They probably all thought it wasn’t healthy.
But I’ve always believed that murder is the healthiest obsession of all.
* * *
—
“Don’t tell me,” my sister, Esther, said on the phone. “You’re hibernating again.”
“I’m fine,” I said. It was after work, and I was at my local grocery store, the Safeway in the plaza within walking distance to Singles Estates. I put cereal in my cart as I shoulder-pinned the phone to my ear. “I’m grabbing some groceries and going home.”
“I told you to come over for dinner. Will and I want to see you.”
“It’s raining.”
“This is Claire Lake. It’s always raining.”
I looked at a carton of almond milk, wondering what it tasted like. “I know you worry about me, but I’m fine. I just have work to do.”
“You already have a job. The website isn’t paid work.”
“It pays enough.”
My big sister sighed, and the sound gave me a twinge of sadness. I really did want to see her, along with her husband, Will, a lawyer who I liked quite a lot. Esther was one of the only people who really mattered to me, and even though she gave me grief, I knew she tried hard to understand me. She’d had her own guilt and trauma over what had happened to me. She had her own reasons to be paranoid—to hibernate, as she put it. The difference was, Esther didn’t hibernate. She had a husband and a house and a good job, a career.
“Just tell me you’re trying,” Esther said. “Trying to get out, trying to do something, trying to meet new people.”
“Sure,” I said. “Today I met a man who has a hernia and a woman who would only say she has a ‘uterus problem.’？” I put the almond milk down. “I’m not sure what a ‘uterus problem’ is, and I don’t think I’m curious.”
“If you wanted to know, you could look in her file and find out.”
“I never look in patients’ files,” I told her. “You know that. I answer phones and deal with appointment times, not diagnoses. Looking in a patient file could get me fired.”
“You make no sense, Shea. You won’t look at patients’ medical files, but you’ll talk about murders and dead bodies on the internet.”
I paused, unpinning my phone from my shoulder. “Okay, that’s actually a good point. I get that. But does it mean that in order to be consistent, I should be more nosy or less?”
“It means you live too much inside your own head, overthinking everything,” Esther said. “It means you need to meet people who aren’t patients, real people who aren’t murder victims on a page. Make friends. Find a man to date.”
“Not yet for the dating thing,” I told her. “Maybe soon.”
“The divorce was a year ago.”
“Eleven months.” I dodged a woman coming the opposite way up my aisle, then moved around a couple pondering the cracker selection. “I’m not opposed to finding someone. It’s dating itself that freaks me out. I mean, you meet a stranger, and that’s it? He could be anyone, hiding anything.”
“Shea.”
“Do you know how many serial killers dated lonely women in their everyday lives? Some divorcée who just wants companionship from a nice man? She thinks she’s won the dating lottery, and meanwhile he’s out there on a Sunday afternoon, dumping bodies. And now we’re supposed to use internet apps, where someone’s picture might not even be real. People are lying about their faces.”
“Okay, okay. No dating apps. No dating at all yet. I get it. But make some friends, Shea. Join a book club or a bowling league or something.”