The Neighbor

If he couldn’t run, then he needed a computer. Actually, he needed his computer and he needed to understand just what Sandy had done. How much had thirteen-year-old Ethan taught her?

Best he knew, the family computer was still safely stashed at the offices of the Boston Daily. But how to retrieve it? He could drag Ree with him over to the offices. Police would shadow him this time, and probably two or three reporters as well. His mere presence would make them suspicious. What kind of grieving husband woke his kid in the middle of the night to go to work two nights in a row?

If the police grew suspicious enough, they might check out the computers at the Boston Daily. Particularly if Ethan Hastings kept talking to them. How much had Sandy found? What pieces had she put together without ever confronting him on the subject? She should’ve been angry. Furious. Frightened.

But she had never said a word.

Had she taken a lover by then? Is that what this came down to? She’d found a lover, and then, once she’d stumbled upon the computer files, made her decision to leave Jason. Except then she’d discovered she was pregnant. His? The other man’s? Maybe she’d tried to break it off with her lover. Maybe that had made the other man angry, and he’d taken steps.

Or maybe, on Wednesday night, armed with her newfound training from Ethan Hastings, Sandy had discovered Jason’s computer files. At that moment, she’d realized she was carrying a monster’s child. So she’d… what? Fled into the night without even her wallet or a change of clothes? Decided to save one child by abandoning the other?

It didn’t make any sense.

Which brought him back to the only other new man he knew of in Sandy’s life-Ethan Hastings. Perhaps the boy had assumed a more intimate relationship with Sandy. Perhaps she’d tried to tell him he was mistaken. Given all the hours he’d spent with her, trying to help her outwit her own husband, Ethan had taken this personally. So he’d come to the house in the middle of the night and…

The youngest killer in America had been sentenced for a double homicide at the tender age of twelve, so as far as Jason was concerned, Ethan Hastings met the age requirement for possible homicidal maniac. The logistics of murder, however, seemed complicated. How would a thirteen-year-old boy get to Jason’s house? Ride his bike? Walk? And how would a kid as scrawny as Ethan Hastings dispose of a grown woman’s body? Drag her out by her hair? Fling her over his handlebars?

Jason sat down at the kitchen counter, his head spinning. He was tired. Bone-deep weary. These were the moments he had to be careful. Because his thoughts might wander, and he’d suddenly find himself in a room that always smelled like fresh-turned earth and decaying fall leaves. He would feel the whisper of hundreds of spider- webs brushing across his cheeks and hair. Then he would see the quick scrabble of one fat hairy body, or two or three, dashing across his tennis shoe, or down his pant leg, or across his shoulder, frantically looking for escape.

Because you had to escape. There were things in the dark much worse than shy, panic-stricken spiders.

He wanted to think of Janie. The way she and she alone had welcomed him home with a huge hug. He wanted to remember how it had been sitting on the floor beside her, dutifully drawing unicorns while she prattled away on the importance of the color purple, or why she wanted to live in a castle when she grew up.

He wanted to remember the look on her twelfth birthday, when he had saved all his money to take her horseback riding for the day, because they weren’t the kind of family that could ever afford a pony.

And he wanted to believe that the morning of his eighteenth birthday, when she had woken up and discovered his room once again empty, that she hadn’t cried, that she hadn’t missed him. That he hadn’t broken his little sister’s heart all over again.

Because he was getting an education these days. He was learning that to be the family of the missing person was in its own way just as terrible as being the missing person. He was learning that living with so many questions was harder than being the person who had all the answers.

And he was learning that deep in his heart, he was terrified that the Burgerman was still alive and well. Somehow, some way, the monster from Jason’s youth had returned to take his family from him.

Jason paced for another ten minutes. Or maybe it was twenty or thirty. Clock was ticking, each minute inching toward another morning without his wife.

Max would return.

The police as well.

And more press. Cable news shows now. The likes of Greta Van Susteren and Nancy Grace. They would apply their own kind of pressure. A beautiful wife missing for days. The dark mysterious husband with a shady past. They’d crack open his life for the world to see. And somewhere in Georgia, some people would connect some dots and place phone calls of their own…

Then both Max and the police would have real ammunition to take his daughter from him. How long did he have? Noon? Two o’clock? Maybe they’d break the story just in time to headline the five o’clock cycle. That would score them ratings. Some news anchorman would see his star soar.

And Jason… How in the world would he ever say goodbye to his daughter?

Worse, what would happen to her? Her mother gone, now dragged away from the only father she had ever known… Daddy, Daddy, Daddy…

He had to think. He had to move.

Sandy was pregnant.

He needed to do something.

Couldn’t access his computer. Couldn’t confront Ethan Hastings. Couldn’t run. What to do? What to do?

It came to him, shortly after two A.M.: his last course of action.

It would involve leaving his daughter, sleeping alone upstairs. In four years, he’d never done such a thing. What if she woke up? Found the house once again empty and started screaming hysterically?

Or what if there was someone else out there, someone lurking in the shadows, waiting for Jason to make his first mistake so he could swoop in and grab Ree? She knew something more about Wednesday night. D.D. believed it; he did, too. If someone had abducted Sandy, and if that same someone knew Ree had been a witness…

D.D. had sworn the cops were watching his house. A promise or a threat. He had to hope it was a little of both.

Jason went upstairs, changing into black jeans and a black sweatshirt. He paused outside Ree’s door, straining his ears for any sound of movement. Then, when the silence unnerved him, he had to crack the door open to reassure himself that his four-year-old daughter was still alive.

She slept in a rounded huddle, one arm thrown over her face, Mr. Smith tucked into the curve of her knees.

And Jason remembered clearly then, vividly, the moment he’d first watched her slide into the world. How wrinkly and small and blue. The flail of her fists. The tight, screwed-up pucker of her wailing mouth. The way he instantaneously, absolutely fell in love with every square inch of her. His daughter. His lone miracle.

“You’re mine,” he whispered.

Sandy was pregnant.

“I will keep you safe.”

Sandy was pregnant.

“I will keep you all safe.”

He left his daughter and jogged down the street.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

You know the thing that takes you the longest to get used to in prison? The sound. The sheer, unrelenting noise of men, 24/7. Men grunting, men farting, men snoring, men fucking, men screaming. Inmates muttering away in their own delusional world. Convicted felons, talking, talking, talking even as they’re sitting on the john, as if shitting in plain sight is somehow easier if they talk through the entire freaking event.

First month in the system, I didn’t sleep a wink. I was too overwhelmed by the smells, the sights, but mostly