А Финн - The Woman in the Window

95

My body bucks in shock. My head twists toward the door.

Lightning ignites the room, torches it white. He stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame, his head haloed with rainwater, scarf loose at his neck.

Words lurch off my tongue. “I thought—you went home.”

“I did.” His voice is low but clear. “Said good night. Waited for them to go to bed.” His mouth curls in a soft little smile. “Then I came back here. I’ve been coming here a lot,” he adds.

“What?” I don’t understand what’s happening.

“I have to tell you,” he says, “I’ve met a lot of psychologists, and you’re the first who hasn’t diagnosed me with a personality disorder.” His eyebrows lift. “I guess you’re not the world’s best shrink.”

My mouth clacks shut and creaks open, like a faulty door.

“You interest me, though,” he says. “You do. That’s why I kept coming back to you, even when I knew I shouldn’t. Older women interest me.” He frowns. “Sorry, is that insulting?”

I can’t move.

“Hope not.” A sigh. “My dad’s boss had a wife who interested me. Jennifer. I liked her. She liked me, kind of. Only . . .” He shifts his lanky body, angles himself against the other side of the frame. “There was . . . a misunderstanding. Right before we moved. I visited their house. At night. And she didn’t like that. Or she said she didn’t.” Now he glares. “She knew what she was doing.”

Then I see it in his fist. A bolt of silver, glinting.

It’s a blade. It’s a letter opener.

His eyes travel from my face to his hand and back again. My throat has closed up.

“This is what I used on Katie,” he explains brightly. “Because she wouldn’t leave me alone. I told her, and told her, so many times, and she just . . .” Shaking his head. “Wouldn’t stop.” He sniffs. “Kind of like you.”

“But,” I croak, “tonight—you . . .” My voice dries, dies.

“What?”

I lick my lips. “You told me—”

“I told you enough to—sorry, but to shut you up. I’m sorry to say it like that, because you’re really nice. But I needed to shut you up. Until I could take care of things.” He fidgets. “You wanted to call the police . I needed a little time to—you know. Get stuff ready.”

Motion in the corner of my eye: the cat, stretching himself along the length of the bed. He looks at Ethan, cries.

“That darn cat,” he says. “I loved that movie as a kid. That Darn Cat! ” He smiles at Punch. “I think I broke its leg, by the way. I’m sorry.” The letter opener winks as he wags it at the bed. “It kept following me around the house at night and I kind of lost my temper a little. Plus I’m allergic, like I told you. I didn’t want to sneeze and wake you. I’m sorry you’re awake now .”

“You came here at night?”

He takes a step toward me, the blade liquid in the gray light. “I come here almost every night.”

I hear my breath catch. “How?”

He smiles again. “I took your key. When you were writing down your phone number that day. I saw it on the hook the first time I visited, and then I realized you wouldn’t even notice it was missing. It’s not like you use it. I made a copy and put it back.” Another smile. “Easy.”

Now he giggles, presses his free hand over his mouth. “Sorry. It’s just—I so thought you’d figured it out when you called me tonight. I was like—I didn’t know what to do. I actually had this in my pocket.” Waving the letter opener again. “Just in case. And I was stalling like crazy. But then you just lapped it all up. ‘My daddy has a bad temper.’ ‘Oh, I’m so scared.’ ‘Oh, they don’t let me have a phone.’ You were practically drooling. Like I said, you’re not the greatest shrink.

“Hey!” he exclaims. “I’ve got an idea: Analyze me. You want to know about my childhood, right? They all want to know about my childhood.”

I nod dumbly.

“You’ll love this. This is, like, a therapist’s dream. Katie ”—he practically pushes the word over with disdain—“was a druggie. A crack whore, except for heroin. Heroin whore. She never even told me who my dad was. And, man, she should not have been a mother.”

He looks at the letter opener. “She started using when I was one. That’s what my parents told me. I can’t remember most of it, really. I mean, I was five when they took me away from her. But I remember being hungry a lot. I remember some stuff with needles. I remember her boyfriends kicking the shit out of me whenever they felt like it.”

Silence.

“I bet my real father wouldn’t have done that.”

I say nothing.

“I remember seeing one of her friends overdose. I saw her die right in front of me. That’s my first memory. I was four.”

More silence. He sighs faintly.

“I started misbehaving. She tried to help me, or stop me, but she was too strung out. And then I went into the foster system, and then Mom and Dad got me.” He shrugs. “They . . . Yeah. They gave me a lot.” Another sigh. “I cause trouble for them, I know. That’s why they took me out of school. And my dad lost his job because I wanted to get to know Jennifer. He was mad about that, but, you know . . .” His brow darkens. “Tough luck.”

The room goes lightning-bright again. Thunder rumbles.

“Anyway. Katie.” He’s looking out the window now, across the park. “Like I told you, she found us in Boston, but Mom wouldn’t let her talk to me. And then she found us in New York, just showed up one day when I was alone. She showed me that locket with my picture in it. And I talked to her, because I was interested. And especially because I wanted to know who my father was.”

Now he swings his eyes toward me. “Do you know what it’s like, wondering if your father is as screwed up as your mother? Hoping he isn’t? But she just said it didn’t matter. He wasn’t in her photos. She did have photos. All that was true, you know.

“Well . . .” He looks sheepish. “Not all of it. That day you heard her scream? I had my hands around her neck. Not even that hard, but I was sick of her by that point. I just wanted her to leave. She went crazy. She wouldn’t shut up. My dad didn’t even know she was there until then. He was like, ‘Get out of the house before he does something bad.’ And you called, and I had to pretend I was all scared, and then you called again, and my dad pretended it was all cool . . . ” He shakes his head. “And the bitch still came back the next day.

“By that point I was bored with her. Seriously bored. I didn’t care about the photos. Didn’t care that she’d learned to sail or was taking sign-language classes or any of it. And like I said, she wouldn’t say anything about my father. Probably she couldn’t . Probably didn’t even know him.” He snorts.

“So, yeah. She came back. I was in my room and I heard her arguing with my dad. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I wanted her gone, I didn’t care about her sob story, I hated her for what she did to me, I hated her for not telling me about my father, I wanted her out of my life. So I grabbed this from my desk”—he waves the letter opener—“and went downstairs, and ran in, and just . . .” He drives it downward. “It happened really fast. She didn’t even scream.”

I think of what he told me just a few hours ago: how Jane stabbed Katie. And I remember how his eyes darted left.

Now his eyes are bright. “It was kind of, like, exhilarating. Just pure luck you didn’t see what happened. Or not all of it.” He looks at me hard. “You saw enough, though.”