I press again.
“Are you in danger?”
Another press.
She asks me if the GPS system is showing the correct address, and I confirm it.
“I’m dispatching a unit to your house immediately. Keep this line open.”
I gather Cassie to me and lean her head against mine. Where earlier tonight her smell was foreign, adult, now it’s an echo of her as a baby. The 911 woman speaks, reassuring me, but nothing will comfort me until I know my children are safe.
I can’t hear anything now. Is he in the house? Does he have a weapon? What, what, what does he want?
Cassie and I stare into each other’s eyes. I do my best to convey both the seriousness of what I’m feeling and the assurance I need to. We’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. If I think it a million times, can I implant the suggestion in my daughter’s mind? Can I make it come true?
Cassie reaches down and takes the knife from where I’ve stashed it in the waistband of my pajamas. I shake my head as she removes the blade from its sheath. She nods back, makes a slight stabbing motion with it. It must be the nerves, but I want to laugh.
I put my hand around her wrist. We cannot do this. We cannot try to defend ourselves.
I speak into the phone. “Please hurry.”
“Ma’am? Did you say something?”
I press one again.
“Hurry,” I say as loud as I can without disclosing our location if he’s in the house. “Please.”
“They’re two minutes away, ma’am.”
I sound my acknowledgment as something flashes through the window. Is that a . . . ?
I spring to my feet and pull the chair out of the way.
“Mom! What are you doing?” Cassie says in a harsh whisper.
“It’s okay. The police will be here in a moment.”
I open the door as more lights flash. I can hear the whine of sirens approaching. I run down the stairs, suddenly unafraid, the adrenaline winning. In the kitchen, I find what I knew I would when I saw the lights: a man with a camera standing on the other side of the glass.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I scream.
“Say cheese,” he says loudly enough for me to hear him as his flash goes off once again.
• • •
After the police have left without catching the guy, the kids have been soothed with cocoa and calming words and are back in bed, and the alarm is on, which I forgot to do earlier, I try to settle into my own bed without much success. What the hell was that all about? Why are people so interested in my life? It’s not like I went around asking for any of it . . . The photograph, the publicity, the status as the poster child for a tragedy I wish I had nothing to do with. I tried to bat it away, and I hate how it makes me a target. Take last night at the restaurant with Teo. A simple moment that should’ve been private, between us, was fair game to some passerby.
I even wanted to turn down the money until my mom talked me out of it. But I’ve used it for the kids—paid off the mortgage and the debts from the restaurant that never was, topped up their college funds, created a trust. I work as hard as I can on the Compensation Committee to make sure that as many deserving families as possible get their due. And yet, it’s never enough. I still feel like a fraud, a fake, a prop in my own life.
What the hell was that man doing? What was he hoping to find? Me with another man? Me with . . . Oh God. I’m so, so stupid.
I pick my phone up off the bedside table, where it will sleep forever now, and open a web browser. TMZ seems like the best bet. And yes, there it is.
TRIPLE TEN WIDOW MOVES ON?
Teo and me kissing is tonight’s breaking news.
• • •
The dawn, when it finally comes, does not improve what happened in the night.
Though I need to tell Cassie and Henry about the kiss before they read about it online, I don’t want to wake them again. I let them sleep in while I count the ways in which I’ll kill the man who terrified us when they find him. I silently send curses to the man or woman—I wasn’t able to tell which—who took the picture of Teo and me. I revive the litany of words I have for Tom, the betrayer, because if he hadn’t done what he did, I’d be a real widow, too torn up with grief to even think about a man, even one as great as Teo. And then I think about her, that anonymous woman who tore my life open. Who is she? Where is she? If she’s alive, does she lie awake at night full of regrets? Or did she slough off Tom’s death, consider it a close call, and scurry back to the comfort of her family, her life?
I get up and go to Tom’s study. I start to pull items from his desk and sort them into piles—keep, toss, donate. I try to tell myself I’m doing what I should’ve done long ago, sort through his things and start to make room for myself in here. But really, I’m looking for evidence, some sign or clue to point the way to her. I’ve been avoiding this forever, not asking the right questions when I had the chance, not searching my own house for further proof of his betrayal because I had enough to deal with.
But now, in the early morning after a night when my stitched-together life feels like it’s falling back apart, it seems like the right time to look under corners and reach to the back of drawers to see if I can find the monster after all and slay it.
Instead, all I find are remnants of our life together. Old bills, the to-do lists he’d make, packs of photographs that never
