I knew I’d be in trouble if I got spotted here—because believe me, these people up in The Oaks are sort of extra special cautious about looking after their property—so I started going through yards, behind bushes. I went through yards on Whitley Avenue and then cut over through a back alley to White Oak Lane, and then when some dog started barking behind a fence I cut back to Whitley.
I started walking slower.
I looked over, and saw a certain house.
And I stopped.
It was Laura’s house.
Chapter
Four
All right. You think I’m lying.
Well, maybe I am.
It’s true I thought about her all the time. I mean, like I said, even seeing my dad lying on the couch made me think of her, because of the similarities, you know, between my situation and his, which I certainly did relate to, and was one of the reasons, and probably the big main reason, I’d gone out in the first place, just to escape that sort of claustrophobic feeling in the house, that mopey feeling my dad always had.
But if I did have any intentions, believe me, they were buried.
They were subliminal.
I mean subconscious.
I really hadn’t had any foresight in the matter at all. It’s just that this was the path I’d always taken to get to her house on the days I’d walked there, the same path I used to walk when we were still together. I mean, I was used to it. So it was probably just some sort of osmosis that made me take the same path again, even though it was, of course, the same thing I had done on the day of the funeral.
I wasn’t—and you’re, of course, probably thinking I was, and you have every right to think it—just some nut kid who sneaked up the street to spy on his ex-girlfriend’s house late at night.
But you can go on not believing me. That’s okay, because I’m pretty sure you’ll change your mind when you hear the whole story.
Of course, I have to admit that once I saw the place, I didn’t want to leave.
Now you’re probably laughing at me. But that’s okay too.
Her house just looked so peaceful. In every home on the street the lights were out—hers too. And I had to get closer to her house. I couldn’t just stay in the street. Some weird patrol car might come by. They had that sort of thing up there.
I ducked aside to get a better look and even see that cast-iron furniture we used to sit on some nights when I came over. It was still there, just beyond some smaller trees in her yard—her huge, huge yard—all the furniture like a little cast-iron haven, surrounded by bushes and vines tangled through the frame of this nifty domed gazebo.
I came right up under the gazebo and stood there looking at the table and chairs for a minute, all of it painted black and barely visible in the dark. I bet there’d been a sprinkler on in the yard earlier, because I gently ran my hand over the cast-iron table and felt it was beaded with water.
I stepped out and walked across the yard very quietly, dodging from tree to tree. Next to the house was a big swath of bushes, maybe fifteen feet high, and they cast a wide shadow over the grass. I stepped into the shadow. I looked both ways first. Across the front street there was nothing. Just some parked cars shining under a street lamp, and a mailbox on the corner. The houses across the street were just as quiet. Some blue light in a single window, maybe somebody still up watching TV.
A car drove past. I froze. I didn’t even duck down.
It was a police car.
I was wearing dark stuff, blue jeans that were new and still very dark blue and stiff, and a black T-shirt with long sleeves. In the shadows I really couldn’t’ve been seen. I knew it. I mean, I felt pretty confident about that. I was standing too still. They say ninjas do that, just as I was doing it. I read about it in a magazine, one of those karate magazines you find in some places, magazine racks in grocery stores. You can also see it in karate movies. They stand very still in the shadows—ninjas, I mean—beside a bush, and unless someone is very observant, they think the ninja is just part of the bushes. He might even angle his arms a little, just to look more like a bush. When I froze I was sort of midstep, and I bet I looked just like a bush.
The cop drove on, slowly. He didn’t use his spotlight and shine it over the grass. If he looked in my direction at all, he just saw bushes and didn’t notice me.
But I looked hard at him. I was staring at the car—my head was turned that way—and when it got to the intersection about fifty yards up the street I could see the driver through the open window, because the lights at the intersection were all pretty bright.
It wasn’t a man at all, but a woman, a woman cop I’d seen around a few times in the neighborhood and up at the grocery, this woman cop with a young-looking face that’s kind of round and pretty, but with a blunt nose that makes her look sort
