I told him about the strange incidents at our house, not just the demonstrations （he already knew about those） but about the unexplained car fire and how someone came in when we weren’t home and drew black dots over the eyes on our photographs.
“Ruined them forever…” he said, genuinely downcast.
“No, it was just on the glass. But whoever it was used some kind of oil-based marker, so it was hell to get it off.”
I told him about the slender young man in the hoodie and the aviator glasses, his appearances on my street, on my campus, and now here. “It’s probably one of the most frustrating things about something like this that yes, it’s wrong and scary and creepy, but it’s not a crime, not until there’s some kind of threat.”
“And then I bet it’s too late most of the time.”
“Once in a while it’s too late, but not most of the time. Unless somebody is really nuts, a person will usually obey a restraining order. But it’s the ones who don’t obey it that worry you. Either they know the system, and they don’t care about it, or they don’t care about anything.”
Why I didn’t tell him more about Esme-or-Emily, right then, about her texts and phone calls, and what they seemed to entail, I’m not sure. I hadn’t even told Julie everything about Esme. Until I had a fuller picture, it somehow seemed to be a risk.
I assured Pete Sunday that I didn’t need help carrying the box to my car, but he carried it anyway. We shook hands and parted. I stowed the box in my trunk, thinking it would fit right there next to my nonexistent assault weapon. Lethargic now, as if all the docked hopes for what I might learn and what I might do with it were brewed into some kind of sedative, all I wanted to do was to crawl beneath my scenes-of-the-holy-land quilt at the inn and sleep the rest of the time before checking out and heading home early in the morning. Actually, I reprimanded myself. I would sleep for an hour and then read these reports, so I could call Pete Sunday on my way home if I had any more questions. Why it seemed easier to call him from my car than from my kitchen at home, again, I have no idea. I drove back to the inn, fell on the bed, and slept until the afternoon sun and my lunchless stomach teased me awake.
I’d passed a diner on the way to the inn. Maybe they had chili.
The diner was one of those pods that resembled an overgrown Airstream trailer. I ate my chili quietly. It wasn’t half bad. When I was finished, I came out into a hushed street.
Did anyone really go to school here?
The temperature had soared into the fifties, which Wisconsin people think of as balmy. Shouldn’t there be college kids rocketing around on bikes and skateboards, pushing the calendar to its limits? Across the street was a little pocket of a park, in the center a dry fountain and a few stone benches, ringed by a tiny labyrinth of paths. From the groomed evergreens hung suet balls studded with berries and birdseed.
I decided to sit for a moment, send a text to Esme, and savor the raw white sunlight. My arrival startled up birds. I looked down the street and realized I was near the police station. There came a piercing recollection of Belinda’s love for Edna St. Vincent Millay （“Don’t you think Vincent and William Butler Yeats would have been perfect for each other?” Belinda told me once, without a scrap of irony. “They had so much in common. Sad love, being Irish.”） I thought about the lines, Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before. Every girl who dies is canonized, of course; but Belinda’s sweet hopefulness was latticed with the cheerful steel of a supermodel. She was National Honor Society and Prom Queen—both things. With grueling practices and iron will, she pushed the cheer squad not just to compete, but to place first in state. She wrote op-eds about the fate of abused animals that raised thousands for the Humane Society. The plaque on the cherry tree that her class planted in Whitehorse Park read She Always Had Time For a Friend. Seeing her walk shining into a room of adults, Jep used to tease, “I’m Belinda McCormack, your senator.”
And what might she have been?
Whether from the breeze or the sentiment, my eyes watered and I reached up, for just a moment, to cover them with my hands. That was when a feeling crept over me again. And I knew he was there. I knew he was watching me from behind those aviator glasses. I should never have come to Black Creek for any reason. This was the place where our future was revoked. And now someone who seemed to sense my every movement had followed me here, as well. No wonder I was a scream with a skin around it.