Delicate Condition, page 20
I inhaled deep, telling myself to calm down, that it was probably just a weird hormonal thing, yet another pregnancy symptom no one ever talked about.
But, when I pulled my hands away from my head, there was an even bigger chunk of hair caught between my fingers. This time, the roots were still bloody.
21
Dex burst into the bathroom seconds after I started screaming. “Anna? Jesus…what is it?”
I couldn’t speak so I just pointed at the hair. It was everywhere, in the sink and the counter, strewn across the broken picture and frame still littering the floor.
“What the—” Dex’s eyes skated over the hair, the picture, and the skin between his eyes creased. He sucked in a breath. “Did that all just fall out?”
He looked at me for an explanation, but I didn’t know what to say. I felt unbalanced and, try as I might, I couldn’t get my voice to work the way it was supposed to. My hair was falling out. I wasn’t hallucinating and I wasn’t dreaming. My hair was falling out.
Dex suddenly had me by the shoulders and was telling me to calm down, to breathe.
“It’s going to be okay,” he was saying. “This is okay, it’s normal. Hair falling out can have something to do with pregnancy hormone shifts. It’s okay.”
It took me a second to focus on his face. “What? How could you possibly know that?”
He shocked me by saying, “Adeline’s sister had it.”
My breath caught. I wasn’t prepared to hear Adeline’s name in this context, and it took me a second to shift my focus away from the hair strewn across the floor and respond. “What?”
“Her younger sister had this horrible pregnancy—she was sick the entire time and, even afterward, she was never really the same.” Dex blinked. He was staring at the photograph on the floor now. He and Adeline were still visible beneath the broken frame. “Addy told me the whole story right after we got married. It was why she hadn’t wanted kids.”
I paused, giving him the chance to keep going. It was the most he’d ever said about his ex-wife. Before this moment I hadn’t even known Adeline had a sister.
I could feel my horror slowly fading, replaced with fascination. Adeline’s sister had a bad pregnancy. That’s why she hadn’t wanted kids. It was so odd, how those few details shifted the picture I had of her, turning the composed, smiling woman from social media into a fuller person. A concerned sister, someone who was a little terrified by what her body could and couldn’t do. The details were like catnip. I wanted to keep pressing him until I got the whole story.
“What do you mean she told you after you got married?” I asked, hesitantly, not wanting to break the spell. “You guys didn’t talk about kids while you were dating?”
Dex’s eyebrows drew together. “No,” he said, a little darkly. “She waited to drop that bomb on me until after we said, I do.”
Something flashed across his face, pain or anger, I couldn’t tell, but it made me flinch, shocked. I’d never heard him talk like this before, like a baby was something he was owed.
Before I could call him on it, he’d leaned over and slid the photograph from beneath the shards of broken glass. “What’s this?”
He looked at me, frowning slightly, and I understood that the moment had passed. If I kept asking about Adeline, I was just going to get the same vague, half answers I always did.
I glanced at the photograph instead, Talia waving at a blurry Meg—or at least, someone who looked a hell of a lot like Meg. “Look,” I said, pointing at her. “See, right there? Who does that look like to you?”
Dex squinted down at it. “Uh…are you talking about the woman in the background? I can’t really see her.”
“Look closer. Doesn’t that look like the woman who snuck into the hospital and gave me an ultrasound?”
Dex looked up, giving me a long, unsettled gaze. “Anna…”
“Look,” I said, pointing. I needed him to believe me on this. “See the red lipstick? It’s her.”
He barely glanced down. “Lots of women wear lipstick.”
“I remember her face, Dex.” I blinked against tears. How could I ever forget it? “It’s her, Meg or whatever her real name is. And Talia’s waving at her. She knows her.”
I could see a tangle of emotions playing out on Dex’s face, the desire to comfort me mixed with an inability to hear—or believe—what I was telling him. After a moment, the disbelief won out, and he sighed deeply and said, “First you get Emily fired, and now you want me to question one of my best friends? Can you hear yourself?”
I was taken aback. The comment about Emily stung. “Talia is waving at the woman who—who violated me.” My voice cracked, and I had to pause and take a slow, deep breath to steady myself. “I can’t believe you won’t back me up on this.”
“Okay,” Dex said. His voice was dull and flat. “Fine, I’ll ask Talia who she is, if it’ll get you to calm down.” He pulled out his cell phone. “First I’m going to call Dr. Hill and let her know what’s going on with your hair.”
* * *
Dr. Hill agreed with Dex that the hair loss was normal, though she thought it had something to do with my stress levels. She recommended that I try to take things easy for a while. Nap. Yoga. Bath. And, if things got really bad, I could take a low-dose aspirin.
Of course that was my only option.
“I asked Talia about the photograph,” Dex told me later that evening. We were sitting at the dining room table, eating dinner. Or Dex was eating. I was mostly pushing food around my plate, feeling nauseated.
I looked up, surprised. I assumed he’d take forever to talk to her, that I’d have to remind him a few times before he finally gave her a call. I felt my shoulders tighten as I said, “You did?”
“I said I would, didn’t I?” He pulled out his phone, frowning down at something on the screen before tapping it a few times and handing it to me. “Look, you can read our whole conversation if you like. Talia said the woman she was waving to was someone she’d met at a fertility testing place in the city a few years ago, back when she was considering freezing her eggs… Anyway, the woman’s name is Margaret, but Talia doesn’t remember her last name.”
I took the phone from him. “Meg’s a nickname for Margaret,” I said, scanning the exchange.
Dex had been reaching for his water glass, but he stopped and looked at me. “Yeah…it’s also a nickname for Megan and Margery and Margo and probably a million other incredibly common women’s names. And you thought it was an alias anyway.”
“I’m just saying we can’t rule her out.”
“We can’t rule out this Margaret woman? Or Talia?” I didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up from the phone, and Dex dropped his hands back onto the table, hard. “Jesus, Anna, you wanted me to ask Talia about the picture and I did. Even if this woman was the woman you saw in the hospital—and that’s a big if—Talia said she barely knows her.”
“But how do we know that’s true?” I asked. Dex threw his hands up as though to say what more do you want? and I kept going, “Think about it, Dex—of course Talia would’ve lied about how well she knew Meg. We need to hand this over to Kamal, and maybe Detective Wood too, and see what they think about it.”
“Whatever you say.” Dex stood, shaking his head. “I need a drink.”
I felt a wave of anger rising inside of me as I watched him leave the room. He was acting like I had some vendetta against Talia. But I liked Talia; I wanted to believe she didn’t have anything to do what was happening to me. The problem was, this wasn’t just about me anymore.
You can’t trust anyone, I thought, my skin prickling. I rested a hand on my bump and forced myself to breathe. That message wasn’t some idle threat—it was a warning. I’d almost lost my baby once. And if I wasn’t careful, I was going to lose her again. For real.
* * *
It was 3 a.m. when I couldn’t take the creaking any longer.
Dex hadn’t come to bed. He was locked away in his office, doing God only knows what. Sulking, probably. I’d tried to sleep, but the creaking had started up again sometime after midnight. I crawled out of bed and went upstairs to the third floor myself. I needed to see with my own eyes that there wasn’t anyone up there. Otherwise, I’d never believe it.
The stairs to the third floor were shallower than they were in other parts of the house, and it got colder the farther up I climbed. I was shaking a little, overheated and keyed up with adrenaline. The cold felt nice against my sweaty skin. I figured it was a good sign, that it would be harder for someone to stay up here if it wasn’t heated. It got so cold at night that my teeth sometimes chattered, and that was downstairs, with the heat blasting and a duvet pulled up to my chin.
I reached the top of the stairs and fumbled with the door. I took a second to catch my breath, one hand braced against my back, gasping like I’d just run a mile. I caught myself fantasizing that I might find Meg waiting on the other side of the door, just standing there, dumbfounded. And then I could…
What? Scream? Run away? Attack her? None of those answers seemed right. I had the distant thought that I should’ve made a plan before tearing after this woman on my own. That I should go back downstairs and get Dex and make him come up here with me. But then I thought about how he’d looked at me when we’d been talking about Talia over dinner, how he’d gotten so frustrated that he’d thrown up his hands and stomped out of the room to get a drink. We’d barely spoken since then. I knew I didn’t have the luxury of bringing him another unfounded suspicion. I had to do this myself. Maybe she wouldn’t want to hurt me. Maybe I could just talk to her, ask her who’d hired her.
I pushed the door open, hinges creaking.
The twin scents of mildew and dust filled my nose, making me take a step back. Such strange scents in this pristine place. They made me think of neglect, of rot. I coughed, eyes squinting.
“Hello?” The sound of my voice was flat, dull, the rooms up here too small for an echo.
I shuffled forward slowly, not wanting to jostle the baby.
It was clear immediately that there wasn’t anyone up here. The beds were all so low to the ground that there was no way someone could crawl underneath them, and there wasn’t enough furniture to hide behind. All the closet doors hung open, revealing boxes and water-skiing equipment and punch bowls. Not enough room for a person.
I wasn’t disappointed. That was the wrong word. I hadn’t wanted her to be hiding out up here. But, as the adrenaline that had been racing through my veins began to drain away, it left me feeling strangely deflated. I felt, suddenly, very tired.
The wind rattled the windows, cold air pinging off glass. I turned back toward the door, and I was about to go back downstairs when I saw something out of the corner of my eye—
My body understood first. My hands tightened into fists, and I went cold all over. I staggered backward, suddenly light-headed, and I would’ve fallen if the wall wasn’t right there. I pressed a hand against it to steady myself. For long moments, I found it impossible to breathe.
She’d been here. My stalker had been here, in this room, right above where I’d been sleeping. I’d been right all along.
I knew this because there was another Summer Day action figure sitting on top of the dresser. It was naked, just like the last one had been, but this one didn’t have a red X drawn over her belly. Instead, someone had pulled every last hair out of its head.
22
Kamal put the doll in a Ziploc bag, just like he’d done with the first one, and he called Detective Wood, but he didn’t think the doll was cause for alarm, even when I pointed out—hysterical, sobbing, snot running down my face as I struggled to get the words out—that my hair was coming out just like the doll’s, that it had to mean something, that she had to have done something to me.
“No one has come into this house without my knowledge for months,” Kamal said. “I can promise you that.”
“Except for Talia’s housekeepers,” I pointed out, tugging on the ends of my hair to make sure it was still attached to my scalp.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dex’s shoulders slump. He brought his hand up to his face, slowly shaking his head.
“Those housekeepers have all been thoroughly vetted,” Kamal said, glancing at Dex as though to confirm. “They’ve had background checks—”
“The housekeepers didn’t leave this in the attic,” Dex cut in, nodding at the doll. His tone was low and even, the long-suffering voice of reason. He didn’t look at me as he added, “I told you, Anna, they’ve been working for Talia for years. They’re trustworthy.”
I drove my teeth into my lower lip as I stared back at him.
But how trustworthy is Talia?
* * *
Talia knew I was still pregnant. She could have accessed the house through the housekeepers; she even had a conveniently empty house right next door. The perfect place to hide and watch us. Watch me.
But why? Why? That was still the unanswerable question. Talia had always been kind to me. We’d always been friends. So why do this? It didn’t make sense.
I thought about the photograph again. Not about how Talia appeared to be waving to someone who looked like Meg, but how Talia and Dex and Adeline had been huddled together, happy. It felt like a clue, a piece of the puzzle I wasn’t getting. Was Talia mad that I was with him instead of Adeline? That I was having a baby with him?
“I think we should leave,” I told Dex after I’d spent a few days obsessing. “We can go stay somewhere else until the baby comes.”
“You want to go back to Brooklyn?” He looked hopeful, but the thought of returning to the brownstone made my stomach turn over.
“I can’t…she’s already gotten to me there.” I hesitated, chewing my lip. “What about a hotel?”
“You know what Kamal’s going to say about security at a hotel,” Dex pointed out. He was right. Making arrangements to travel to LA for the awards had meant hours on the phone with hotel staff in California to set up my security. And we’d had weeks to deal with that. I couldn’t imagine what Kamal would say if I asked him to do the same thing in a matter of days. He hadn’t even okayed me taking another day trip back to Brooklyn to visit Siobhan, insisting that the beach house, with its alarm system and cameras and privacy fences, was the safest place for me.
“Look, we’ll be in LA soon.” Dex pulled me toward him, rubbing my arms. “She’s not going to follow us across the country, right?”
I’d swallowed. I wasn’t so sure.
* * *
I ended up by the side of the pool again late one night on my way to take a trash bag out to the dumpster. Shivering.
The dead raccoon was still lying at the bottom of the pool, half covered in snow and dead leaves. He’d been out here for weeks now. Staring. Frozen. I was amazed some other animal hadn’t gotten to him yet. There were bears and foxes up here. Weren’t they hungry too?
I tilted my head to the side, my eyes traveling over the swell of his belly, the heft of his legs. I noticed, absently, that my mouth was filling with saliva.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, startling me so much I nearly dropped my trash bag. I pulled it out and checked the screen: Detective Wood. My stomach seized. I felt like I’d been caught doing something shameful.
“Anna, good, I’m glad I was able to catch you,” Detective Wood said when I answered. It sounded like he was eating something. Chips, maybe? I could hear a wrapper crinkling, the sound of chewing. “I wanted to let you know that we were able to track down that username you were interested in… Let’s see… Number1crush, is that right?”
I swallowed and turned my back on the raccoon. My mouth was suddenly very dry. “And? What did you find?”
“Number1crush is the handle of a seventeen-year-old girl living in Havertown, Pennsylvania, named Amelia Davies. I checked Ms. Davies’s schedule for the day of your break-in and the day of your hospital visit. On both days, she left school at three p.m. and went straight to a shift at a Cenzo’s Pizzeria, which is where she was until approximately nine p.m. on both evenings. I confirmed her alibi with her teachers, as well as the manager at Cenzo’s, and several coworkers. It’s pretty tight. I think we can safely rule her out.”
I only really understood maybe a third of what he’d said. Number1crush was only seventeen? Seventeen? And she couldn’t have been the same woman who broke into our house and climbed into bed with me because she’d been at her after-school job at a pizza place?
I thought back on all those cruel messages she’d sent, the emails and the pictures and the threats. It didn’t seem possible that they’d all come from a teenager.
“I…I don’t understand,” I said when I could find my voice again. “I think you might have the wrong person… You haven’t seen the messages she’s sent me—they’re awful.” That baby would be better off never being born. For a moment I felt so queasy that I thought I might need to sit down. “I don’t think a child would’ve sent those. Could they have come from someone else in the house? Her mother, maybe?”
“We’ve seen the messages, Ms. Alcott. Miss Davies never deleted them from her outgoing messages, so it wasn’t difficult to find them. I understand why you would’ve been upset. When we spoke to Miss Davies, she said they were just a joke. Apparently a lot of her friends send stuff like that to celebrities. It’s a game.”
A game? For a moment I was so angry that I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t think or speak. A game? I imagined snapping at her. You think this is a game? This is my life you’re messing with.
“Is that all?” I asked, feeling deflated.
“Not quite. I got in touch with the head of security over at Warner Bros and, according to them, there was a break-in at their warehouse a few months ago.”
I blinked fast, the sudden change in subject taking me a second to process. “There was?”
