А Финн - The Woman in the Window

Olivia had shifted slightly in her sleep, banked herself upon her left arm, the right trailing loose along her side. Her cheek was pressed into the ground. I tipped her onto her back, mopped the snow from her skin. Gently thumbed her ear.

Ed hadn’t moved. I leaned into his face. He was still breathing.

I’d pushed the phone into my jeans pocket. Now I fished it out, squeezed it for luck, dialed 911 again. For a breathless second I imagined it ringing, could almost hear it, trilling in my ear.

Nothing. I stared at the screen.

Stared at the car, turtled on its back, helpless, like a wounded animal. It looked unnatural, even embarrassed.

Stared at the valley beneath us, spiky with trees, a thin silver ribbon of river unfurled in the distance.

I stood up. I turned around.

The mountain reared over me. In the daylight, I could see that I’d misjudged how far we’d dropped—we were at least two hundred yards from the road above, and the stone face looked even more impassable, more impossible, than it had the night before. Up, up, up my gaze climbed, until it reached the summit.

My hand wandered to my throat. We’d plunged all that way. We’d survived.

I tilted my head back farther still, to take in the sky. And squinted. It all seemed too vast, somehow, too massive. I felt like a miniature in a dollhouse. I could see myself from without, from afar, tiny, a speck. I spun around, wobbled.

My vision swam. Something twinged in my legs.

I shook my head, rubbed my eyes. The world subsided, retreated to its boundaries.

For a few hours I dozed beside Ed and Olivia. When I awoke—11:10 a.m.—the snow was crashing on us in waves, wind cracking like whips overhead. A low growl of thunder sounded nearby. I swept flakes from my face, jolted to my feet.

That same flutter in my vision, like ripples in water, and this time my knees snapped toward each other, magnet-jerked. I started to slump toward the ground. “No,” I said, my voice raw and chapped. I swung a hand to the snow, propped myself up.

What was wrong with me?

No time. No time. I pushed against the ground, stood. Saw Ed and Olivia at my feet, half-submerged.

And I began dragging them into the car.

How did the time creep by? It seemed, during the following year, that the months were passing more quickly than those hours with Ed and Livvy on that inverted ceiling, the snow rising against the windows like a tide, the windshield creaking and popping under the weight of white.

I sang to her, pop songs, nursery rhymes, tunes I invented, as the noise outside grew louder and the light within got dimmer. I studied the whorls of her ear, traced them with my finger, hummed into them. I wrapped my arms around his, braided my legs with his, twined my hands with his. I wolfed a sandwich, guzzled a juice box. I unscrewed a bottle of wine before remembering that it would dehydrate me. But I wanted it. I wanted it.

We were underground, it felt; we had burrowed someplace secret and dark, someplace sheltered from the world. I didn’t know when we would emerge. How we would emerge. If.

At some point my phone died. I fell asleep at 3:40 p.m., 2 percent power, and when I awoke, the screen had gone dark.

The world was silent, except for the scream of wind, and Livvy, tugging breaths from the air, and Ed, a faint crackle in his throat. And me, sobs guttering somewhere in my body.

Quiet. Absolute quiet.

I came to in that womb of a cabin, my eyes bleary. But then I saw light leaking into the car, saw the dim glow behind the windshield, and heard the silence the way I’d heard the noise. It inhabited the car like a living thing.

I uncoiled myself and reached for the door handle. It clacked reassuringly, but the door wouldn’t budge.

No.

I scuttled on my knees, rolled onto my aching back, crammed my feet against the door and pushed. It budged against the snow, then stopped. I kicked the window, clopped it with my heels. The door stuttered open. A little avalanche piled into the car.

I slithered outside on my stomach, crushing my eyes shut against the light. When I opened them again, I could see dawn boiling over the distant mountains. I rose to my knees, surveyed the new world around me: the valley, drenched in white; that faraway river; the plush snowfall beneath my feet.

I swayed on my knees. And then I heard a crack, and I knew it was the windshield collapsing.

I sank one foot then the other into the snow, stumbled to the front of the car, saw the glass staved in. Back to the passenger door, back inside. Once more I pulled them from the wreckage, Livvy first, then Ed; once more I arranged them side by side on the ground.

And as I stood above them, my breath steaming before me, my vision went fuzzy yet again. The sky seemed to bulge toward me, pressing upon me; I crumpled, eyelids clenched, heart hammering.

I howled, a wild thing. I turned onto my stomach, flung my arms around Olivia and Ed, clutched them to myself as I whimpered into the snow.

That was how they found us.

67

When I wake on Monday morning, I want to speak to Wesley.

I’ve twisted myself in the sheets, have to peel them from my body, like apple skin. Sun is pouring through the windows, lighting up the bedclothes. My skin glows with heat. I feel oddly beautiful.

My phone is on the pillow beside me. For an instant, as the ring purrs in my ear, I wonder if he might have changed his number, but then I hear his voice boom, unstoppably loud as ever: “Leave a message,” he commands.

I don’t. Instead I try his office.

“This is Anna Fox,” I tell the woman who answers the phone. She sounds young.

“Dr. Fox. It’s Phoebe.”

I was wrong. “I’m sorry,” I say. Phoebe—I worked with her for almost a year. Definitely not young. “I didn’t recognize you. Your voice.”

“That’s all right. I think I’ve got a cold, so I probably sound different.” She’s being polite. Typical Phoebe. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks. Is Wesley available?” Of course, Phoebe’s quite formal, and will probably call him—

“Dr. Brill,” she says, “has sessions all morning, but I can ask him to give you a buzz later.”

I thank her, offer my number—“Yes, that’s what I have on file”—and hang up.

I wonder if he’ll call back.

68

I head downstairs. No wine today, I’ve decided, or at least not this morning; I need to keep a clear head for Wesley. Dr. Brill.

First things first: I visit the kitchen, find the stepladder as I left it, leaning against the basement door. In the morning light, almost combustibly bright, it looks flimsy, preposterous; David could knock it down with a smash of his shoulder. For an instant, doubt tiptoes into my brain: So he’s got a woman’s earring on his bedside table; so what? You don’t know that it’s hers, Ed said, and that’s true. Three small pearls—I think I’ve got a similar pair myself.

I watch the ladder as though it might walk toward me on its spindly aluminum legs. I eye the bottle of merlot gleaming on the counter, next to the house key on its hook. No, no booze. Besides, the place must be littered with wineglasses by this point. (Where have I seen something like that? Yes: that thriller Signs —middling film, splendid Bernard Herrmann–esque score. Precocious daughter strews half-drunk cups of water everywhere, and they end up deterring the space invaders. “Why would aliens come to Earth if they’re allergic to water ?” Ed ranted. It was our third date.)

I’m getting distracted. Up to the study with me.

I park at my desk, slap my phone next to the mouse pad, plug it into the computer to charge. Check the clock on the computer: just past eleven. Later than I thought. That temazepam really put me under. Those temazepams, technically. Plural.