I tread softly in the direction that Christian went. Christian and Lily’s neighborhood is wooded. Tree branches hang over the street, moving like arms. The homes are old and there are no sidewalks and very few streetlights, which leaves long stretches of blackness where the light doesn’t reach. The street itself is uneven and potholed. I have to be careful where I step, so that I don’t trip and fall. I’ve lost sight of Christian up ahead. Still I follow, listening for footsteps, hearing only the movement of fallen leaves as they scatter across the street in the cool breeze.
Suddenly I’m startled by the low creaking sound of a screen door opening from somewhere behind me. I wheel around as the door slams emphatically closed. I wonder if it’s Lily, if Lily saw me or if she’s come outside looking for Christian. I stand in the middle of the empty street. My eyes take stock of the homes behind me. It’s not Lily. A house back, someone has stepped outside. I wouldn’t know it, except that I see the flare of a match and then an amber glow like from the end of a burning cigarette.
I turn back around. I keep walking, catching a flash of Christian in the distance as he climbs a small hill. The land here is rolling, because of the proximity to the river. Christian is about thirty or forty feet up, suddenly manifested in the halo of light that comes from a streetlight. He’s there, and then he’s gone again, devoured by darkness, descending the other side of the hill.
I pass quietly across the street. I walk along the opposite edge of it, in the grass, taking long strides to catch up, so that my breathing becomes heavy and audible from exertion. I try to suppress it, to hold my breath, to remain invisible and silent.
I catch another glimpse of Christian when the light hits him. I watch from a distance as he comes to a stop, standing at the end of someone’s driveway. He takes a quick assessment of the street. He’s reached his destination.
I watch as Christian moves toward this neighbor’s garbage bin, which, like Christian’s, is parked at the end of the driveway. I’m at a loss. I watch, confused, as he opens the lid and sets the plastic bag he’s been carrying inside. He then gently lowers the lid. He sets it closed, so that it doesn’t make a sound. He reassesses the street, and then leaves, heading back the way he came. He wastes no time in getting back to his house, walking faster now than he did to get here. He walks past me without even knowing it. I become inanimate as he does, holding my breath, waiting until Christian is gone, and then I pass quietly across the street.
I go to the house where Christian just was. I go to the garbage bin and lift the lid. I use my phone’s flashlight to search inside. The bin is practically full to capacity, so that I don’t have to reach too far to find Christian’s plastic bag.
I take the plastic bag out and set the lid of the garbage bin slowly closed. The bag is knotted at the handle. I pick at the knot, but when the knot doesn’t easily give, I take the bag back to my car with me.
Back in my car, I work at the knot. I lose patience after a while and tear through the plastic with my fingernails. I reach inside the hole I’ve made to pull items out. It’s dark in my car. I don’t want to turn on the car and risk making myself any more visible than I already am. I try to make do with the negligible light. It’s hard to see. I have to feel with my hands, running my fingers over fabric, relying on touch to make out the shape of things. Lying on my lap are items of clothing. I feel buttons and lace. I hold them up one at a time to the inadequate light from the touch screen, which came on when I opened the door.
My eyes, my mind can’t process at first what I’m seeing.
Just as I start to make out the reddish-brown stain on the fabric, the quiet drum of knuckles on the driver’s window makes me scream.
CHRISTIAN
I think someone is following me as I make my way home.
I don’t know what it is exactly that makes me think this, if it’s some sixth sense or if it’s something I hear or subliminally see. The night is mostly silent. It’s still. If you’re quiet, you can just make out the sound of someone walking along the river, on the other side of houses. There are voices and then a high-pitched giggle. Kids. You can hear traffic in the distance, too, though it’s far-off and subdued. A rabbit darts across the street in front of me as a dog barks, and then there is something else, something closer, slight and subtle but nagging and persistent.
I don’t know what that is.
I don’t look back. I keep going. I tell myself it’s only guilt, that it’s my conscience speaking. Lily's and my house sits at the end of the street. The outside lights are on but beyond our home, it’s blackness. Lily is inside the house washing up for bed. We didn’t talk much tonight. Lily was quiet, shaken from her conversation with Nina. Our stress levels have reached new heights.
I make my way up the driveway, but I don’t go inside. I walk around to the side of the house, away from the porch lights, where I lie in wait in the shadows beside our home.
A cool breeze sweeps up out of nowhere, moving my hair. At the same time, a woman walks through a shaft of light coming from the streetlamp, and I would think that it was a neighbor taking a walk or walking a dog, except that as I look, Nina Hayes’s face comes slowly into focus. My heart races inside of me as I study her hair and her face, my eyes descending her body until I come to the bag in her hand, the same bag that I just left in a garbage can down the street, to get rid of the evidence of what Lily did to Jake. I didn’t want to leave it in our own garbage can in case someone found it.
My thoughts race. Nina was watching me. She was following me. She has the bag with Lily’s blood-soaked clothes. I watch in disbelief as Nina walks straight past the end of our driveway, as if to leave with the bag, and if not for the sound of a car door opening and then closing, I wouldn’t know she’d parked where the road dead-ends.
I can’t let her leave with that bag.
If I do, everything Lily and I have done up to this point is all for naught.
I don’t think. I react. It’s not conscious. One minute I’m standing on the side of the house, watching Nina, and the next I’m moving down the driveway for the street, feeling like I would do anything, absolutely anything, to get that bag back, to stop Nina from seeing what she’s about to see.
I come to her Tesla parked in the darkness. I stand less than three feet from the car. My muscles tighten. Everything feels suddenly more acute. My senses are heightened, honed. I have razor-sharp focus.
Nina’s fingers pick at the knot, removing things from the bag.
I’m too late. She’s already seen what’s inside.
I rap on the window, feeling something inside of me turn stone-cold. At this end of the street, the road narrows and slightly turns. The trees close in on you, making those safe, warm, cozy houselights feel very far away. There is a barricade at the end of the street and then, on the other side of it, nothing but trees. If you forge a path through the trees, you come to the river. The river isn’t incredibly deep. Maybe six or seven feet. It’s the type of river that’s slow and meandering. I hear it from here.
Nina turns at the sound of my knock.
There is this split second of calm before the storm.
In that second, I see myself reach out for the door handle. It’s something out-of-body and uncontrolled. A reflex. The door opens and Nina is suddenly aglow in the interior car lights, the open bag on her lap, a look of shock and horror on her face.