Chapter Four
At six o’clock that evening, Jane was on her front stoop when Megan walked down their winding street, lugging a briefcase that looked far too heavy for her.
Megan waved from the end of Jane’s walk. “Hello! Come on over.” Jane met her and walked with her past the hedge and down her driveway.
Megan’s big brick house sat slightly farther back on its lot than Jane’s house did, which was nice for both of them, affording more privacy and sunlight than might otherwise have been the case since the houses were only a driveway-width apart.
Unlike most houses in the neighborhood, Megan’s had an attached garage. During the renovation the developer had torn down the free-standing one-car garage and rebuilt it with two bays, permissible because the structure extended no farther than the original toward the property line. Jane knew from the open house that the area above the garage was now a luxurious master suite.
Megan put the briefcase down in the drive and fiddled with a keypad beside the garage door. The double door rolled up with a clackety-clackety-clack. Jane was surprised to see the garage was empty, though when she thought about it, she’d never seen Megan in a car. Jane had heard that young people often didn’t own cars these days, relying instead on bicycles, public transportation, rideshares, and rentals. Indeed, there was a sturdy red bicycle leaning against the back wall of the garage.
Megan entered more numbers on the keypad on the door from the garage to the house while a camera stood sentry over the door. Once they’d climbed the two-step riser and were inside the house, Megan punched more numbers into the security system to disarm it.
Jane watched with interest. It wasn’t uncommon for people to have alarm systems in her increasingly tony neighborhood, particularly in houses such as Megan’s that had been gut renovated. But in Jane’s experience the systems were generally activated only when residents were away for an extended time, not for a simple day at work. Break-ins were not unknown. There had been a rash of them more than a decade ago. But they were exceedingly rare.
Megan’s house was lovely. When Jane had come through during the open house, her first impression had been one of light and brightness. Most of the downstairs walls had been removed during the renovation.
She and Megan entered into an open kitchen with tall ceilings, white-white cabinets, a big kitchen island, and white countertops. The kitchen extended to the front of the house. A comfy-looking white leather couch, a coffee table, bookshelves, and a TV mounted on the outside wall filled the remaining space.
Jane was shocked to realize that the furniture was the same as it had been the last time she’d been there. Apparently, Megan had bought not only the house but also the furniture it had been staged with. She had bought, fully, the vision of the life the developer had been selling.
On the other hand, the house wasn’t obsessively neat. There were personal touches—a crocheted afghan askew on the back of the white leather couch and bowls for a pet of some kind on the kitchen floor. Expensive brass cooking pans hung from a rack over the kitchen island. An antique painting of a lamb was over the fireplace, which should have looked out of place in the sleek room but somehow fit right in. Jane found the hominess and slight mess reassuring. In her experience, people who viewed their homes as stage sets—places where the perfect setting would result in a perfect life—often had problems. Megan truly lived in her house.
A half-full glass mug of light brown liquid sat on the coffee table. Megan whisked it away, stowing it in the big farmer’s sink as she offered Jane a drink. “Wine? Iced tea? Water?”
Jane accepted the wine. Megan’s most alarming symptoms—the lost time, voices, blackouts, the paranoia—could be related to alcohol consumption. It would be interesting to watch her drink.
Megan pulled an open bottle of white wine out of the fridge, grabbed two fancy crystal wineglasses, and led Jane outdoors to a bistro set on a small flagstone patio. The day had cooled down enough to make the outdoors pleasant.
The yard was smaller than Jane’s because of the way the house sat on its lot. The tiny bit of grass was mowed, and despite the drought, the shrubs that the developer had added were thriving. Megan, or someone, must be caring for them. A high stockade fence separated Megan’s backyard from Jane’s. Jane could look down onto a sliver of the yard from the bedroom at the back of her house, the bedroom Jane still thought of, despite more than a decade of disuse, as her son Jonathan’s room. But Jane never went in there if she could avoid it, so until that moment she couldn’t have reported on the state of Megan’s back garden.
Megan poured the wine. Jane waited to see if her neighbor would ease the way into the conversation. When she did not, Jane broached the reason they were both there. “When did you begin to feel—”
Megan smiled. “Like I was losing it?” Megan wiggled her bottom on the cast-iron chair, settling in. “I can’t say exactly. It’s been a gradual thing. Six months, maybe?”
Jane counted backward in her head. Six months would have been March. Megan had moved in during November. “Did the symptoms start all at once?”
“No. The first thing was the night sweats. Then the flashing lights. The rest came after.”
“These lights flash when your eyes are closed?” Jane clarified.
“Yes. They wake me in the night. But when I open my eyes, they’re gone. By then I’m fully awake, my heart is pounding, and I can’t get back to sleep.”
“What about the voices?”
“The same thing. I hear someone talking downstairs. I wake up and I’m awake.”
“You hear the voices only when you’re asleep?”
“And then I wake up,” Megan confirmed.
“Is it possible you’re dreaming?”
“I’d hoped that was true for a long time. But how can you explain that I wake up bathed in sweat? I didn’t dream that.”
“Are you getting enough rest?”
“I’m certain I’m not. I have a stressful job and work long hours. Being up for a couple of hours at night isn’t helping.”
“Let’s talk about the other symptoms,” Jane said. “Start with losing time.”
Megan shifted in her seat again. But this time it wasn’t the movement of a woman getting comfortable. It was the drawing back and into herself of a person distinctly uncomfortable. “When I wake up in the night like that, I try to get back to sleep, but I usually can’t. I go downstairs and read or watch a little TV. I try to relax and not obsess about the time and not sleeping, because that only makes it harder to get back to sleep. But then I look up and hours have gone by. Time I don’t remember. Time that isn’t measured by pages read or TV movies watched. I can’t account for it.”
Jane focused on keeping her face neutral, interested. Not alarmed or surprised. “Is it possible you’re dozing off?” Jane had reached an age where dozing off on the couch late at night was a distinct possibility. Or any time, really.
Megan shook her head. “I don’t think so. If I was asleep, wouldn’t I be conscious of waking?”
Would she be? Jane tried to think if she was conscious of waking every day. “And when this time has passed, what do you do?” she asked gently.
“I go back to bed and sleep until my alarm goes off.” Megan paused. “Early. Way too early. I’m always exhausted.”
Could sleeplessness alone account for Megan’s symptoms? Jane wasn’t sure. “Is this every night?”
“No, not quite every night, but almost. I’m always relieved when I have a night when I sleep through.”
“Did you speak to your doctor about your sleep problems?”
“I did. She prescribed something. I haven’t picked it up at the pharmacy yet. I’m wary of taking it. The medication comes with a lot of side effects. I need to be sharp at work. I can’t be walking around like a zombie.”
Jane let that go. Surely losing several hours of sleep almost every night wasn’t helping her mental acuity either. “And the forgetting things?”
“I’ll be certain I had put the security alarm on when I went up to bed, but I’ll check my phone before I go to sleep and the system isn’t activated. Or I’ll be sure I closed the garage door, but when I come downstairs on these wakeful nights, it will be wide open.”
“That kind of memory lapse sounds pretty normal to me.”
“It’s not like me.”
Jane tried to think if she had ever noticed Megan’s garage door open during the day. It was the kind of thing, if it happened frequently, that would have been remarked on in the neighborhood. She decided she had not.
“I noticed the bowls beside the kitchen island,” Jane said. “You have a pet.”
“Wembly, a marmalade cat,” Megan confirmed. “He’s around inside somewhere. He’s a big guy, but shy. He doesn’t like it when I have other people in the house. Luckily for him, I rarely do. I’m not home enough to do much entertaining.”
Jane wished Wembly had been a dog, more sensitive to intruders, more communicative about changes in the environment. “How does Wembly react when these things occur, like the voices?”
Megan shrugged. “He likes it when I’m up during the night. He loves to sit with me on the couch.”
“The feeling you’re being stalked or followed, when did that start?” Jane prompted.
“More recently. Maybe three or four months ago.” Megan looked at the tabletop. Her long brown hair hung down on either side of her face.
“Have you noticed someone lurking outside or following as you walk?”
Megan smiled and made a noise that was almost a laugh, perhaps at herself. “No, nothing like that. No faces peering in the windows. It’s more a feeling of being watched that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”
Jane thought losing several hours of sleep multiple nights in a row might explain Megan’s paranoia. On the other hand . . . “Let’s try this,” she said. “If someone were stalking you, who would it be?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“You’re a lawyer. A disgruntled client perhaps?” Jane suggested.
Megan actually did laugh this time, a big full-throated guffaw. “I’m a real estate lawyer, not a criminal lawyer or even in civil litigation. My clients do sometimes act as if their transactions are life-and-death matters, but believe me, they’re not. It’s land deals, building sales and purchases, zoning, planning, and historical commission approvals.”
“And none of these life-or-death matters have resulted in interactions with anyone you’d suspect?”
“No.” Megan shook her head. “I’m sure of it.”
“How about other people in your life? There was a young man who helped you move in. I noticed him carrying boxes from your truck.”
That Megan had bought all the staging furniture in the house explained the smallish rental truck she’d turned up with on that cool gray day early in November. There’d been a lot of speculation about the new owner around the neighborhood. Jane had watched the handsome man and pretty woman in their midthirties carry boxes into the house. She’d assumed they were a couple and had been mildly baffled when he’d disappeared from the scene.
“That was Ben. My ex. We were together for twelve years starting in law school and lived together for the last five until I moved here. But it didn’t work out. He wasn’t ready to make more of a commitment to a shared life, and I was unwilling to wait. This house”—Megan gestured through the patio doors to the inside—“is my statement that I’m unwilling to wait to get the life I want. Certainly, I’m unwilling to wait for a man.”
Megan’s statement did explain the four-bedroom house on a quiet street. The house was aspirational, a statement about the life Megan planned.
“Exes have been known to stalk,” Jane ventured.
Megan didn’t hesitate. “Not Ben. He’s the most laid-back, practical guy you’ll ever meet. We parted friends. We wanted different things. But it wasn’t ugly. That’s why he helped me move.”
“And there’s no one else? No one you can think of who might want to pursue you or hurt you?”
Megan’s brow furrowed. Double lines too deep for someone her age appeared over the upturned nose. “Well, maybe one.” She paused, taking her time, gathering her words. Then she blew air out in one quick puff and continued. “A few months ago, I went on an online date. Ben and I were broken up, and I was feeling the need to get back out there.”
“Online dating can work very well,” Jane said. “That’s how I met my . . .” She hesitated. Boyfriend was such a ridiculous word at her age. “Person,” she finished. Though both she and Harry had thought they were meeting someone else at the time.
“Then you had better luck than I did,” Megan said. “I met this guy for coffee at Peet’s in Harvard Square. Just coffee. I wasn’t impressed, but I guess he was, because he was really aggressive, pressing me to go on a real date, a weekend away, a honeymoon.” Megan picked up her wineglass and drank. It was the first sip she’d taken since they’d sat down. “That last is an exaggeration, but barely. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
“How long ago was this?”
Megan cast her gray eyes heavenward and squinched up her pert nose, trying to remember. “January. It was a New Year’s resolution to get out there more. The resolution lasted for exactly one date.” She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her dress and scrolled through her calendar. “Here it is. January twelfth.”
“Have you heard from him since?”
“He contacted me through the dating app a couple of times. I didn’t respond.” Despite the warm fall evening, Megan wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. “He was awful.”
“And what was his name?” Jane asked.
“Howard. Howard Berg. Borg.” She shuddered again. “Ugh.”
Jane took the red notebook out of her handbag and wrote down the name, getting Megan to spell it for her. It seemed as good a place to start as any. “There’s something else I need from you,” she said. “Have you told anyone besides me about your concerns?”
“Absolutely not. I don’t want people to think I’m crazy. That’s why I came to you for help. I want someone who hasn’t been part of my life.”
“Good,” Jane replied. “I need the name of a friend, a very good friend you trust completely. Someone who’s known you for a long time and who will give me an honest assessment of you and whether you’ve changed over the past several months.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Yes,” Jane answered. “Who better to assess us than our friends.”
“What will you tell this person about why you’re talking to them?”
“I’ll tell them whatever you would like, within limits. You’re going to call to say I’ll be setting up a meeting, so you can give the reason.”
Megan thought for another few moments, the crease in her brow appearing again. “Talk to my friend Andy Bromfield. We went to law school together and we’ve shared an office at our law firm for seven years. No one has seen me through more ups and downs. I’ll call him and tell him who you are and why you want to talk to him. I’ll figure out what to tell him.”
Jane had finished her wine, but Megan had only had the one sip. Megan grabbed her nearly full glass and led them inside, where they left the glasses on the countertop by the sink. Behind them was a desk built into the kitchen cabinetry, with a fancy, covered bulletin board at eye level for someone seated and a blackboard above that.
“What’s your cell number?” Megan asked.
Jane rattled off the familiar numbers. Megan wrote Jane’s full name and cell number on the blackboard in a large flowing script. A poster tacked on the wall next to the bulletin board was covered with photos and words cut from magazines. “Visualize success!” the poster proclaimed. There were photos of adorable babies, tropical islands, cats, and kittens.
“What’s your number?” Jane asked.
Megan took a business card from a receptacle on the desk, scribbled on it, and handed it to Jane. MEGAN LARSEN, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. BOOKERMAN, DIGBY, AND EADE. Under her name was an address, a landline number and extension, a cell number, and an e-mail address. In her flowing handwriting, Megan had added Andy Bromfield’s name and cell number.
Jane thanked her, and Megan let her out through the garage. Jane waved from the sidewalk as Megan lowered the door, clackety-clackety-clack.