Safe Haven

belongings.

Dust rose from the gravel and she bounced through the potholes before pulling to a stop out front. She sat in the jeep — dented and scraped, but still running fine — and stared at the door, remembering how Kevin had bled to death on her porch, his gaze fixed on her face.

She didn’t want to see the bloodstains. She was afraid that opening the door would remind her of the way Alex had looked after Kevin struck him. She could practically hear the sounds of Kristen and Josh crying hysterically as they clung to their father. She wasn’t prepared to relive all of that.

Instead, she started toward Jo’s. In her hand was the letter that Alex had given her. When she’d asked him why he’d written to her, he’d shaken his head. “It’s not from me,” he’d said. She’d stared at him, confused. “You’ll understand once you read it,” he’d told her.

As she approached Jo’s, she felt the trace of a memory stir to life. Something that happened on the night of the fire. Something she’d seen but she couldn’t quite place. Just as she felt her mind closing in on it, the memory slipped away. She slowed as she drew nearer to Jo’s house, a frown of confusion creasing her face.

There were cobwebs on the window, and a shutter had fallen to the ground where it lay shattered in the grass. The porch railing was broken and she could see weeds sprouting between the planks. Her eyes took in everything, but she was unable to process the scene before her: a rusted doorknob, half dangling from the door, grime on the windows as if they hadn’t been cleaned in years.

No curtains…

No entry mat…

No wind chime…

She hesitated, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She felt odd and curiously weightless, as if she were in a waking dream. The closer she got, the more the house seemed to decay before her.

She blinked and noticed that the door was cracked down the middle with a two-by-four hammered across it, bracing it to the crumbling casing.

She blinked again and saw that part of the wall, up in the corner, had rotted away, leaving a jagged hole.

She blinked a third time and realized that the lower half of the window was cracked and broken; pieces of glass littered the porch.

Katie climbed onto the porch, unable to stop herself. Leaning in, she peered through the windows into the darkened cottage.

Dust and dirt, broken furniture, piles of garbage. Nothing painted, nothing cleaned. All at once, Katie stepped back on the porch, almost stumbling off the broken step. No. It wasn’t possible, it just wasn’t. What had happened to Jo, and what about all the improvements she’d made on the small cottage? Katie had seen Jo hang the wind chime. Jo had been over to her house, complaining about having to paint and clean. They’d had coffee and wine and cheese and Jo had teased Katie about the bicycle. Jo had met her after work and they’d gone to a bar. The waitress had seen them both. Katie had ordered both of them wine…

But Jo’s glass had been untouched, she recalled.

Katie massaged her temples, her mind racing, searching for answers. She remembered that Jo had been sitting on the steps when Alex dropped her off. Even Alex had seen her…

Or had he?

Katie backed away from the decaying home. Jo was real. There was no way she’d been a figment of her imagination. She hadn’t made her up.

But Jo liked everything you did: she drank her coffee the same way, she liked the clothes you bought, her thoughts about the employees at Ivan’s mirrored your own.

A dozen random details suddenly began crowding her mind and voices dueled in her head…

She lived here!

But why is it such a dump?

We looked at the stars together!

You looked at the stars alone, which is why you still don’t know their names.

We drank wine at my house!

You drank the bottle by yourself, which was why you were so dizzy.

She told me about Alex! She wanted us to be together!

She never mentioned his name until you already knew it, and you were interested in him all along.

She was the kids’ counselor!

Which was the excuse you used as a reason to never tell Alex about her.

But…

But…

But…

One by one, the answers came as quickly as she could think of them: the reason she’d never learned Jo’s last name or saw her drive a car… the reason Jo never invited her over or accepted her offer to help her paint… how Jo had been able to magically appear at Katie’s side in jogging clothes…

Katie felt something give way inside her as everything clicked into place.

Jo, she suddenly realized, had never been there at all.

43

Still feeling as if she were in a dream, Katie stumbled back to her house. She took a seat in the rocker and stared at Jo’s house, wondering if she’d gone utterly mad.

She knew that the creation of imaginary friends was common among children, but she wasn’t a child. And yes, she’d been under a great deal of stress when she arrived in Southport. Alone and friendless, on the run and looking over her shoulder, terrified that Kevin was closing in — who wouldn’t be anxious? But was that enough to have prompted the creation of an alter ego? Maybe some psychiatrists would say yes, but she wasn’t so sure.

The problem was that she didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t believe it because it had felt so… real. She remembered those conversations, could still see Jo’s expressions, still hear the sound of her laughter. Her memories of Jo felt as real as her memories of Alex did. Of course, he probably wasn’t real, either. Probably made him up, too. And Kristen and Josh. She was probably strapped to a bed in an asylum somewhere, lost in an entire world of her own creation. She shook her head, frustrated and confused and yet…

There was something else nagging at her, though, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She was forgetting about something. Something important.

As much as she tried, she couldn’t seem to place it. The events of the past few days had left her feeling drained and jittery. She looked up. Dusk was beginning to spread across the sky and the temperature was falling. Near the trees, a mist was starting to roll in.

Looking away from Jo’s house — which was how she’d always refer to it, regardless of the state of mind it implied — Katie reached for the letter and examined it. The outer envelope was blank.

There was something frightening about the unopened letter, even though she wasn’t sure why. It might have been Alex’s expression as he’d handed it over… somehow she knew it was not only serious, but also important to him, and she wondered why he hadn’t told her anything about it.

She didn’t know, but it would be getting dark soon and she knew she was running out of time. Turning the envelope over, she lifted the seal. In the waning light, she ran her finger over the yellow legal paper before unfolding the pages. Finally, she began to read. To the woman my husband loves,If it seems odd for you to read these words, please believe me when I tell you that it feels just as odd to write them. Then again, nothing about this letter feels normal. There’s so much I want to say, so much I want to tell you, and when I first put pen to paper, everything was clear in my mind. Now, however, I find myself struggling and I’m not sure where to begin.I can start by saying this: I’ve come to believe that in everyone’s life, there’s one undeniable moment of