Confessions on the 7:45
Lisa Unger
For Jeffrey.
Because after twenty years and counting,
you are first, last and always.
PART 1
ALL OUR LITTLE SECRETS
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
—George Orwell, 1984
PROLOGUE
She watched. That was her gift. To disappear into the black, sink into the shadows behind and between. That’s where you really saw things for what they were, when people revealed their true natures. Everyone was on broadcast these days, thrusting out versions of themselves, cropped and filtered for public consumption. Everyone putting on the “show of me.” It was when people were alone, unobserved, that the mask came off.
She’d been watching him for a while. The mask he wore was slipping.
He, too, stood in the shadows of the street, a hulking darkness. She’d followed him as he drove, circling like a predator, then finding a place for his car under the trees. He’d parked, then sat as the night wound on and inside lights went out, one by one. Finally, he’d stepped out of his vehicle, closed the door quietly, and slipped across the street. Now he waited. What was he doing?
Since she’d been following him the last few weeks, she’d seen him push his children on the swings in the park, visit a strip club in the middle of the day, drink himself stupid with his buddies viewing a game at a sports bar. She’d watched as he’d helped a young mother with a toddler and baby in a carriage carry her groceries from her car into her house.
Once, he’d picked up a woman in a local bar. Then, out in the parking lot, they romped like animals in his car. Later, he went to the grocery store and picked up food for his family, his cart piled high with ice cream and Goldfish crackers, things his kids liked.
What was he up to now?
The observer only sees, never interferes. Still, tonight she felt the tingle of bad possibilities. She waited in the cool night, patient and still.
The clicking of heels echoed, a brisk staccato up the deserted street. She felt a little pulse of dread. Was there no one else around? No one else glancing out their window? No. She was the only one. Sometimes didn’t it seem like people didn’t see anymore? They didn’t look out. They looked down, at that device in their hands. Or in, mesmerized by the movie of past and future, desires and fears, always playing on the screen in their minds.
The figure of the young woman was slim, erect, confident. She marched up the street, sure-footed, hands in her pockets, tote over her shoulder. When he moved out of the shadows and blocked her path, the young woman stopped short, backed up a step or two. He reached for her, as if to take her hand, but she wrapped her arms around her middle.
There were words she couldn’t hear, an exchange. Sharp at first, then softer. On the air, far away, they sounded like calling birds. What was he doing? Fear was a cold finger up her spine.
He moved to embrace the girl, and she shrank away. But he moved in anyway. In the night, he was just a looming specter. His bulk swallowed her tiny form, and together in a kind of dance they moved toward the door, at first jerking, awkward. Then, she seemed to give in, soften into him. She let them both inside. And then the street was silent again.
She stood frozen, unsure of what she’d seen. Later, when she realized what he’d done, who he truly was under the mask, she’d hate herself for staying rooted, hiding in the shadows, only watching. She’d tell herself that she didn’t know then. She didn’t know that beneath the mask, he was a monster.
ONE
Selena
Selena loved the liminal spaces. Those precious slivers of time between the roles she played in her life.
She missed the 5:40 train because her client meeting ran long, knowing before she even left the conference room table that there was no way she would be home in time for dinner with her husband Graham and their two maniac boys, Stephen and Oliver. The wild hours afterward—showers, pajamas, random horseplay, vicious but brief sibling battles, television maybe if either of them could sit still a minute—that concluded in story time would have to unfold without her. Selena didn’t often work late; she made a point to be home on time. Chaotic as their evenings often were, that was the best part of her day.
But when she did miss the train that night—she didn’t even bother trying to get to the station—it created a space that hadn’t been there before. Just a little over two hours between the 5:40, which she normally took, and the 7:45, which she intended to catch after finishing up a few things at the office.
In that gap, she could feel herself expand. She wasn’t working. She wasn’t mothering. She just was. She could think. And truth be told, Selena did have some things she needed to think about. These things were a white noise in the back of her mind.
She slipped out of the cab she’d taken back to the office, into the cool autumn evening. The noise of the city washed over her, the manic rush of people on their way home after a long day. Then she stepped into the hush of the quiet lobby, with its marble floors and gleaming walls. Selena nodded to the doorman who knew her, then swiped her card through the gates. Up the elevator alone.
Here her heart started thumping, mouth going dry. Her bag was too heavy, the tote pulling down on her tight shoulder muscles. She hadn’t missed the train on purpose; she really hadn’t wanted to cut the client off as he went on and on.
But.
The office was empty. The literary agency had a small staff; most of them people with families. Many of the parents left before school pickup, then worked at home in the afternoons. Beth, her boss, also her lifelong best friend, had things set up like that so that people could work well and take care of their families—imagine that. It was the rare humane workplace.
She didn’t bother flipping on the light in her office, enjoying the glittering downtown view through her big window. A rush of heat to her cheeks as she dropped her bag. She shifted off her jacket and sat in front of the computer and took a deep breath before opening the lid on her laptop.
It was after 6:15 now. The boys would have had their dinner. If Selena knew their nanny, Geneva, and the efficiency with which she ran the show, Oliver and Stephen would also be showered and in jammies. She probably had them settled in front of the television already.
Selena leaned back in her ergonomic chair, felt its pleasant tilt.
She hadn’t hidden the camera, precisely. Geneva had been made aware of cameras in the home—one upstairs, one down. Selena had simply moved the one from the boys’ bedroom, and told neither Graham nor Geneva about it.
She paused another second. Her desk was cluttered with framed pictures of the boys and Graham, drawings from school, a ceramic owl Oliver had made at art camp. She picked up the glazed misshapen thing; he’d carved his name in the clay bottom. She touched the ridges of the wobbly O, the backward e. Somewhere she heard a vacuum cleaner running.
Her wedding picture—where her smile beamed, and Graham was dashing in his classic tux. He’d whispered to her while the photographer snapped away—dirty things, funny things. Then: This is the best day of my life. His breath in her ear, his arms around her. Her whole body tingled with joy, with desire. Nearly ten years ago now. God, it was a heartbeat, a blink, a single breath drawn and released.
She put the photo down. Then, she clicked on the app that would allow her to watch on her laptop the video feed from the camera she had placed in the boys’ playroom.