Caroline Eriksson - The Watcher

I took the bus to her neighborhood at a time when I figured she’d probably be home from work. I hadn’t called in advance. No one knew where I was or what I was planning to do. She lived in a small single-story house, and when I knocked on the front door, she was standing in the kitchen. I could see her through the window. She appeared to be checking on something in the oven. She had her frizzy hair down and was wearing an apron over her turquoise dress. She turned around and caught me looking in her window. She was beautiful. She looked puzzled when she opened the door, wondering if I was a friend of someone in the book club and perhaps they’d invited me. It wasn’t until after she’d let me in and shut the door that I managed to identify myself.

She’d already started walking back to the kitchen, but when I told her my name, she spun around, teetering on her high heels. Once she turned back around to face me, I clearly could see that she wasn’t just surprised, but rather afraid, terrified. What had Peter told her, actually? What had he said about me? I stepped closer to her.

“I kind of need to talk to you,” I said, trying to sound as calm as possible. “Do you think we could sit down for a moment?”

Anna’s eyes roved around the room, over my shoulder and back again. It seemed like she was looking for someone or something. Then I realized it was an expression of the discomfort she was feeling because I was between her and the door. She didn’t believe what I’d said about talking. She thought I was planning to hurt her.

I took another couple of steps forward and said, “I just—”

I didn’t get any further before she lunged for an open door somewhere between us. I hadn’t thought of this before now, but Anna disappeared through that doorway and tried to slam it shut behind her, presumably in an attempt to stop me from following her. Instead, she must have tripped, because I heard a terrible crash, a piercing scream, and a few heavy thuds. Then it was completely silent.

I stood there frozen at first, then crept closer to the doorway. Cool air rushed up at me along a steep, narrow set of stairs down into the basement. Anna was lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, and as soon as I saw her, I knew she was dead. Even so, I called her name several times. When she didn’t respond, I went down to her and put two fingers on her neck. There was no pulse beating under her skin anymore. Then I panicked. I raced back out the same way I’d come in, left the house and the neighborhood as fast as I could. The scope of what had happened didn’t seriously sink in until later. Dead. Anna was dead because of me. True, I had no intention of harming her, but the fact remained: If I hadn’t shown up unannounced on her doorstep, this irreversible event wouldn’t have happened.

My sister sits quietly as I say all this. At some point, she gets up to put away the leftover food. Then she sits back down across from me and keeps listening. Of course she’s aware of most of this from the last section of my manuscript. Still, I have the sense that it’s only just now becoming real to her. When I’m done, I cast a quick glance at her serious face. I can see the little muscles beneath one of her eyes, twitching.

“I can’t comprehend it,” I say, resting my head in my hands. “I can’t wrap my head around the fact that she’s dead and I’m… that I was the one who…”

My voice breaks. I wait for my sister to say something else, anything at all, but she’s quiet for a long time.

“So awful,” she finally says. “Really awful.”

Another few minutes pass in silence. Then my sister shivers, as if she’s trying to clear all the images out of her mind. She looks up and our eyes meet.

“It wasn’t your fault, Elena.”

“I went into her home,” I say roughly. “Something about the way I looked or the way I was acting frightened her. When I realized she was dead, I didn’t call for help. I didn’t notify the police or call an ambulance. I hightailed it out of there.”

My sister doesn’t respond right away, and I look off, staring at one of the tea-light flames until my field of vision warps and fills with strange colors.

For several days, I’d waited for the police to come storming in at any moment. I was sure they would have formed suspicions and detected evidence or fingerprints, or that someone in the neighborhood had seen a strange woman running from the house. But nothing happened. Then I saw the death announcement in the newspaper, and it said that Anna had been torn away from friends and family, shockingly and tragically. Nothing in the short obituary even hinted that there was anyone to blame for what happened. To the contrary. Days turned into weeks without anything happening. And then Peter got in touch.

“It wasn’t your fault,” my sister repeats. “You had a shock and you… But it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. Peter said the same thing, didn’t he? Of all people, he certainly ought to know.”

I blink. His words are still ringing in my ears: She died, Elena. She’s dead. That’s what’s happened. It was an accident, a sheer accident.

The truth is that it wasn’t up to me, my sister, or Peter to decide whether it was my mistake or not, my fault or not. But I don’t say that out loud.

Not long after that, we call it a night. We’re both exhausted, but my sister insists on spending the night, offering to sleep on the floor next to my bed. I protest weakly, saying that I’m used to being alone and that she doesn’t need to stay for my sake. She strokes my cheek.

“Did you hear what I said before? From now on, you don’t need to be alone anymore.”

While I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I hear her through the wall, talking to Walter and saying that she won’t be home until the morning. Her voice is mild, and before they hang up, I hear her say, “I love you, too.” Apparently love that lasts does exist; long-term relationships can work. It’s nice to know. When I got it into my head that something wasn’t right between my sister and her husband, I was probably just projecting my own experiences, just like with Philip and Veronica. I see that now.

I set down my toothbrush and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. Even though I see the part I played in what happened, some pieces of the story are still missing. There is only one person who can help me put them into place. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.

When my sister wakes me, it’s already late morning.

“I have to go,” she says. “I have an appointment for a massage with a ruthless physical therapist. I would cancel it, but it would be hell trying to get a new appointment and…”

I wave her on her way. Of course she should go. I can handle things.

“But I’ll call you afterward, OK?”

Even though I nod, she doesn’t budge. I thwack her with my pillow.

“Get going, then.”

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she laughs, heading for the door.

I throw the pillow after her but miss. She sticks her tongue out at me before disappearing down the stairs and, a few minutes later, out the front door. I stretch and realize that I’d slept straight through the whole night for the first time in a long time.

When I make it down to the kitchen, I see that my sister made a pot of tea. I drink a cup and eat some leftovers while I run through what the day might hold in store for me.

At regular intervals, I glance out the window. On one of those occasions, Leo is suddenly just there in the yard. He’s sitting on that blue bench in front of the rhododendron bushes, not doing anything. From what I can see, he doesn’t even have a book with him. He’s just sitting there and drawing patterns on the ground with the tips of his shoes, as if he’s waiting for someone.