“I think I’m just going to go up to bed,” my mother says as she breezes past me in the mudroom, stepping into the still-dark kitchen just beyond. I can tell from the sound of her voice that she’s exhausted from the day and because I slipped her a Xanax before she went in for her biopsy, because she was so nervous about it. I didn’t ask the doctor if it would be okay; I did it anyway.
“Okay,” I say, finding it hard to tear my eyes away from the shoe print.
Someone has been in the house while we were gone.
Was it Jake?
I shouldn’t feel afraid if my husband was in the house when we were gone. I should be happy that he’s come back home to me. He’s my husband. I love him and he loves me.
But instead of being happy, my mouth is dry and my breathing has become faster, my pulse quickening. I don’t like the idea of Jake keeping a low profile all this time, and then concealing himself somewhere in our dark house when I’m not home.
I think of what Ryan asked me this afternoon when we found the tracking device on the car. Is everything alright at home, Nina, with you and your husband?
The answer of course is no.
“Wait, Mom,” I say, tearing my eyes away from the shoe print and following her into the darkness. I come up behind her, grabbing her gently by the arm and she turns to me.
“Nina. What is it? What’s wrong?” she asks, searching my eyes.
I don’t have a chance to tell her before something crashes into the ceiling right above our heads from the second floor. I gasp. My mother’s eyes and mine jerk in tandem in the direction of the noise. I find my hand clinging to my mother’s arm, and hers to mine.
“Just wait here,” I whisper. “Let me go see what it is.”
“Nina,” she hisses once as I pull my arm away.
I reach for the light switch but miss it on the way for the stairs. I bump into the edge of the foyer’s console table in the darkness. The table moves, scraping an inch across the floor. It’s not quiet. A picture frame on the edge of the console table totters and then pitches forward, falling facedown on the wood. The glass breaks. I leave the broken glass where it is, stepping over it as I approach the bottom of the stairs. My legs are weak and unsteady beneath me. My body trembles. I take the upright post at the end of the stairs in my hand, pulling myself up the steps one at a time. I keep my gaze on the top of the stairs.
Directly above the kitchen is the master bedroom and bath. They’re my favorite rooms in the house. Our master bath is mostly stark white, except for the walls, which are covered with a metallic black and gold wallpaper. The bath is stone resin. The shower water comes down like rain. It’s practically spa-like.
The master bedroom was once Jake’s and my haven, though now when I think of it, I think only of that last awful fight. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to separate these things in my mind: our bedroom and that fight. When I think of it, I think of Jake’s rabid face, of the way he and I squared off on opposite sides of the bed, screaming at each other. I’d never seen him so angry. I’d never seen him lose his temper like that before.
If you hate it here so much, then why don’t you just leave?
I’d called his bluff. I dared him. I lost the dare.
Because by morning, Monday morning, the morning he left, he’d gone to the opposite extreme, to something self-controlled and cold. We got ready for work in silence, saying nothing to each other, just glaring at one another and giving each other a wide berth. The only words he spoke to me were as he left. I spoke first, as he pulled open the door to leave. I said, “Have a good day,” and to be honest, I don’t know if they were sincere.
Jake froze with his back to me in the open door. He turned slowly back, gazing over a shoulder, his face unsmiling and unkind. He was silent at first, regarding me, his eyes moving up my body to my face to the point of making me uncomfortable and self-conscious. I wasn’t sure that he was going to say anything at all, but then he did. He practically huffed, and he said, “Don’t wait up,” not giving me a chance to reply as he turned and walked away from me, slamming the door so vehemently that the dishes in the kitchen cabinet shook.
When the house was built, Jake and I put so much thought into our bedroom’s design. It wasn’t just a place for us to sleep, but to spend time. Ours is a Savoir bed, which for some people, costs more than their car. It always felt insulting and overindulgent to sleep in a thirty-thousand-dollar bed, but Jake worked hard for his money and he had an inheritance. He believed that if he wanted a Savoir bed, he should have a Savoir bed. He didn’t like me to remind him of all the other more practical things we could do with that type of money.
When I come to it, the bedroom door is only partly open. I don’t know whether I left it like that or not, not that it matters because Martha would have been the last one in the room. I reach into the bedroom with a hand, through the open door, holding my breath, being quiet.
As I enter the room, the smell of perfume overwhelms me, piercing my nasal passages.
The light switch is located just inside the door, to the right of it. I run my hands over the wall. I find and flip on the light switch, expecting the room to fill with light, but it doesn’t. Nothing happens. The room stays dark.
And then I remember turning the lamp off last night at the base, which is on an end table beside the bed. I have to walk across the dark room to get to it. I stand in the doorway, working up the courage to step further into the room, picturing this accent chair and ottoman we have in the corner of the room. The chair and the ottoman are velvet. They’re the color of marigolds. The chair has a low profile and a deep seat and, for all intents and purposes, is Jake’s chair because it’s where he likes to sit when he’s in the bedroom but not on the bed. He sits back in the chair, kicks his feet up on the ottoman and in the mornings when he’s home or at night when I slip into my pajamas, I feel his eyes on me, watching me, following me from his chair.
“Jake,” I whisper, practically breathless, out into the darkness, imagining him keeping hidden in his marigold chair, waiting for me to come home. The perfume is mine. I have many bottles of perfume, but this is one I wear all the time. It’s Chanel. I’d recognize the scent anywhere. Jake gave the bottle to me. “Are you here? Jake?”
My words are met with silence. It means nothing. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t here.
I practically have to force myself into the room.
As I cross the room for the lamp, my feet step on something wet and sticky that makes me think of blood.
With the next step, I come down on something sharp. It pierces my feet and I cry out, clamping my hands against my mouth to quiet the sound. I move through total darkness, walking on the edges of my feet where it hurts less, anticipating what it would feel like for someone’s hands to come down on me, to touch me, to grab me by the feet.
I come to the lamp. I fumble for the switch. I turn on the light. Light floods the room. I spin around, looking in all the dark corners of the bedroom and bath.
Jake’s chair is empty. There is no one in the bedroom but me.
On the floor beside the dresser is a bottle of broken perfume. Perfume runs along the wooden floors, getting absorbed by a wool rug when the flow of perfume reaches it.