The Last House on the Street(6)

“Fortunately, you’re here, alive and well, so hopefully not,” Officer Oakley says. “You did a great job. So we have an excellent description of a woman who would stand out anywhere.” She hands me her card. “I know you’re scared,” she says. “You’ve been through a lot and I don’t blame you for feeling a bit paranoid right now.”

Officer Petrie looks toward my bookcase. “Was that picture here when Ann Smith was in the office?”

I follow his gaze to the bookcase and see the framed photograph of the three of us—Jackson, Rainie, and myself. I’m grinning in the picture, my arm around Jackson’s waist. Rainie, just two at the time, sits on his shoulders, her arms stretched wide, trusting her daddy to hold tight to her legs. Jackson’s dark hair falls over his forehead, and his eyes crinkle with joy. The photograph was taken the day we closed on our four wooded acres in Shadow Ridge. We could not have been happier.

“Yes,” I say. “Maybe that’s how she knew about my daughter? Though it doesn’t explain everything else she knew about me.”

“Well, if you see her again anywhere,” Officer Petrie says to both Natalie and myself, “call us right away. Don’t put yourself in any danger. Just call us.”

Natalie looks at me. “People say ‘I want to kill so-and-so’ all the time,” she says, reassuringly. “She was probably just—”

“No,” I say with certainty. “This was different. She meant it.”

“On the one hand,” Officer Oakley says, “I wish she’d given you more information to help us out, but for your sake, it’s good she didn’t. I don’t like that she knows where you live, or at least, where you’re going to be living. It’s a new house, so you probably have good locks, a good security system?” It was more of a question than a statement.

“I have a security system,” I say. I’d done nothing about setting it up yet, though. You don’t think about security systems in a safe little town like Round Hill. “I’ll get it taken care of,” I say, mentally adding it to my insanely long list of things to do.

Once the police and Natalie leave, I call my father, but he doesn’t pick up, which is not unusual. He’s terrible with his phone.

“Hey, Dad,” I say. “Keep a close eye on Rainie this afternoon, okay? I’ll explain later. I’m on my way home.”

Then I pack my briefcase and leave my office, carefully locking the door behind me.



* * *



I usually enjoy the walk from my office to the underground garage in downtown Greenville, sometimes stopping to pick up a cappuccino for the half-hour drive home to Round Hill, but this afternoon, I look over my shoulder with every step. I reach the garage and shudder as I walk into the shadows. The building absorbs the daylight and I nearly run to my car. Once inside the SUV, doors locked, I feel my heart thudding in my chest. I sit there for a moment, hands in my lap, thinking. Maybe I should put the new house on the market. Forget about moving in. Jackson and I had designed the house for ourselves and the family we hoped to create. At four thousand square feet it’s far too big for just Rainie and me. But I tear up at the thought of someone else living in the house we designed with so much love and hope.

I close my eyes. Let out a breath. Then I start the car. I’ll make the house a happy place. I’ll make happy memories there for Rainie.

I drive the car out of the dark parking garage and into the sunlight and it’s as if the light washes away my fear. That’s the problem with the house. It’s full of floor-to-ceiling windows, yet all the trees make it feel closed in. Jackson and I rhapsodized about being surrounded by all that gorgeous thick greenery. From the glassed-in rear of the house, all you can see is green, not another house in sight. Ours is considered the best and largest of the lots in the small development. Yet at that moment, I wish we’d picked a different lot. I wish we’d picked a different neighborhood altogether.





Chapter 4



ELLIE


1965

That Tuesday, I took Brenda out to lunch at the Round Hill Sandwich Shop. It was a bribe of sorts, although I didn’t think Brenda realized it. Her mind was so consumed by the fact that she would be marrying Garner on Saturday that she seemed to have forgotten she’d promised to go with me to Turner’s Bend after lunch. I wanted to see Reverend Filburn, the minister who’d been quoted in the newspaper article about the SCOPE program. I tried my best to focus on Brenda’s chatter, though. I worried that we were already drifting apart. Brenda would return to UNC with me the Monday after her wedding—no honeymoon for her and Garner—and she’d finish out the year, keeping her marriage and pregnancy a secret so she didn’t get kicked out of the dorm. She was moving in a direction I wouldn’t be able to relate to.

I watched her now as she added another spoonful of sugar to her sweet tea. She still looked like a teenager: turned-up nose, rosebud lips, and a curly blond halo of hair that set off her big baby-blue eyes. We’d never really shared the same interests: I’d loved school and science and reading; Brenda had loved music and movie magazines and boys. Aunt Carol would tease her. Who’s your heartthrob this week, Brenda? But somehow, Brenda and I connected, even more so once we started dating Reed and Garner. We double-dated all through high school, even after the guys went off to college. These days, we saw them on the weekends when we came home or when they came to Chapel Hill to take us out to dinner. Brenda was really my best and oldest friend. I’d never had many.