The Stranger Inside. Lisa Unger
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The rain knocks on the tin roof and the sound of it always makes me think of you. Not because of the name you gave yourself. I never called you Rain.
The sound reminds me of your childhood home. I used to love that old house, how it was deep back in the woods. Rooms dim, with wind chimes on the porch. Your father still lives there, doesn’t he?
Your mother seemed always to be cooking, some black-and-white movie playing on that tiny portable television perched on the kitchen counter. Your father’s study smelled of leather and cigarette smoke.
I’d marvel at his shelves and shelves of dusty books, the typewriter on the rickety wood table by the window. He had a computer, of course. But he’d write on that old thing and give your mother the pages to enter into “the box,” as he liked to call it. His keyboard clatter echoed down the hardwood floor of the hallway. I loved his tall thinness, the way his suit jackets hung off his broad shoulders. He was a writer, a real writer. You were often mad at him because he cared more about the page than he did about you, or so it seemed. I think you were wrong about that. You didn’t see the way he looked at you. As if you were a princess and a unicorn and a rainbow all rolled into one perfect girl.
My house was different, sprawling and frigid, filled with light, professionally decorated, museum white and gray, expensive pieces of modern art chosen by my mother not for love, or because she had any idea what was truly beautiful, but because it “went with the room.” My father only cared about numbers. My mother, I’m not sure what she cared about then, before. Afterward, she had a kind of awakening, became someone else. But then, they worked all week, lay by the pool all weekend. They watched television in bed at night with the lights out. Sometimes I’d wake up and it would still be on, its blue glow flickering through the crack of the door left ajar. There were no books in my house, except in my room. My parents didn’t read. They didn’t have time, they said.
Your parents used to play cards with us. Your mother had an art studio in the garage. We’d all make a big mess out there—drip paint on the floor, get it all over our clothes, the walls, each other. She’d only laugh and tell us that whatever creation wound up on the canvas, that it was beautiful. Your dad gave us a summer reading list. We saw him on the news sometimes, came across articles about him in magazines. You didn’t seem impressed; you were used to his brand of fame. But I was awed by him. Hey—remember that horrible review, written by some former friend of his? He sulked about it for days, muttering, shutting doors too hard. Your mother told us to play outside, not to hang around the house that week. But then the keyboard started clattering again. Because that’s what you do when you’re a writer, I guess. You just keep writing, no matter what they say about you.
I’m rambling.
Does that happen to you? Do you get lost in the memories of who we were before?
Today, the black fingers of despair tug at me. They always do in the days that follow one of my—excursions; there’s a heavy grayness that settles. A sense of loss.
In the planning, there’s so much energy and tension, the intensity raw and alive. And then when it’s done, some engine inside me sputters and dies, gears grinding to a halt. In that silence, I return to that moment right after I called to Mrs. Newman and just before I heard the sound that stopped me in my tracks on that dirt path to the woods. And I wish and wish anything had turned me back toward home.
But, as you have told me more than once, we can’t go back. Everybody knows that.
The rain is heavy, which is odd for this time of year. Maybe if it were cooler, it would be snow. The water sluices down the window as I build a fire in the great room. It’s too hot for a fire. But I haven’t built it for warmth.
Article by article, I burn the clothes I wore last night, the gloves, the balaclava. And soon, everything I brought into Markham’s house with me is gone. The car is hidden. There’s no trace of me.
Who am I? I often wonder the day after. Sometimes there’s even regret. What have I done? What does this make me? In the planning, in the hunt, in the execution, there’s nothing like that. But after, there’s a heaviness I carry. You told me once that the thoughts I harbored, the things I couldn’t let go, that it was wrong, that nothing good had ever come from wanting revenge. But what do you know about right and wrong?
When the clothes are burned, I brew some coffee. I boil water and pour it over the grounds, the liquid trickling into the carafe through the brown filter. The Chemex, it’s elegant, simple. It’s the way your father brewed coffee. I used to admire him. I guess I still do, even after everything.
When your heroes reveal themselves as human, it exposes your own flaws, too. Naivete, mainly, a willingness to believe in someone, something. Do you remember that book signing he did in that tiny store off of Main Street? We were kids then, but we tagged along with your mother. His big bestselling days were behind him. But his fans turned up in droves, repeating back lines to him that he’d long forgotten writing. In print, they referred to him as the father of dystopian fiction. Remember how people stood around the small store, how hot it was, how the line snaked outside and down the street? His flop of white hair, those round specs. I thought he was the coolest man alive.
I drink my coffee and watch as the fire dies to embers, everything reduced to ash. I look at the row of his books on my shelves. All of them signed, first editions. They’re worth quite a bit, I think. Not that I’d ever part with them. Not that I’d ever part with any piece of you, or anything that connects back to the time when we were young together. The last safe place.
Upstairs in my study, I get online, start scrolling through the news headlines. I miss seeing your name in print every day, Rain Winter. All your stories, even when later you started producing and editing instead, had a certain energy to them. A quiet authority. You let the facts tell the tale, never hyping, never proselytizing even in that subtle way that some journalists do. I loved the longer pieces, when you dug in deep to your subject, the characters at its heart. It was personal; I could tell.
You’re still trying to understand, aren’t you, in your way? I am, too.
I scroll through your social media feeds. A picture of your baby. Really? You and Greg, a selfie in the park. Come on. Your professional sites are wastelands of retweets and shares. On Insta there’s an artful shot of one of those smoking martinis, some party, moms’ night out. Christ. How long can you go on like this? I might have predicted it, though. Your retreat into the cocoon of domesticity.
That look on your face when Markham got off. It wasn’t despair, exactly. It was more like a bitter resignation, the look of a child who discovers there’s no Santa. A part of you knew it all along. You shook your head slightly; your mouth dropped open just a little. You folded into yourself. You gave up on justice.
You were back there in the woods with me. Remembering.
Anyway, if I know you, you’re on fire today. That’s not why I did it. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t part of the reason. There was no rush; I could have done it anytime over the next few months. But your social media posts are downright depressing.
Come back to life, Lara.
My phone buzzes and the sound moves through me like electricity. The front gate.
I touch the app to activate the camera and see a black sedan with a young woman sitting in the driver’s seat. There’s someone beside her, but I can’t see a face, just the thick thighs of a large man, a hand with a wedding ring. Interesting. I don’t get many visitors out here.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
She says my name. Her voice is husky, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. She holds her identification up to the camera.
“We have a few questions about a case we’re working on,” she says. “I’m wondering if you can help us.”
I could ask for her to identify