  “Are you Margaret Spielman?” a delivery man asked from behind an enormous arrangement of red roses. Two dozen at least.

  Margot set her coffee mug down on the table by the door, her face flushed in the glow of the bright petals. “Yes?”

  “Then these are for you.” The dark-skinned man handed her the flower vase.

  “My goodness!” She marveled at the size of them, the thick stems, the opening blooms gathered in a heavy umbrella the precise color of blood. She set the heavy arrangement on the table next to the staircase, a table selected specifically for large flower arrangements. There wasn’t a card. Are they from Myron? She dismissed the thought as quickly as it came to her. Grand gestures weren’t his style. But who?

  “Can you sign here for me, ma’am?”

  Margot bristled at the word ma’am but offered a thin smile. She grabbed the pen and clipboard. “Is there a card?”

  “Not that they gave me.”

  He held his hand out for his clipboard, but she held on to it a second, scanning the form for any name but hers. “Are you sure there isn’t some sort of name at least? Those must’ve cost a hundred dollars! I can’t imagine anyone would go to such trouble without at least leaving their name. Can you?”

  The man shrugged. “I dunno. Can’t really predict what people will do though, right? I’ve seen some weird stuff on this job.”

  “Can you call someone back at the shop for me?” She batted her eyes at him ever so slightly and crossed her arms to push her breasts together just so. “I’d hate not knowing who to thank.”

  “I don’t
know what good it’d do. We just get the orders off the internet. People don’t leave a name, they don’t leave a name.” He lifted his chin at her cleavage, assessing. He knew this game and didn’t feel like playing. He pulled a worn business card from his back pocket. “You can call the number there if you want.”

  She took the card with a sigh and closed the door.

  The enormous bouquet threw a red shadow on the wall as she stood there alone in the foyer. The longer she stood there looking at it, the more uncomfortable they made her until she finally grabbed her coffee mug and headed back to the kitchen, where her pink phone was waiting on a cold marble slab. She glanced at the business card in her hand again before tossing it in the trashcan. Then she dialed a number from memory.

  “Yes. Good morning. Can I please speak to Dr. Moriarty? . . . Yes, I’ll hold.”

  She set the phone on the counter and turned on the speakerphone. Classical piano music spilled out of the pinholes in the plastic and onto the floor. Chopin. The eerie notes curled up the stairwells and down the hallway upstairs to where Hunter’s bedroom stood empty.

  Margot drummed her fingers nervously, then went to the pantry and grabbed a jar of organic peanut butter. While the ominous funerary played, she ate two guilty spoonfuls and refilled her coffee.

  Finally, a deep voice broke through the speaker. “Moriarty.”

  “Alan? It’s Margot.”

  “Margot? What, ah . . . How are you?”

  She snapped off the speakerphone and picked up the receiver. “Fine. Listen, Alan. You didn’t”—she tapped her heel against the ground and winced—“send me flowers. Did you?”

  There was a long pause as he answered from wherever it was he worked.

  “Yeah. I know. I just got these roses and thought. I don’t know.” Her face burned pink.

  Another pause.

  “Of course. No. I won’t . . . You take care of yourself, okay? Thanks.” She tapped a button on her phone irritably and dropped it three inches onto the counter as if it were hot. She shook her head at herself and put away the peanut butter. “Stupid,” she whispered. “So fucking stupid.”

  After all of the breakfast dishes had been put away, Margot circled the kitchen feeling guilty, restless, worried. I don’t live that far away. She shuddered to think “Kevin” knew her address. There was no way some stranger had found her address online. She’d been so careful.

  Two full laps later, she picked up the phone again. Two buttons. Three rings. “Myron? . . . No, everything’s fine. Um . . .” She glanced back toward the flowers in the foyer, debating whether or not to ask about them. “Yeah. No, I’m sorry. I know you’re working. It’s just . . . I am taking care of myself! Jesus, I’m not an invalid! I’m just going stir crazy here in this house . . . I know quitting my job was my decision. It’s just—”

  Myron’s voice could be heard through the earpiece, loud and agitated.

  Margot squeezed the phone harder, angry. Calling him had been a mistake. “Okay. Fine. We’ll talk later!”

  She slammed the phone down and stormed back out into the foyer. The flowers hadn’t moved but seemed even fuller than before. Impossible to hide. Bleeding red on the walls. She tugged her lip at them, debating. Standing in the two-story foyer with her ponytail and bare legs, she looked tiny, girlish.

  Lost in thought, she trudged up the oppressively grand staircase and padded barefoot into her room to run a hot bath. The house stood still as the bathroom clouded with steam. Once Margot had sunk down deep into the hot water, she shut her eyes and listened to the sound of the street outside. The way the warm wind slapped the window sashes back against their frames in her bedroom. The hum of a lawn mower a block away. A silvery drop of water hitting the still surface of the bath, sending ripples toward her neck. Margot lay there rigid, willing her muscles to relax, darting from one thought to another.

  I don’t live that far away.

  A loud crash of a box hitting the attic floor jolted her upright. She climbed out of the tub, barely pausing to grab her towel. Racing out into the hall, she called, “Hunter? Is that you?”

  Down at the bottom of the grand staircase, the front door was closed. Did I remember to lock it? she wondered. The roses still waited for an explanation from their perch in the foyer.

  “Hello?” she called out again.

  The silence of the house answered.

  Margot shivered in her towel, unsure what to do next, taking three steps forward. The door to her studio gaped open. She puzzled at it a moment. She never left it open. When she poked her head inside, everything seemed to be in order.

  Peeking into the dark corridor that led over the garage, she saw the attic door was shut. Even in daylight, Margot hated going up there. Rumors and graffiti seemed to circle her thoughts as she climbed the stairs, swatting at imagined cobwebs. Smells of the contractors and the half-dead squatters who had once slept there still lingered in the air—sweat and cigarettes and chemical poisons. A pile of old blankets had been left in the corner. Margot eyed them, making a mental note to complain to Myron.

  The bathroom light at the far end had been left on again.

  “Hello? Anybody up here?”

  Hair still dripping, Margot inched her way across the floor of the long attic cavern toward the bathroom. To her right, doors to both the attic bedrooms hung open. She blinked at the second one. It had been locked since they bought the place. Max’s voice the day they’d toured the house came back to her. Anyone give you a master key?

  No one had, but there the door was, standing wide open.

  A dusty box lay on its side in the middle of the mysterious room, toppled over. Was that the bang I heard? She puzzled at it. It wasn’t one of theirs. It was too old and grimy, lying there in the rectangle of daylight streaming in through the tiny window. Outside, tree branches waved lazily in the wind.

  Unnerved, Margot quickly finished her search of the attic. The mystery room of old boxes, the room full of her Christmas decorations, and the main living room were empty. She clicked off the bathroom light after checking the tub and behind the door. A large shadow on the bathroom floor gave her pause. A place where the grout had been stained darker than the rest. Margot didn’t want to consider what had spilled there and made a point to step over the stain with her bare feet.

  Satisfied the attic was empty, she sighed in frustration at her ruined bath. “This creepy fucking place,” she muttered to herself and headed back to the stairs.

  The stairwell felt darker than before, and it took her a moment to figure out why. The door had swung shut. A jolt of fear shot through her. She scanned the empty room for some sort of weapon. Not a baseball bat or a golf club in sight.

  “Shit,” she hissed and crept down the stairs as quietly as she could.

  I don’t live that far away.

  She pressed her ear to the door and listened for an intruder. Nothing. With a deep breath, she turned the handle and pushed the door. It didn’t move. She tried again, pushing harder. The dead bolt slapped against brass strike with a loud tick.

  It was locked.

  33

  Margot pounded on the door until her fist was raw. “Hello? Hunter? God dammit! Let me out of here!” she bellowed, her voice echoing off the bare sloped ceilings and hard floor of the attic. “This is it, Hunter! I’ve had it! Let me out of here now, or I swear to God . . .”

  She could never finish that sentence, not even while pounding and kicking hard enough to crack one of the panels of the door. The crackle of cleaving wood startled her enough to stop her banging. Squinting in disgust, she ran a finger over the joint between the panel and the style. These doors alone are worth a fortune! the interior designer had exclaimed, sauntering around during his tour. Fifteen hundred dollars apiece, easily!

  Margot collapsed on a step. Is he even home? Did I see him leave? Do I know him at all anymore? The thought of awkward, lanky Hunter locking her in a room left her gaping with disbelief. But who else? “Hunter? Are you there?”
>
  Her hands were trembling. The bath towel had fallen onto the steps in her fury. She looked down at her naked torso, then up at the attic ceiling. It would be hours before Myron returned home from work. And that was if he didn’t stop off at the gym, or wherever it was he went. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  An electronic trill of music made its way under the locked door. The cell phone. She’d left it down in the kitchen. She leaned toward the sound. Hunter? Myron?

  The song abruptly stopped. She waited with shallow breaths for it to begin again, but there was nothing. A hostile silence radiated up through the floorboards. She shrank back against the steps, sweating in the stale heat of the third floor. The sun had drifted higher in the sky, beating down on the dark slate of the roof, cooking the wood and plaster. She swallowed hard.

  Finally, she stood up and crept back up the stairs to take stock. Out one of the front dormer windows, cars rushed past on Lee Road down below the trees. A delivery truck rumbled past. Each window dormer created a useless but charming alcove not quite big enough for a desk or a reading chair, just the frustrated possibility of one. She opened a window and called out, “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

  Cars kept passing by.

  In the crawl space, the air-conditioning kicked on, filling the air with the hum of the electric motor and the waterfall sounds of the air rushing through the ducts buried behind the knee walls. A bead of sweat dripped down Margot’s back.

  Out the bathroom window, the view was entirely trees and the shadow of the house next door. The sash opened without a fight. Several cigarette butts sat piled in the windowsill, and a smattering of ashes blew into her face along with a blast of fresh air. Margot recoiled, spitting and wiping her face. “Max! You son of a bitch!”