This Story Might Save Your Life(50)
He looked at me as if my face was out of focus. Outside, the wind whistled through the trees. “Some people would see it as a burden, being married to someone with your condition.”
Numbness spread through my body as I cast about for a response. I should’ve known this was how he would react. And yet as cruel as these words were, I knew also that they were true. Some people would see it as a burden being married to someone with my condition. I would see it as a burden being married to someone with my condition. It wasn’t like I enjoyed having to abide by a rigid schedule. It wasn’t like I delighted in playing medicinal whack-a-mole with my symptoms whenever conditions changed.
“I don’t see it that way.” He tweaked my nose. “But if you need space, you get space.”
* * *
BY 6:00 P.M., the Santa Ana winds were in full effect. They rattled the windows as Xander examined himself in the bathroom mirror. He tilted his head and undid the top button of his black oxford shirt. “Do you want me to bring anything back? Popcorn? Junior Mints?”
Perched on the edge of our clawfoot tub, I ran a hand through the bubbly water. “I’m good.”
He stared at me as a mother might entrusting her infant to a sitter for the first time. I patted his back as he hugged me. “Go. Stay out as late as you want. Have fun.”
The moment the lock clicked on the front door, my entire body relaxed. I. Was. Alone. It had been literal months since I had last been alone.
Friends, it was like I was transported back in time. I was twenty-one again, dancing in my underwear in my first solo apartment. I soaked in the tub with an overfull glass of wine, watched a saccharine rom-com in bed with a carton of greasy chow mein, and painted my nails while singing along to Fleetwood Mac. I was a goddamn female cliché. It was beautiful.
I was still awash in this glow of revelatory freedom when the power went out.
“Xander?” I said reflexively, and then cursed myself for my codependency. I could handle this alone. It was probably just a fuse. Lighting the way with my phone, I found the breaker box beside the stairs. Everything seemed in order.
As I stepped out onto the terrace, a gust of warm wind whipped the door from my hand; it slammed against the wall with a loud bang, and I let out a yelp.
“Chill out,” I whispered to myself. From my perch, it appeared the entire neighborhood was down. The moon was but a sliver in the sky.
“Joy?”
I turned toward the voice and found Carlotta waving a flashlight from her back porch. Holding my hair against the wind, I met her at the fence.
“Do you need any candles?” She pointed the light up to her face. Though we’d chatted regularly when I first moved in, I hadn’t seen Carlotta in well over a month, and I was startled by the change in her appearance. She wore a headscarf and wide-rimmed glasses, and she had no eyebrows. No hair at all, in fact.
I declined her offer, attempting to be casual, but she’d already clocked my reaction. “Yes, yes, I have cancer. No use tiptoeing around it.”
Xander had become friendly with her partner, Emil. It started with Xander borrowing a ladder, and the next thing I knew Emil was his twice-weekly personal trainer. Xander was even making plans to buy the MG Emil was restoring. I’d be shocked if Carlotta’s health never came up, but if it had, Xander hadn’t mentioned it. “I’m so sorry.”
Through the fence, in the dark, in the squalling wind, she gave me the lowdown: leukemia, acute lymphocytic. Her second time in five years. She’d finished the induction phase of chemo, was presently in remission again, and would soon begin the second phase of chemo.
“Quite the slog,” she said.
I offered to help with anything she needed, and she surprised me by taking me up on it. “Come over Saturday? I need to turn over my planter beds, and gardening is not Emil’s speed.”
I promised I would be there, she asked if I was sure I didn’t need any candles, I said I was good, and we returned to our separate houses.
The silence was jarring when I slipped back through the terrace door, the darkness engulfing. With my phone light, I found my candles, and then I called Xander. Voicemail.
It was time for bed, but I knew he’d be home soon, knocking things over in the dark, so I decided to wait for him. I waited thirty minutes, then an hour, knowing it would mess with my routine, and still he didn’t arrive, nor pick up his phone. Benny didn’t answer either, though this was less surprising since he was visiting his sister in Connecticut.
I am not melodramatic. In fact, I had taken the last few months in relative stride. We’d exercised caution with regard to the superfan because that’s what you do when an invisible stranger trails your every move. But now, alone in the dark, I let my imagination run wild.
If he knew where I was all hours of the day, he without doubt knew I was home alone.
Every true crime story I’d ever heard came back to me in a flash. Were our gates secure? Was our lock easy to pick? What if my phone ran out of charge? Why didn’t we install a landline? Would someone hear me if I screamed for help? I lit more candles, but the resulting shadows haunted me. Each time the house creaked, each time the windows rattled, my entire body seized with tension.
I’m embarrassed to admit how quickly I spiraled.
The power was restored before Xander returned. He found me on the kitchen floor, asleep, knife in hand.