I can picture it, I can: Margaret, waking up next to me as I flung myself from the sheets, tossing my legs over the mattress in the dark. Following me down the hall, down the stairs, into the backyard. Working up the courage to reach out, grab my shoulder, as I approached the edge of the marsh.
“Did you try to wake me?” I had asked.
“Mom said not to. It’s dangerous.”
“It’s not dangerous. That’s an old wives’ tale.”
She listened. Margaret always listened to me. To everything I said.
“I won’t hurt you,” I had told her. And she nodded her head, believing. Trusting.
It was a promise I couldn’t keep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
NOW
I can barely breathe as I sit in the silence, Waylon’s laptop glowing in the dark like that spring tide moon. I continue to stare at the headline, the memories pummeling over me like water from a broken dam, until I hear a low growl from somewhere across the house.
I slap the laptop shut and twist around, relief flowing through me when I realize it’s just Roscoe pawing at the back door.
“Oh God,” I whisper, my head feeling airy and light. “I’m sorry, buddy.”
I stand up and walk back into the kitchen, guilt washing over me as I realize he hasn’t been outside all day. Then I open the back door and let him out, deciding to step into the backyard with him. I need some air.
I slide the door shut behind us and take a deep breath, trying to steady the shaking in my hands. It’s muggy out tonight, a stifling damp in the air that hints at impending rain. Roscoe sniffs around, his senses in overdrive after an entire day stuck indoors, and I guess mine are, too, because everything seems to be somehow intensified tonight, like I’m looking at the world through a microscope. I can hear the unified croak of the toads in the marsh a few blocks east; the cicadas, nature’s white noise, suddenly deafening in my ears.
I pace around a bit, my eyes adjusting to the dark, and think.
Waylon is looking into Mason’s case, that much is the truth, but it seems like he’s been looking into it for far longer than I thought—and more than that, it seems like he’s looking into me. The case file and recordings are one thing, but the pictures and article seem to be something else entirely. It seems more personal, more targeted.
All I know is I can’t trust him anymore. I can’t trust him to help.
I need to start finding some answers on my own now, without him, and suddenly, my neck snaps up. I have an idea.
I walk over to Mason’s window and move a little to the right, to the exact spot that I had seen peeking out between the trees as I sat in that rocking chair just four days ago. I realize now that if Paul Hayes can see into my backyard from his porch, then that means, standing in the right spot, I should be able to see his porch from here, too. I look across my backyard, past the fence, through the gap in the foliage, and squint. It’s dark outside, but I have the light from the moon, the stars glowing bright against a cloudless sky. There’s a streetlight near his house, the one that shines almost directly onto his porch, and that’s when I see it: a subtle alteration in the air like the shifting of a shadow or the gentle sway of a rocking chair.
He’s there.
Moving quickly, I let Roscoe inside and shut him in my bedroom, grabbing my cell phone and leaving again through the front door. Then I walk around the block, making my way toward 1742 Catty Lane.
I approach the house, my heart beating hard in my chest, and think about Dr. Harris’s words.
Hallucinations, delusions.
I think about what Detective Dozier told me just this morning: that Paul Hayes lives alone. I think about that comment I had seen—that I thought I had seen—and how, suddenly, it was no longer there. But was it even there to begin with? Honestly, I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure about anything ever since I saw myself on that laptop screen, standing over Mason’s crib in the dark. I don’t know what I’ll do if I get to Paul’s house and find that the porch is empty; if that rocking chair is just moving on its own, being pushed by the phantom legs of the breeze. I can’t really stand to think about it. But the closer I get, the more confident I feel: He’s there. I can see him so clearly, staring straight into the void. That same weathered face, old, like leather left out in the sun; bulging eyes like cloudy marbles.
This man, whoever he is, feels like my best shot right now. My only shot.
I slow down once I reach the porch, casting Dozier’s warning to stay away into the recesses of my mind. Then I turn to face him, clearing my throat.