А Финн - The Woman in the Window

She coils her hair around one long finger.

“You’re sure . . .” she begins, and I tense, because I know what’s coming. “You’re definitely sure there’s no way this is all a misunderst—”

I lean forward. “I know what I saw.”

Bina drops her hand. “I don’t . . . know what to say.”

Speaking slowly, as though I’m picking my way through ground glass. “They’re not going to believe that anything happened to Jane,” I say, as much to her as to myself, “until they believe that the woman they think is Jane—isn’t.”

It’s a knot, but she nods.

“Only—wouldn’t the police just ask this person for, like, ID?”

“No. No. They’d just take her husband’s—they’d just take her ‘husband’s’ word. Wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they?” The cat trots across the carpet, slinks beneath my chair. “And no one’s seen her before. They’ve barely been here a week. She could be anyone. She could be a relative. She could be a mistress. She could be a mail-order bride.” I go for my drink, then remember I haven’t got one. “But I saw Jane with her family . I saw her locket with Ethan’s picture in it. I saw—she sent him over here with a candle, for Christ’s sake.”

Bina nods again.

“And her husband wasn’t acting—?”

“As though he’d just stabbed somebody? No.”

“It was definitely him who . . .”

“Who what?”

She twists. “Did it.”

“Who else could it be? Their kid is an angel. If he was— were going to stab anyone, it’d be his father.” I reach for my glass once more, swipe at air. “And I saw him at his computer right beforehand, so unless he just sprinted downstairs to cut up his mom, I think he’s in the clear.”

“Have you told anyone else about this?”

“Not yet.”

“Your doctor?”

“I will.” Ed, too. Talk to him later.

Now, quiet—just the ripple of flames in the hearth.

Watching her, watching her skin glow copper in the firelight, I wonder if she’s humoring me, if she doubts me. It’s an impossible story, isn’t it? My neighbor killed his wife and now an impostor is posing as her. And their son is too frightened to tell the truth.

“Where do you think Jane is?” Bina asks softly.

Quiet.

“I had no idea she was even a thing,” says Bina, leaning over my shoulder, her hair a curtain between me and the table lamp.

“Major pinup in the fifties,” I murmur. “Then a hard-core pro-lifer.”

“Ah.”

“Botched abortion.”

“Oh.”

We’re at my desk, scrolling through twenty-two pages of Jane Russell photographs—pendulous with jewels ( Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ), dishabille in a haystack ( The Outlaw ), swirling a gypsy skirt ( Hot Blood ). We consulted Pinterest. We scraped the trenches of Instagram. We scoured Boston-based newspapers and websites. We visited Patrick McMullan’s photography gallery. Nothing.

“Isn’t it amazing,” Bina says, “how according to the Internet, some people might as well not exist?”

Alistair is easier. There he is, sausage-cased in a too-tight suit, from a Consulting Magazine article two years old; russell moves to atkinson, the headline explains. His LinkedIn profile features the same photograph. A portrait in a Dartmouth alumni newsletter, hoisting a glass at a fundraiser.

But no Jane.

Even stranger: no Ethan. He isn’t on Facebook—or Foursquare, or anywhere—and Google yields nothing beyond assorted links to a photographer by the same name.

“Aren’t most kids on Facebook?” Bina asks.

“His dad won’t let him. He doesn’t even have a cell phone.” I roll one sagging sleeve up my arm. “And he’s homeschooled. He probably doesn’t know many people here. Probably doesn’t know anyone. ”

“Someone must know his mother, though,” she says. “Someone in Boston, or . . . just someone .” She walks to the window. “Wouldn’t there be photographs? Weren’t the police at their house today?”

I consider this. “For all we know, they could have photographs of this other woman. Alistair could’ve just shown them anything, told them anything. They’re not going to search their house. They made that very clear.”

She nods, turns, looks at the Russell house. “The blinds are down,” she says.

“What?” I join her at the window and see it for myself: the kitchen, the parlor, Ethan’s bedroom—each one shuttered.

The house has closed its eyes. Screwed them shut.

“See?” I tell her. “They don’t want me looking in anymore.”

“I don’t blame them.”

“They’re being careful. Doesn’t that prove it?”

“It’s suspicious, yes.” She tilts her head. “Do they close the blinds often?”

“Never. Never. It’s been like a goldfish bowl.”

She hesitates. “Do you think . . . do you think you might be, you know—in danger?”

This hadn’t occurred me. “Why?” I ask slowly.

“Because if what you saw really happened—”

I flinch. “It did.”

“—then you’re, you know, a witness.”

I draw a breath, then another.

“Will you please stay the night?”

Her brows lift. “This is a come-on.”

“I’ll pay you.”

She looks at me half-lidded. “It’s not that . I’ve got an early day tomorrow, and all my things are back—”

“Please.” I gaze deep into her eyes. “Please.”

She sighs.

45

Darkness—dense, thick. Bomb-shelter dark. Deep-space dark.

Then, far away, a remote star, a prick of light.

Move closer.

The light trembles, bulges, pulses.

A heart. A tiny heart. Beating. Beaming.

Flushing the dark around it, dawning on a silk-fine loop of chain. A blouse, white as a ghost. A pair of shoulders, gilt with light. A line of neck. A hand, the fingers playing at the throbbing little heart.

And above it, a face: Jane. The real Jane, radiant. Watching me. Smiling.

I smile back.

And now a pane of glass slides in front of her. She presses a hand to it, prints it with tiny maps of her fingertips.

And behind her, suddenly, the darkness lifts on a scene: the love seat, raked with white and red lines; twin lamps, now bursting into light; the carpet, a garden in bloom.

Jane looks down at the locket, fingers it tenderly. At her luminous shirt. At the inkblot of blood spreading, swelling, lapping at her collar, flaming against her skin.

And when she looks up again, looks at me, it’s the other woman.

Saturday, November 6

46

Bina leaves a little past seven, just as light is wrapping its fingers around the curtains. She snores, I’ve learned, light little snuffles, like distant waves. Unexpected.

I thank her, sink my head into the pillow, drop back into sleep. When I wake, I check my phone. Almost eleven o’clock.

I stare at the screen for a moment. A minute later I’m talking to Ed. No “guess who” this time.

“That’s unbelievable,” he says after a pause.

“Yet it happened.”

He pauses again. “I’m not saying it didn’t. But”—I brace myself—“you’ve been really heavily medicated lately. So—”

“So you don’t believe me, either.”

A sigh. “No, it’s not that I don’t believe you. Only—”

“Do you know how frustrating this is?” I shout.

He goes quiet. I continue.

“I saw it happen. Yes, I was medicated, and I—yes. But I didn’t imagine it. You don’t take a bunch of pills and imagine something like that.” I suck in a breath. “I’m not some high schooler who plays violent video games and shoots up his school. I know what I saw. ”