Someone's Listening E-Book

Seraphina Nova Glass

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

A chilling, breathless tale of suspicion, obsession and revenge. Perfect for fans of B.A. Paris and Shari Lapena SHE WROTE THE BOOK ON ESCAPING A PREDATOR, NOW ONE IS COMING FOR HER Faith Finley has it all:she's a talented psychologist with a flourishing career, a bestselling author and the host of a popular local radio program, Someone's Listening, with Dr. Faith Finley. She's married to the perfect man, Liam Finley, a respected food critic. Until the night everything goes horribly wrong, and Faith s life is shattered forever. Liam is missing gone without a trace and the police are suspicious of everything Faith says. They either think she has something to hide, or that she's lost her mind. And then the notes begin to arrive. Notes that are ripped from Faith's own book, the one that helps victims leave their abusers. Notes like "Lock your windows. Consider investing in a steel door". As the threats escalate, the mystery behind Liam's disappearance intensifies.And Faith s very life will depend on finding answers

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

By Seraphina Nova Glass

Title Page

Leave us a review

Copyright

Someone’s Listening

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Acknowledgments

Prologue

One

Two

Three

“[A] stellar debut... exceptionally well-drawn characters set this above the psychological thriller pack.”

Publishers Weekly

“[An] entertaining mystery... Nicely creepy.”

Booklist

“A taut web of suspicion, murder and revenge in this chilling tale… Add Someone’s Listening to your must-read list!”

LIV CONSTANTINE

“Unputdownable. I found myself suspecting everyone at some point. Twisty, original and a must-read.”

KAREN HAMILTON

“A taut and intriguing suspense that held my attention from the very first page. A stunning and impressive debut.”

ALESSANDRA TORRE

BY SERAPHINA NOVA GLASS

Someone’s Listening

The Seduction

SOMEONE’SLISTENING

SERAPHINA NOVA GLASS

TITAN BOOKS

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Someone’s Listening

Print edition ISBN: 9781789096255

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789096262

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: October 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third party websites or their content.

© Seraphina Nova Glass 2020

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

SOMEONE’SLISTENING

For Mark Glass.

Always.

WHEN I wake up, it’s black and still; I feel a light, icy snow that floats rather than falls, and I can’t open my eyes. I don’t know where I am, but it’s so quiet, the silence rings in my ears. My fingertips try to grip the ground, but I feel only a sheet of ice beneath me, splintered with bits of imbedded gravel. The air is sharp, and I try to call for him, but I can’t speak. How long have I been here? I drift back out of consciousness. The next time I wake, I hear the crunching of ice under the boots of EMTs who rush around my body. I know where I am. I’m lying in the middle of County Road 6. There has been a crash. There’s a swirling red light, a strobe light in the vast blackness: they tell me not to move.

“Where’s my husband?” I whimper. They tell me to try not to talk either. “Liam!” I try to yell for him, but it barely escapes my lips; they’re numb, near frozen, and it comes out in a hoarse whisper. How has this happened?

I think of the party and how I hate driving at night, and how I was careful not to drink too much. I nursed a glass or two, stayed in control. Liamhad a lot more. It wasn’t like him to get loaded, and I knew it was his way of getting back at me. He was irritated with me, with the position I’d put him in, even though he had never said it in so many words. I wanted to please him because this whole horrible situation was my fault, and I was sorry.

When I wake up again I’m in a hospital room, connected to tubes and machines. The IV needle is stuck into a bruised, purple vein in the back of my hand that aches. In the dim light, I sip juice from a tiny plastic cup, and the soft beep of the EKG tries to lull me back to sleep, but I fight it. I want answers. I need to appear stabilized and alert. Another dose of painkiller is released into my IV; the momentary euphoria forces me to heave a sigh. I need to keep my eyes open. I can hear the cops arrive and talk to someone at a desk outside my door. They’ll tell me what happened.

There’s a nurse who calls me “sweetie” and changes the subject when I ask about the accident. She gives the cops a sideways look when they come in to talk to me, and tells them they only have a few minutes and that I need to rest.

Detective John Sterling greets me with a soft “Hello, ma’am.” I almost forget about my shattered femur and groan after I move too quickly. Another officer lingers by the door, a tall, stern-looking woman with her light hair pulled into a tight bun at the base of her skull. She tells me I’m lucky to be alive, and if it had dropped below freezing, I wouldn’t have lasted those couple hours before a passing car stopped and called 911. I ask where Liam is, but she just looks to Sterling. Something is terribly wrong.

“Why won’t anyone tell me what happened to him?” I plead. I watch Detective Sterling as he picks his way through a response.

“The nurse tells me that you believe he was in the car with you at the time of the accident,” he says. I can hear the condescension in his voice. He’s speaking to me like I’m a child.

“They said ‘I believe’ he was? That’s not a—That’s a fact. We camefrom a party—a book signing party. Anyone, anyone can tell you that he was with me. Please. Is he hurt?” I look down at my body for the first time and see the jagged stitches holding together the bruised flesh of my right arm. They look exaggerated, like the kind you might draw on with makeup and glue for a Halloween costume. I close my eyes, holding back nausea. I try to walk through the series of events—trying to piece together what happened and when.

Liam had been quiet in the car. I knew he’d believed me after the accusations started. I knew he trusted me, but maybe I’d underestimated the seeds of doubt that had been planted in his mind. I tried to lighten the mood when we got in the car by making some joke about the fourteen-dollar domestic beers; he’d given a weak chuckle and rested his head on the passenger window.

The detective looks at me with something resembling sympathy but closer to pity.

“Do you recall how much you had to drink last night?” he asks accusingly.

“What? You think…? No. I drove because he… No! Where is he?” I ask, not recognizing my own voice. It’s haggard and raw.

“Do you recall taking anything to help you relax? Anything that might impair your driving?”

“No,” I snap, nearly in tears again.

“So, you didn’t take any benzodiazepine maybe? Yesterday…at some point?”

“No—I—Please.” I choke back tears. “I don’t…” He looks at me pointedly, then scribbles something on his stupid notepad. I didn’t know what to say. Liam must be dead, and they think I’m too fragile to take the news. Why would they ask me this?

“Ma’am,” he says, standing. He softens his tone. This is it. He’s going to tell me something I’ll never recover from.

“You were the only one in the car when medics got there,” he says,studying me for my response, waiting to detect a lie that he can use against me later. His patronizing look infuriates me.

“What?” The blood thumps in my ears. They think I’m crazy; that soft tone isn’t a sympathetic one reserved for delivery of the news that a loved one has died—it’s the careful language chosen when speaking to someone unstable. They think I’m some addict or a drunk. Maybe they think the impact had made me lose the details, but he was there. I swear to God. His cry came too late and there was a crash. It was deafening, and I saw him reach for me, his face distorted in terror. He tried to shield me. He was there. He was next to me, screaming my name when we saw the truck headlights appear only feet in front of us—too late.

NOW

WHEN the clock on the stove hits noon, I pour a tumbler of pinot grigio. I make myself wait until noon so that I know I still have a modicum of control. I pull my robe tight and slip onto the front porch to sit. The sky is dark—a pebble gray—and the air is crisp. Across the street a car pulls into the driveway. Ginny DaLuca has forgotten something, it appears. She opens the car door, and the speakers inside exhale light jazz music as she runs in and then back out of the house quickly, holding her forgotten item. I notice an autumn wreath on her door. It’s barely September, but she can’t help herself. The same bronze and orange wreath of twisted twigs and foliage with a tacky scarecrow face in the middle welcomes her guests, of which I no longer am one. I don’t bother to wave the way I once did because she’d pretend not to see me, or maybe give an uncomfortable smile and nod. I used to be someone who secretly (very secretly) swelled with delight when I saw a row of Christmas decorations pop up next to the back-to-school supplies in late August, but now, this forcing ahead of time is intolerable. If anything, I want to slow it down. Reverse it even.

The Sunday newspaper, in its plastic sheath, lies at the end of the driveway, half of it immersed in a puddle from last night’s rain. How many times have I said I’d go online and change my subscription to digital only? It’s so wasteful. Liam liked the feel of the paper though. He liked the inky film it left on his hands, the smell of it. He didn’t want to look at his laptop on Sundays. “It’s exactly why we have a big front porch,” he’d say, after promising to recycle the paper. I sip my drink, wishing I would have poured a red—more suited for the weather—and wonder how many newspapers would have to pile up at the end of the drive before one of the neighbors would check to see if I were dead.

A soft tapping of rain starts up again. The Pattersons give up on raking leaves from their sugar maple that’s shedding early this year. They laugh at their attempt to spend the gloomy Sunday in the yard, and with a shrug of defeat, Al Patterson puts an arm around his wife as she shields her head with her hands and rushes inside. How I long for Liam’s hand on the small of my back for any reason at all. If he were here, he’d comment on how illogical it is for them to rake before all the leaves have fallen for the season. There’s a small window between the end of fall and the first snow, and he’d always plucked out those few days, like feeling the rain coming in one’s bones, and timed it perfectly.

I rescue the paper from floating down the gutter. It’s bloated with rainwater, but I take it inside and lay out the swollen pages on the kitchen table anyway. I’m relieved not to see my face looking back at me; maybe enough time has passed and they’re finally on to the next life to ravage with speculation and statements of “alleged” involvement. At my desktop, a chat bubble blooms on my screen. It’s Ellie, and although she means well, the sisterly concern she tries to communicate with daily check-ins is becoming exhausting. There are only so many times you can circle the same conversation and get nowhere. She’s sorry for my loss. I know she is. She wants to make sure I’m eating. She encourages me to work.

Her intentions are golden, but it will take a shift into vodka gimlets before I breach that tired conversation today. I ignore the bubble asking me how the weather is holding up, and I try to do a little work.

Since taking a leave of absence from my practice, I still communicate with a few patients who didn’t take the news of my time away very well. Paula Day is suffering from stage four breast cancer and no matter my own hardships, I would never abandon my weekly video chat with dear Paula. Eddie Tolson’s panic disorder exploded when I explained I’d be away, so I chat with him now and then. In my private practice, I’ve pretty much kept on anyone who wildly protested my leave, but most of them took my referrals quietly and sympathetically with the promise of my speedy return. I respond to a few emails, but it’s hard not to think of Liam. It’s hard to concentrate on anything else.

I click on a folder on my desktop titled “Liam.” I’ve kept every email and photo, even the everyday notes he used to leave around the house that I took photos of because I thought they were so sweet. I uploaded them all to the computer over the years: “Sorry I drank all the almond milk, I’ll pick up more tonight,” taped inside the fridge; “Meet me at Luigi’s at 7?” on a stick-it note on my car. It’s silly to keep such mundane remnants, but it was all part of our evolution together. I never wanted to forget, even when he was here, the swoosh at the top of the L in his signature or the inside jokes we exhausted. “Hardy Har” scrolled at the bottom of dozens of these old notes, a secret, stupid one-liner, just between us, which we’d stolen from some long-forgotten TV comedy sketch and made our own language. I cherished each one. All of the photos and instant messages strung together; this was our life. Even our ranting text arguments—I never deleted those from my phone. Now, the pettiness of them fills me with shame.

I scroll through some of the last photos of him—of us. His work as a food and wine critic meant the lion’s share of our photos were at restaurants. We’re pictured together, with that stagey, for-the-camera pose, sharing a Scotch egg at a gastropub, or taking giant bites of lobster rolls off a pier in Cape Cod. There’s a short video of him explaining why romesco sauce can go on darn near anything. I click to play it even though I’ve watched it countless times. I took the little clip with my phone at an Italian place in New York that I don’t recall the name of, but I remember so clearly the drippy candles and the Dean Martin song playing in the background.

We’d taken a cab there right from the airport to make our reservation on time, so we were dressed too casually for the place, and we’d had a few Makers Mark and sodas on the plane to celebrate a television spot I’d gotten. It wasn’t like him to drink often and certainly not before he reviewed a restaurant; I guess that’s why I love this clip. Just thirty-two seconds of Liam preaching the utilitarian nature of romesco sauce with a dot of it on his cheek, slightly buzzed.

My face has become rinsed with tears before I notice, so I close the folder and graduate from wine to vodka and turn a house-flipping show on TV to fill the silence. After a couple of miraculous and seamless home renovations, I pull on a wool coat and start my daily work. I print a hundred more missing persons posters from my office printer and head out. I look at Liam’s face on the poster. It’s a photo we took at Sapori Trattoria last year. My face, along with the veal scaloppini we shared that night, are cropped out. I thought it was the clearest photo of him I could find.

Today I’ll just go to shops, hang them inside restaurant front windows so the rain doesn’t dissolve him.

THEN

ON a bitter February night, I came home to find Liam in the kitchen in socks and sweats, the table covered with takeout boxes that looked like carefully wrapped gifts. They each held different desserts and dishes from the French restaurant that he’d written a rave review about the week before.

“Try this.” Liam handed me a glass. I took a sip and handed it back. He looked surprised. “You can’t tell me you don’t like it.”

“It’s too sweet. Ugh,” I say, rejecting it as he tried handing it back to me.

“This is a tawny port. Forty years old.”

“It tastes like a rancid fruit pie.”

He smiles and pours my glass into his own.

“More for me,” he says. “So this is a ‘no’ for your book launch party then?”

“You’re cute.” I smile.

“I am?”

“Yes, you’re treating this party like a wedding. Are we going to taste a sampling of cakes next?” I say, picking at boxes on the table.

“No. But there is a Pots de Creme I figured you’d at least want to try. The owner of le Bouchon is practically falling over himself at the opportunity to host it, so I thought I’d take advantage of that.”

“Free Pots de Creme. How could I say no to that?” I placed the port he was holding on the counter and wrapped my arms around him, kissing him. “Thank you. For being so supportive.” He kissed me back. I rubbed my hands together, eyes wide. “What flavor?”

“Mocha.” He opened a box and grabbed two forks. I was so grateful that he was embracing my new book and getting used to my new role in the spotlight. Since my first book (Starting Over: Life After Abuse) had done so well, I was asked to appear on many shows for guest spots until landing a weekly advice slot on a talk radio program: Someone’s Listening, with Dr. Faith Finley.

It wasn’t fame exactly, but locally I guess you could say it was. It was a bit overwhelming to be recognized here and there, to be invited to bourgeois cocktail parties and black-tie dinners where I would often be asked to speak. Liam was the one who was used to that role—the feared and respected critic whom every chef in town went to great lengths to impress when he sat down at their tables. He supported my success, but I can’t help but feel that he missed the way it was before, when he was the gatekeeper to charity dinners and Bears season tickets and all things social and exciting. I was the quiet academic and he was the charming foodie, revered for his swift and honest opinions on everything from the authenticity of the latest taco truck to James Beard Award–worthy restaurants. My colleagues quietly disapproved of my new role when I started the radio spots a few years back. It was the McDonald’s of therapy, after all—a few minutes on the air and I’m wielding life-altering advice? It was hard to tell if their judgment was based on their keen moral compasses or…envy. I shared office space with a few other clinical psychologists and an analyst whom I only saw in passing now and then. The curt nods and smiles I started receiving from Alan and Thomas in place of the once obligatory but genuine small talk we used to engage in told me all I needed to know about their feelings regarding my media presence. I did help people though, no matter what they thought.

Liam and I kept a condo in the city that we got away to now and then, and where I occasionally stayed when I was writing my book—a glorious brownstone built in the late 1800s with a sliver of balcony overlooking the busy street below. I remembered a woman staring at my mailbox then back up at me one afternoon when I stabbed a key into the box and flipped through a pile of junk mail in the shared lobby. As I tossed an oil change coupon into the recycling, she put together who I was.

“You’re Dr. Faith Finley.” She beamed ear to ear and began rambling about how she’d written into Dr. Phil four times but couldn’t get through and could I help her.

“I don’t usually offer advice in the lobby like this, and I’m heading…” I started to say.

“Of course. I’m so sorry. You’re headed out. You must be so busy. I’m Lettie.” She reached her hand out to shake mine. “It’s so nice to meet you. I can’t believe you live in my building!”

“Nice to meet you too, Lettie. How about you call into the show on Friday, and I’ll let the producer know to put you through,” I said.

“Oh my God. Really? Thank you! Yes!” She beamed.

She did call in to the show. Sadly, she had the same story I hear almost every week. It started with a flared temper and an apology, but her husband’s verbal abuse has turned into rage and physical altercations, and she doesn’t understand why she keeps going back.

I counseled her the way I would anyone in her position, and referred her to my book where there was a whole chapter on creating a safe plan to leave. The station even sent her a copy of the book after the call. A couple of weeks later she called back to report that she’d taken the advice and was singing my praises and thanking me on air, safely away from her abuser. So, I had proof I wasn’t just some sellout. I was making a difference in more lives than I could in private practice. Maybe it wasn’t the same, but it was still valuable.

It wasn’t just Lettie. The same week a woman called about her out-of-control teen and then reported, months later, that the recovery center I suggested for her was a miracle, and her daughter was sober and that she was like a different person. I remember calling the New Hope Recovery Center myself and coordinating with the mother after the call. It wasn’t fast-food advice, and I resented the implications otherwise. I tried to keep my defensiveness in check.

Mostly, I just received fan admiration, but it was the people in my practice—the people whose opinions I thought mattered more—that robbed me of my breath anytime I let myself think about the things they undoubtedly said about me out of earshot.

Liam would just say “Screw ’em. Jealous old dinosaurs. Clearly they didn’t read your book or they’d know how damaging passive aggression can be. You lay it right out for them.” I loved it when he’d try to defend my honor, no matter how nonsensical and unnecessary.

I would do anything. Anything in the whole world if we’d never hosted that party—if that night had never happened. Anything.

NOW

I’VE been walking in the cold rain longer than intended. It’s already dark and I’m out of posters so I duck into a tavern for a drink. We bought our house out here a few years ago. It’s only fifty miles outside of Chicago, but feels like a small town where you can’t escape seeing someone you know. As I slip in through the massive wooden door to the tavern, I’m grateful to be out of the cold and hope I don’t recognize anyone inside.

The light is soft and red, and the ancient carpet is dotted with black gum spots and outlines of stains from years of neglect. I’m comforted by the warmth and low light. I aim for the restroom first, but when I go in, I’m assaulted by stinging fluorescent light and the smell of bleach as a Shakira song plays too loudly through a distorted speaker. It changes my mood instantly from temporarily comforted to irritated, and out of nowhere I’m suddenly fighting an overwhelming feeling to break down sobbing—a feeling I fight back a lot these days—but I don’t. I go out and scan the place quickly, and when I don’t see any familiar faces, I belly up to the bar.

It’s been nearly seven months since the accident. I know I’m supposed to feel thankful that I’m up and walking again. It’s hard to do. The only thing I’m thankful for is that I’m more mobile, so I can better spearhead search initiatives for my husband.

Now that I can get around, I hope the darkest times are behind me—long stretches of nights unable to sleep, utterly confined by my fractured ribs and broken leg, dependent on a home health aide for nearly everything. I didn’t get to choose who they sent. Insurance just sent whoever, and I got Barb, a heavy-set twentysomething who smelled like cigarette smoke covered up by drugstore body spray that left a charred plastic scent in every room she lounged in. That’s mostly all she did unless I needed help to the bathroom or getting something to eat.

She wore a Garfield T-shirt, stained, with a quip about hating Mondays while she played Candy Crush on her phone and wolfed down Arby’s smokehouse brisket and curly fries. Meal prep was on her list of skills, but she looked at the vegetables I had her buy like foreign objects. After serving me a silo of blue cheese dressing with a few leaves of lettuce, I had to coach her to simply throw a salad together. The fatigue from my injuries left me aching, and the depression I tried to fight, on a minute-by-minute basis, did not allow me any patience with the situation. I heard her call me a bitch once, on the phone, talking to a friend. I didn’t care. I would have if it were another time, but I was starting to wonder if I was capable of caring about anything ever again.

In the early mornings, I usually tried to sleep on the couch. Adult Swim, infomercials with knives that cut through bricks, and repeats of Jimmy Swaggart sweating into a handkerchief with a hand to heaven, distracted me just enough to keep me from ending up back in the hospital with a panic attack. I almost called for an ambulance one night a few months back, when an invasion of anxiety left me hyperventilating so severely my limbs went numb and I thought was having a heart attack. It’s something I’d heard all the time from patients, and I knew exactly how I’d approach this if it were someone else—what advice and treatment I’d proffer—but the grief would simply not allow me to react rationally.

Now though, I can do more than cry and post desperate social media pleas offering a reward for any information about Liam. When it happened, they treated me like some unstable drunk in the hospital who was making up stories. When they learned who I was, the pacifying condescension shifted into something else. I was credible enough, I surmised, that they would at least not dismiss what I was saying, no matter how implausible it seemed. But they were the ones on the scene, and they assured me I was the only one in the car. They weren’t looking for a second person at the time, though, so I’m sure they did only a half-assed look around. After a few days, when Liam Finley did not show up at his wife’s side in the hospital, nor did he show up to work or his Saturday pickup basketball game at the Y, they finally started to ask real questions, not just bullshit ones, half-accusing me of being a pill popper and therefore an unreliable voice on what had happened in that car. Even with the new evidence, they still didn’t believe me.

I hate this bar. A string of lights spelling out “live, laugh, love” blink above the front door, sluggishly, weary from the task of boosting spirits. Tacky plaques with obscene quotes decorate the wall behind the long, ancient, oak bar. Every surface of wood is scratched and weathered; mirrored rows of glass bottles are disordered and dressed with sugary overspill. The smell of stale cigarettes and urine are only circulated, not alleviated, by the dusty ceiling fans.

Liam loved the nostalgia of the place, the mammoth Pac-Man game in the back, the jukebox with real vinyl in it. I loved it because he loved it, and we spent nights here, dancing to Neil Young on the makeshift dance floor on Saturday nights and relishing our quiet escape from the city that we’d discovered. But now it’s just the closest place to numb myself.

I want to believe that the impossible things the detectives are telling me are lies. Liam withdrew money before the accident; it looks like he planned to disappear. It’s outrageous, laughable. Except that I discovered his passport missing, and I’m running out of plausible reasons for him to have taken out a large sum of money without telling me. I wish I never opened the goddamn drawer our passports live in. I was looking for a receipt for some stupid thing. I never even thought to check to see if his passport was in its place, and I wish I didn’t know. I wish I never looked. The bartender places another drink in front of me before I need to order one; I gulp it down in a few swallows, and push the dark thoughts away.

The waitress, Pearl, smiles at me as she sits in a booth with her scratch-offs. I order an Old Fashioned and nod in her direction to passively say hello. After her husband died, the bar owner gave her a job even though she is clumsy and forgetful and the customers complain about her. The regulars look out for her, though, because of the tragedy. The stories about her misfortune vary. The most consistent version is that her husband worked for a metal factory in town until one night, on the graveyard shift, he fell asleep and his sleeve was pulled into a three-roller press. He was squeezed all the way through until all of his insides were pressed out, leaving only strips of papery flesh behind to gum up the cogs and gears.

It’s said that Pearl always packed him a lunch basket full of things like sweet potato cakes, candied figs, heaps of pasta, and warm buttered bread, and she’d always drop it off for him before she went to bed at night. She didn’t witness the accident, but she did arrive at the factory just after it happened—in time to see bloody strips of him left behind—his skin and tissue flooding over the sides of the press. Some say she lost her mind that night.

I offered her my services once, no charge, if she ever wanted to talk. She never took me up on it. It’s true she’s not quite lucid all the time, so she mostly just chain smokes and drinks translucent coffee until it’s time to clean up for closing. She looks smaller than usual tonight, slunk in her stool, swimming in her big sweater that was meant to match her earrings. Across the front is a cross-stitched jack-o’-lantern, whose triangle cutout eyes and nose are meant to light up, but the sweater has no batteries and the pumpkin’s dead face makes her look even more lifeless than usual.

I want her to mother me. I want to ask how she coped with such devastating loss, so she might comfort me and tell me to be strong, but she hasn’t coped, and that’s why she scares the hell out of me. She laughs abruptly, her square jaw bobbing like a ventriloquist’s doll. Then she stops and looks around, offended as if some phantom person has asked her to be quiet.

I order another drink. My phone vibrates across the bar top. It’s Ellie again. I can picture the conversation already. I know that she is, at this moment, standing in her kitchen over a pot of Hamburger Helper, browning the meat with a diapered baby on her hip and a toddler nearby in a bounce chair. I’d be at the counter with a glass of wine, picking at the fresh baked, from a tube, sheet of cookies, no doubt contaminated by greasy little kid fingers. This is Sunday night. I suppose there is a comfort in the routine of it. I answer. She finishes hollering to her husband before saying hello.

“Joey! Like, it’s not hard. You want poop in your green beans, fine by me,” she yells. Then a pause. “Then take him. Diapers are in the trunk. I forgot to bring them in.” I can hear Joe sigh or scoff as he takes the baby.

“Ell?” I’m not sure if she forgot she called.

“Faith. Hey. Sorry ’bout that. How are you doin’?” she asked, changing her tone dramatically from the moment before with Joe.

“I’m okay.” I down my drink in one swallow and gesture for another. There are a few minutes of talk about the cold front, her call to Sprint customer service earlier, how little Hannah is going to go as a cupcake for Halloween because she found the sweetest little costume at Pottery Barn. I remember when Ellie and I were little and she went as Bob Ross. She sported an epic afro and carried around a little painting of woodland creatures. A cupcake? I guess parenthood does weird things to a person. She finally squeezes in hints that I should come back to the city.

“We’re gonna pawn the kids off on Joe’s parents and do like an adult dinner in a couple weeks. Do you think you might be in town…wanna come?” she asks carefully. Joe is a Chicago cop, and she is an overwhelmed stay-at-home mom, so they rarely get any time away. She never asks me to watch the kids, thank God, but I feel a little bad she knows it would be hell for me.

“Um… I mean, maybe,” is all I have to offer at the moment. Sometimes I wonder if she was right about going back to the city. It was Liam’s idea to move out here. He wanted an idyllic little corner for us. We were still in the city several days a week usually, but he had grand plans for this small town life he’d never had. We both grew up in the city, grad school on both respective coasts. We traveled, we had months, maybe years, where our careers could have easily splintered our relationship if we weren’t so committed…and yes, in love.

He’d thought Sugar Grove would be our place. A house you couldn’t even dream of in Chicago for the price point— with a hot tub on the deck, an acre for future dogs to run in, and a big ole BBQ pit he dug himself. He adored it. All of it. It even had a small airport, and since he reviewed all over the country, he could use it for last-minute trips if he needed to without driving to Chicago.

I split my practice. Three days a week in Chicago, a couple in Sugar Grove. If I’m honest, it wasn’t what I would have chosen, but with him, it’s hard to explain; it was perfect. He made it that way. I did prefer the lull of sirens at night and self-righteous baristas with man buns, microbreweries, and a public radio station I could tune into without static, but now… I didn’t know what to say to Ellie. I tell her I’ll think about it.

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