was no escaping the heat.
I was looking up, watching the “L,” getting my bearings. I wondered what time it was. I knew every clock in the city. The Peacock clock, Father Time, Marshall Field’s. Four clocks on the Wrigley Building, so that it didn’t matter which way you came at it from, you could still see a clock. But there were no clocks there, on the corner where I was at.
I didn’t see the stoplight before me go red. I didn’t see the cab come hustling past, racing another cab to snatch up a fare down the street. I stepped right into the street with both feet.
I felt him first. I felt the grip of his hand tighten on my wrist like a pipe wrench so that I couldn’t move.
In an instant, I fell in love with that hand—warm, capable, decisive. Protective. His fingers were thick; his hands big with clean, short nails. There was a tiny tattoo, a glyph on the skin between his fingers and thumb. Something small and pointy, like a mountain peak. For a minute, that was all I saw. That inky mountain peak.
His grip was powerful and swift. In one stroke, he stopped me. A second later, the cab raced past, not six inches from my feet. I felt the rush of it on my face. The wind off the car pushed me away, and then sucked me back in as it passed. I saw a flash of colors only; I felt the breeze. I didn’t see the cab shoot past, not until it was speeding off down the street. Only then did I know how close I came to being roadkill.
Overhead, the “L” screeched to a stop on the tracks.
I looked down. There was his hand. My eyes went up his wrist, his arm; they went to his eyes. His eyes were wide, his eyebrows pulled together in concern. He was worried about me. No one ever worried about me.
The light turned green, but we didn’t move. We didn’t speak. All around, people stepped past us while we stood in the way, blocking them. A minute went by. Two. Still, he didn’t let go of my wrist. His hand was warm, tacky. It was humid outside. So hot it was hard to breathe. There was no fresh air. My thighs were moist with sweat. They stuck to my jeans, made the arctic-blue tee cling to me.
When we finally spoke, we spoke at the same time. That was close.
We laughed together, released a synchronous sigh.
I could feel my heart pound inside of me. It had nothing to do with the cab.
I bought him coffee. It sounds so unimaginative after the fact, doesn’t it? So cliché.
But that was all I could come up with in a pinch.
Let me buy you a coffee, I said. Repay you for saving my life.
I fluttered my eyelashes at him. Put a hand on his chest. Gave him a smile.
Only then did I see that he already had a coffee. There in his other hand sat some iced froufrou drink. Our eyes went to it at the same time. We sniggered. He lobbed it into a trash can, said, Pretend you didn’t just see that.
A coffee would be nice, he said. When he smiled, he smiled with his eyes.
He told me his name was Will. There was a stutter when he said it, so that it came out Wi-Will. He was nervous, shy around girls, shy around me. I liked that about him.
I took his hand into mine, said, It’s nice to meet you, Wi-Will.
We sat in a booth, side by side. We drank our coffees. We talked; we laughed.
That night there was a party, one of those rooftop venues with a city view. An engagement party for Sadie’s friends, Jack and Emily. She was the one who was invited, not me. I don’t think Emily liked me much, but I planned to go anyway, just the same as Cinderella went to the royal ball. I had a dress picked out, one I took from Sadie’s closet. It fit me to a T, though she was bigger than me, Sadie with her broad shoulders and her thick hips. She had no business wearing that dress. I was doing her a favor.
I had a bad habit of shopping in Sadie’s closet. Once, when I was there, all alone or so I thought, I heard the jiggle of keys in the front door lock. I slipped out of the room, into the living room, arriving only a second before she did. There stood my darling roommate, hands on her hips, looking quizzically at me.
You look like you’ve been up to no good, she said. I didn’t say one way or the other whether I’d been being good. It wasn’t often that I was good. Sadie was the rule follower, not me.
That dress wasn’t the only thing I took from her. I also used her credit card to buy new shoes, metallic wedge sandals with a crisscross strap.
I said to Will that day in the coffee shop about the engagement party: We don’t even know each other. But I’d be an idiot not to ask. Come with me?
I’d be honored, he said, making eyes at me in the café booth. He sat close, his elbow brushing against mine.
He’d come to the party.
I gave him the address, told him I’d meet him inside.
We parted ways beneath the “L” tracks. I watched him walk away until he got swallowed up in pedestrian traffic. Even then, I still watched.
I couldn’t wait to see him that night.
But as luck would have it, I didn’t make it to the party after all. Fate had other plans that night.
But Sadie was there. Sadie, who had been invited to Jack and Emily’s engagement party. She was out of this world. He went right up to her, fawned all over her, forgot about me.
I’d made it easy on her, inviting him to that party. I always made things easy for Sadie.
If it wasn’t for me, they never would’ve met. He was mine before he was hers.
She forgets that all the time.
There isn’t much to our street, just like any of the other inland streets that lie braided throughout the island. There’s nothing more than a handful of shingled cottages and farmhouses bisected by patches of trees.
The island itself is home to less than a thousand. We live on the more populous part, in walking distance of the ferry, where there’s a partial view of the mainland from our steeply sloped street, the size of it shrunken by distance. And yet the sight of it brings comfort to me.
There is a world out there that I can see, even if I’m no longer a part of it.
I drive slowly up the incline. The evergreens have lost their needles now, the birch trees their leaves. They’re strewn about the street, crunching beneath the car’s tires as I drive. Soon they will be buried by snow.
Salty sea air enters the window, open just a crack. There’s a chill to the air, the last lingering traces of fall before winter arrives full bore.
It’s after six o’clock in the evening. The sky is dark.
Up above me, across the street and two doors down from my own home, there is a flurry of activity going on at the Baineses’ home. Three unmarked cars are parked outside, and I imagine forensic technicians inside, collecting evidence, fingerprinting, photographing the crime scene.
The street looks suddenly different to me.
There is a police car in my own driveway as I pull up. I park beside it, a Ford Crown Victoria, and climb slowly out. I reach into the back seat to gather my things. I make my way to the front door, looking warily around to be sure that I’m alone. There’s the greatest sense of unease. It’s hard not to let my imagination get the best of me, to imagine a killer hiding among the bushes watching me.
But the street is silent. There are no people around that I can see. My neighbors have gone inside, mistakenly believing they’re safer inside their own homes—which Morgan Baines must have thought, too, before she was killed in hers.
I press my keys into the front door. Will leaps to his feet when I enter. His jeans are slouchy,