76

I sit at the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead. Shadows play on the wall before me.

I’ve lit a candle, a little potted Diptyque, fresh out of the box, a Christmas present from Livvy two years back. Figuier. She loves figs.

Loved.

A ghost of a draft haunts the room. The flame shifts, clings to the wick.

An hour passes. Then another.

The candle is burning fast, wick half-drowned in a soft pool of wax. I’m slumped over where I sit. My fingers are cradled between my thighs.

The phone lights up, shivers. Julian Fielding. He’s supposed to see me tomorrow. He won’t.

Night falls like a curtain.

That’s when your troubles started, Little said. Your problems going outside.

At the hospital, they told me I was in shock. Then shock became fear. Fear mutated, became panic. And by the time Dr. Fielding arrived on the scene, I was—well, he said it simplest, said it best: “A severe case of agoraphobia.”

I need the familiar confines of my home—because I spent two nights in that alien wilderness, beneath those huge skies.

I need an environment I can control—because I watched my family as they slowly died.

You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way, she said to me. Or, rather, I said it to myself.

Life made me this way.

“Guess who?”

I shake my head. I don’t want to talk to Ed right now.

“How you feeling, slugger?”

But I shake my head again. I can’t speak, won’t speak.

“Mom?”

No.

“Mommy?”

I flinch.

No.

At some point I keel to one side, sleep. When I wake, my neck sore, the candle flame has dwindled to a tiny blot of blue, shimmying in the cool air. The room is plunged in darkness.

I sit up, stand up, creaking, a rusty ladder. Drift to the bathroom.

As I return, I see the Russell place lit up like a dollhouse. Upstairs, Ethan sits at his computer; in the kitchen, Alistair seesaws a knife across a cutting board. Carrots, neon-bright beneath the kitchen glare. A glass of wine stands on the counter. My mouth goes dry.

And in the parlor, on the striped love seat, is that woman. I suppose I should call her Jane.

Jane’s got a phone in her hand, and with the other she slashes and stabs at it. Scrolling through family photos, maybe. Playing solitaire, or something—games these days all seem to involve fruit.

Or else she’s updating her friends. Remember that freak neighbor… ?

My throat hardens. I walk to the windows and tug the curtains shut.

And I stand there in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing.