The night was clear and cool. It was like stepping into cold water at first. I gasped. Cate let go of my hand and I nearly fell into her. The wind chimes cast long-fingered shadows onto the road. I was trying to understand, to shake off the last of sleep. Another fire. Cate’s house was on fire.
“Your friend’s still in there.” Cate had something—a dishrag, damp—clamped over her mouth and nose, but her exposed eyes were raw and red, watering. Before I could say anything, she’d vanished back into that hot and airless space.
I stood in my T-shirt and underwear, legs exposed, the ache in my eyes and throat ebbing slowly. The moon was a fat crescent. In patches, the clouds broke to reveal brilliant clusters of stars. I patted myself down, panicky. The letter and notebook must still be where I’d left them when I fell asleep, tucked under the pillow in Cate’s spare room. Shit. My mother’s handwriting was going to be lost in the blaze. I’d gotten her back, even in such a tiny form, and now she was being tugged down into the same fate.
A light prickle across my shoulder blades, like I was being watched. The houses on this shady street were spaced far apart, no lights on in any windows. I turned. There, down the street—in a little dip, where the shadows collected more thickly under an outcropping of tree branches. A silhouette. Someone tall stood, motionless, watching me. For a minute I was sure it was my sleep-soaked mind playing tricks. A tree trunk or a pole, transfigured into a person by darkness and paranoia.
He began walking toward me, a few steps.
I moved toward him too, unhesitating. He stopped.
Behind me, a flurry of movement as Tom and Cate lurched through the open doorway, Tom bent over as he wheezed, Cate awkwardly angled beneath his body to keep him upright. I noticed that Tom was holding something—the notebook, my mother’s notebook, thank god—and then returned my attention to the shadowed figure.
I took another step forward, and adrenaline hit me in a woozy rush. The man took a step backward now. Too quickly, he turned and launched himself into the shadows, racing up the steep curve of the hill. I took off after him. The man was up ahead not fifteen yards.
I heard nothing but the pavement slapping beneath my feet, the scattered rhythm of my heartbeat. I was out of shape, my lungs turning tight, and I couldn’t go too fast without shoes—already my soles were burning. I tried to memorize all the details I could. He wore a dark suit. The jacket flapped open when he passed one of the bright pools cast by a rare streetlight. I tried to make out his features, but he was focused, never once looking behind him. I couldn’t close that gap that hovered between us.
Most of all, I wanted to look into his eyes. To feel that dizziness that I now associated with reaching into the world and getting what I wanted from it. “Stop,” I called, but it came out thinned and unconvincing, and the stranger’s footsteps didn’t falter.
At the top of the hill, he intersected with the trees and the shadows in a way that hid him for a second too long, and I stopped, scanning desperately. There was a flicker of movement. Just a squirrel racing across the road. I limped to the top of the hill, seeing only trees and road, pavement lacy with the shadows of the branches. Nobody else. Nothing else.
Down the street, a sudden slam. Lights blazed on, twin circles. A car separated from the deep darkness at the side of the road, hiccupping as it went over the curb, too fast for the narrow road. The license plate in the front, shiny white, caught the moonlight and I tried to memorize the plates, but it was too dark, I only caught the bright red logo near the top, the chipper cursive loop of a state name. A V or a U—
The headlights engulfed me completely, a chemical glare of white, like a surgery light bearing down. In my wildness, I considered standing there until he either stopped or ran me over. But at the last second my instincts took over and yanked me back, and the car was gone before I’d blinked the starbursts from my eyes. The maroon sedan I’d seen outside my mother’s house the night after the fire.
* * *
At sunrise, the three of us were in the backyard. Cate couldn’t keep still. She wore a loose tie-dyed T-shirt that reached her knees, a faded stir of blues and greens. With her half-tangled hair clouding out around her, rage burning in her eyes, she paced the perimeter of the yard. Tom and I both sat stunned on the dew-damp grass. Back here, in the garden, things felt safer. The flowers were a protective shield all around us. The air was filled with birdsong, the sky lavender and then hot orange and then a cleansing yellow.
“The work I do here,” Cate said abruptly. “The work I do here is with women who need safety. And protection. I can’t ask them to come here. Not when someone is trying to kill me. Not when he knows where I fucking live.”