Never Wake (9 page)

Troy shifted from one foot to the other. She didn’t say anything, just stood there. Emma looked down. What now? She couldn’t tell Troy she had made a mistake by letting her up, but she couldn’t just—let her in. Could she?
But what if she doesn’t come back? What if she—

Once again Troy’s emotions were so clear to Emma that she thought they were her own. Utter loneliness, fear, desperation, desolation. She backed away from the open door. Troy didn’t move right away. It was as if she was giving Emma the chance to change her mind before she stepped into the room and shut the door behind her.

When Abe broke into sixty-three-year-old Desdemona Bernard’s home, he hadn’t expected that he would be spending two nights in the tiny cottage amusing himself by going through her correspondence and personal items.

He now knew that Desdemona stretched her paltry social security checks by organizing monthly bus trips across the Canadian border to buy prescription drugs. She had two daughters. One was in love with her jailbird husband and the other was contemplating whether or not she should have an HIV/AIDS test because of an unfaithful partner. Desdemona also had thirteen cans of cat food, but no cat hairs, cat toys, or cat smells present in her home. Abe hoped she had been unable to bring herself to throw away the food because the cat had recently passed away, but he had a feeling Desdemona was forced to stretch her food budget in other unsavory ways.

Abe was sitting at her desk because the only other seating with a view of the window was occupied by Desdemona’s sleeping form. Her luxuriant gray hair spilled over the arm of her sofa. Abe thought she looked as if she was napping. Desdemona may have been a beauty at one time, but, Abe guessed, a harsh life and the birth of her children had sapped all but the last residue of that away.

Although the desk chair offered no lumbar support, he had the perfect view of Southwest Bonita Lane. On either side of the street were cottages identical to Mrs. Bernard’s. Abe guessed they had been built forty years ago as low-income housing and were still being used as such. In Abe’s opinion, no matter what race of people lived there, poor neighborhoods always had one thing in common—they always lacked space. Although it looked cared for, this neighborhood was no different.

All the cottages on Southwest Bonita Lane crowded the curb, leaving a strip of sidewalk that would be too small for a grown man to walk on. They were grouped in sets of three, with the unfortunate soul in the middle having only views of their neighbors’ buildings out their bedroom windows. Both Mrs. Bernard and Troy Nanson had middle units. Abe would bet money those were the least expensive. The advantage was that both had large windows bracketing either side of their front doors, whereas, the other cottages only had one small one. Someone had helped Mrs. Bernard push a large ancient desk up to one of her front windows. He wondered if it had been Troy.

He could picture Desdemona sitting at the desk and writing her letters while watching the comings and goings of her neighbors. He wondered what she’d thought of Troy Nanson. Since they lived across the street from each other, they had to have interacted. Did Desdemona bake her cookies? Or did she call the police if Troy so much as glanced toward her mailbox? Maybe they just waved to each other in the same “I don’t want to get involved” way he and Teresa did with their neighbors.

Abe stood up, and his hand went to his lower back where he kneaded the tense muscles there. His stomach complained as it had done off and on for the last few hours. He wished that he had stopped to get food on his way in. Rather than risk missing Troy, he’d had to make do with the one edible thing in Desdemona’s house, popcorn. Not the microwave kind. Desdemona just had the kind you popped yourself, using a pan or skillet. Besides, she had no microwave. He had read the directions twice, but still burned the first batch. The second came out white and fluffy. It was apparent that Desdemona worried about her salt intake because he had to settle for No-salt and unsalted butter. Still, he had to admit it was better than the microwave stuff he treated himself to when Teresa wasn’t around to throw out comments about the small bulge that had appeared where his flat stomach had once been.

Abe grunted. He had passed the annoyed stage hours ago. Where in the hell was she? They always went home, didn’t they? It made no sense to him that this Troy Nanson could screw up his study on his first outing—unless… He stared at the darkened cottage. Could she have come and gone while he was sleeping? He had dozed off twice and awakened to the sound of his own snoring.

Maybe she’d seen him. No, that wasn’t possible. He’d been too careful. Even if she’d been home when he was breaking into Desdemona’s place, he would have seen her leave by now. He had been watching for three days and in all that time there hadn’t been any hint that she had ever come home.

This was not going as he had planned. Jake Ostroph and Emma Webster were not the least bit interesting. He thought for sure that Troy would be worth his attention, but he couldn’t even find her.

“Where in the hell…”Abe left the sentence unfinished. Crying about it would do him no good. He would just have to find her. He had waited long enough. He walked out of Mrs. Bernard’s house, and the woman who had been his sole companion—even though she didn’t know it—for the last three days was dropped from his mind like the unimportant memory that she was.

The one person capable of holding his interest had been Troy. Why she had taken on a more important position than the others he didn’t know. But there was something about her that intrigued him. He felt she was the key to the answers he was seeking. The others meant nothing to him now, backups, if necessary, but not worth the time it would take to observe them.

Abe tested the doorknob and smiled. Of course she hadn’t left the door open. That would be too easy. He thought about putting his foot through it, but instead went around the side of the cottage to look for a less obvious way in. Like he’d done at Mrs. Bernard’s. Troy’s bathroom would be small and prone to mildew if not aired properly and, sure enough, as Abe rounded the corner and walked down the two-foot walkway on the side of Troy’s cottage, he spotted the open bathroom window. Also, like Mrs. Bernard, Troy’s view was of brown siding that had seen better days twenty years before. The bathroom window was small, but Abe was tall, and contrary to what Teresa thought, still quite thin.

He landed with a thud on the floor and lay there, struggling to catch his breath. What if she was in the house and he had just alerted her, like an idiot, to his presence? Abe forced himself to lie still even though his elbow smarted and the small of his back felt like someone had just pummeled it. His raspy breathing sounded loud in the tight quarters. Abe pulled himself to his feet with the help of Troy’s pedestal sink and opened the bathroom door. He heard the hum of an appliance, but nothing else.

As he had suspected, Troy’s floor plan was the same as Mrs. Bernard’s, but it was obvious that Troy was not a believer in making things homey. From where he stood, he could see the living room and most of the kitchen. The living room consisted of hardwood floors, a black futon, a chair, a TV and TV cart, and dark brown walls that had no evidence of ever having pictures on them. Desdemona had too much furniture and Troy seemed to have too little. His groaning stomach dictated that he find something to eat before he allowed himself to look around further.

A wet bar and a bank of cabinets were all that separated the narrow kitchen from the living room. The kitchen was a perfect rectangle. It had a gas stove at one end, and the refrigerator whined from its spot against the wall. The refrigerator was similar to one his nana had when he was a kid. By age fourteen, he could prop his elbow on top of it if he wanted to. Abe snatched an open bag of pretzels from the top of the refrigerator and wolfed them down as he walked into the living room. A bicycle frame leaned against a wall near the front door, and a poster tube leaned against another wall. Abe’s eyes were drawn to the black futon again. He walked over to it and sat down, his lower back protested as he leaned back. A pillow and a folded comforter had been left at one end. She’d sat here, maybe slept exactly where he was sitting.

Abe sighed. “How depressing.” His voice sounded sharp and cruel in the empty room. A pair of shoes, slim with some kind of rubberized spikes on the sole, had been left on the floor.

He was a bit disappointed by Troy’s home. He had expected pictures or chatchkas that would give him more insight into her personality.
Ha, you think you know this girl from watching her for two minutes?
Abe stood up; there was no point in spending too much time dwelling on it. There were two other doors to look behind before he had to leave with his tail tucked between his legs. With any luck, one of them would hold a clue to Troy’s whereabouts.

The first door led to a closet that looked like a graveyard of bike parts. Frames, wheels, and seats had been stashed in every available space. Four bike chains hung from the clothing rod and the scent of motor oil or something similar assailed Abe’s nose.

He closed the closet and opened what he figured would be Troy’s bedroom. He fought down his initial disappointment and walked in. Although her living room and kitchen were both neat, this room looked as if it hadn’t been lived in. Abe looked at the bedspread, the two end tables, the bureau, the curtains, and then he looked back out into the drab living room. It was like a movie he had once enjoyed on cable TV where two kids were sucked into a black--and-white TV show.
This is odd
. Abe rifled in his pocket for a small silver box the size of a cell phone. Did she create this, or is this how she lives? Abe walked over to the end table and started to sit down on the bed. He paused and instead of sitting down, he slid open the small drawer on the nightstand. Troy had placed a paperback book, two rings, a small locket, a newspaper clipping, and a tri-fold flyer inside. The clipping was an obituary. Pictured in the obituary, Patricia Rose Harvey, age thirty, had her head thrown back and seemed to be laughing at something the photographer was saying. The tri-fold flyer was Patricia Harvey’s funeral program, but it made no mention of Troy Nanson as surviving relative or friend, although it mentioned others. But who was she? A relative? A roommate? Not with one bed—.

Abe sank down on to the bed. “I’ll be damned.” He tried not to notice the disappointment, but it was there. But why wouldn’t Raife Paterson mention that she was gay? Abe had assumed that there had been a relationship between the two. Abe closed his eyes. He had made the cardinal mistake. He had assumed. His stomach quailed and the pretzels he had consumed threatened to come back up.

His attraction to Troy Nanson had been so textbook that even he had known what it stemmed from. She was his creation, his triumph: walking, talking, strong, and beautiful. It made perfect sense that he would love her. So what if she looked nothing like the women he dated before and after his marriage? So what if she would never look at him twice on the street? Abe had felt something when he watched her flee the hospital, even though she hadn’t known what she was running from.

And now this.

His anger startled him so much that he laughed out loud.
So what if she’s gay? It’s not as if you had any real thoughts of ever starting something with the girl.
Abe placed the obituary back in the drawer and noted the cemetery where Patricia Rose Harvey was buried, then closed the drawer. Abe stood and smoothed the wrinkles out of the bed, on the off chance that Troy did return home. He had a feeling she would know someone had been in her home. That is, if she missed the fact she had broken glass all over her bathroom floor.

*

She didn’t look the way she was supposed to. Or at least not the way Troy had imagined her. Of course, she’d also assumed that when they met face to face, there would be eye contact, but she had gotten that wrong, too.

Troy felt unkempt. She always did when she met new people. The fact that this Emma, this woman she didn’t even know, could make her feel like she wasn’t worthy made her angry.

Emma glanced at her and then back at the floor.
Her eyes are weird. Not quite blue, more a steely, grayish-blue and they look dilated. Is she high? No, has to be a trick of light.
Troy thought about taking a step closer, but one look at Emma’s frightened face told her that it was best she stay where she was.

“Sorry about your window.” Troy hated how gruff her voice sounded.

Emma looked up at her then. Troy was so disappointed to realize that Emma’s eyes were, indeed, normal, everyday blue that she almost didn’t register Emma’s words when they came.

“I don’t have any food,” Emma said.

Hot licks of anger warmed Troy’s ears. “I don’t want your food. Is that why you think I came up here? To try to steal your food? Wake up, lady. Food is pretty much ripe for the pickings out there. Why in the hell would you think I’d sit on that damn curb for three days—?”

Emma stepped back to escape Troy’s anger. “I meant,” she said, her voice soft and steady as if she were talking to a rabid dog, “I meant to ask if you had any food?”

She’s scared shitless. She wouldn’t have let me up here if she hadn’t been hungry.
The realization froze any angry words before they left Troy’s lips. “When’s the last time you ate?” she asked.

Emma looked toward her kitchen as if it could give her the answer. “What day is it?”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Troy started toward her.

Emma’s face went slack and pale. She held up her hands and took another step back.