UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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31

It was clear now to Charlotte that Frank was hiding something from her. Hiding everything, perhaps. About Ed, about himself. But a different realization—he wasn’t listening to her, he’d stopped listening to her—made her heart grow even heavier.

“I left Oklahoma so that I could make a new life for myself and the girls,” she said. “I have to do that on my own. I want to do that on my own.”

“Just think about it,” he said. “Give me a chance. We love each other. Nothing else matters.”

He kissed her. She kissed him back.

“Will you think about it?” he said. “Yes?”

Charlotte nodded. “Yes.”

She did love him, she supposed. But at this point in her life, so much else mattered, too. So much else mattered more. He would have understood that, if only he’d been listening.

“Good-bye, Frank,” she said.

“I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

The door closed behind him. Charlotte took a seat on the bed to wait. The cream-colored chenille spread was patterned with rosebuds. She counted them one by one. When she reached fifty, when she’d given Frank enough time to take the elevator down and walk to his car, when she was sure that he wouldn’t return for forgotten car keys or wallet, she stood and crossed the hall.

She left the light in her room off—the glow from the miniature-golf course would have to do—and slid open the dresser drawers as quietly as possible.

The girls would be indignant. They always insisted on packing their own suitcases and placed great importance on what went where, in which order, exactly. But Charlotte didn’t want to wake them yet, not until everything was ready. Rosemary would have too many questions. Charlotte would have to stop and explain to her why they were leaving now, why Frank wasn’t coming with them, why they needed to hurry, hurry, hurry. Charlotte had only an hour until Frank returned. She didn’t want to say good-bye to him twice.

Get in the cab, girls, hurry, hurry, hurry. I’ll explain everything once we’re on the bus.

Was there a late-evening bus to Los Angeles? Yes, surely there was. If not, Charlotte would cross that bridge when she came to it.

Would the girls ask why Frank hadn’t said good-bye to them? Oh, yes, surely they would. Charlotte had no idea yet what she’d tell them. She’d cross that bridge later, too.

One of Joan’s shoes was missing. Charlotte got down on her knees and felt around beneath the bed. The dog padded over and pressed his cold nose against the side of her neck.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered to him. “I haven’t forgotten you.”

The dog flopped down next to her and heaved a skeptical sigh.

“They won’t keep you off the bus,” she told him. “I won’t let them.”

Charlotte felt .  .  . good. Bright-edged and clearheaded and optimistic. It was only a bit more than a week ago that she’d sat numb and exhausted at the dining-room table as Dooley carved the Sunday roast. Only a bit more than a week ago that the prospect of yet another day of this—her life, in her skin—had made her want to curl into a ball and never move again.

Now, even though she knew that there were trials were yet to come, she couldn’t wait for tomorrow. She couldn’t wait to see what it might bring.

Joan’s missing shoe finally revealed itself, wedged between the wastebasket and a leg of the desk. Climbing to her feet, Charlotte saw an envelope on the desk. She’d almost missed it in the dim light. Inside the envelope were the prints from the roll of film she’d entrusted to Gigi.

Charlotte shuffled through the stack. The shot from the miniature-golf course had turned out rather nice, though not quite the way she’d expected. The shutter had lagged a bit, spilling the shadows from the windmill onto Frank and the girls. But the extra split second had given Rosemary’s pirouette an extra inch of lift and thrown Joan’s golf ball into stark white relief and caught Frank at the very beginning of a smile.

She stuffed the photos into her purse and finished packing. She checked to make sure that the girls were still asleep. Their day at the lake had knocked the stuffing out of them, and they hadn’t stirred. It would be a struggle to wake and dress them, but Charlotte had time.

Back across the hall in Frank’s room, she found a pen and a sheet of hotel stationery. She didn’t know what to put in the note. What more was there to say? Already he was beginning to transform in her mind, changing from a real person to a fond memory. A memory that would grow perhaps even fonder over time, but also less real.

She considered giving the photo to him, the one from the miniature-golf course. It was the best of the batch, though, so she decided to keep it for herself.

When she opened the door to leave, she was surprised to find a man standing there. He’d been about to knock, she assumed, though his arms were at his sides.

“Oh,” she said. “Hello.”

“I’m with the hotel,” the man said.

“Is there a problem?”

“Back inside.”

Her sudden panicked thought: a fire, the girls, why had she not heard the alarm? She had to go to them, she had to go to them now. “My daughters. I need to—”

“Back inside,” the man said. He took a step forward, and Charlotte had to take a step backward and before she realized what was happening, the man had closed the door behind him, he’d locked it.

He was chalky, sweating, a fringe of dark hair damp and jagged against his forehead. His suit looked as if he’d slept in it.

He didn’t work for the hotel. His eyes moved around the room. His right hand was bandaged, from the wrist to the tips of the fingers. She hadn’t noticed that before. In his left hand, he held a gun. Where had the gun come from? She hadn’t noticed it either.

She felt dizzy. Maybe, maybe this man did work for the hotel. Hotel security. Maybe .  .  .

“Where is he?” the man said.

“This isn’t my room,” Charlotte said.

“Where is he?”

“He’s not here. He went to visit a friend.”

“Sit down. The bed.”

If she screamed, the girls might wake. They might come running. They knew where she was. Every night when she’d tucked them in, she’d made sure that they understood. I’m just across the hall. I’ll be back by ten. If you need anything, anything at all, come and get me.

If she screamed and the man fired his gun at her, the girls would hear the shot and come running. He would shoot them, too.

The girls, the girls, the girls. Charlotte’s brain stammered and stalled. The girls, the girls, the girls—she could think of nothing else. Whatever happened, whatever she did or did not do, whatever this man did or did not do to her, she had to keep him away from Rosemary and Joan.

She’d been so stupid. This was about Frank. No, it was about the man she’d thought was Frank. How could she have been so stupid? Her hands were shaking. She clenched them and pressed her fists flat against the chenille bedspread, the patterned rosebuds.

“When will he be back?” the man said.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “In about forty-five minutes, I think.”

The man peeked into the bathroom, into the closet. He pulled the drapes shut. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

His voice, quiet and conversational, should have calmed her. It didn’t. He pulled the chair away from the desk and took a seat by the door. He used his bandaged hand to swab the sweat from his temple, his forehead.

He was Frank’s age. Shorter, slighter, just .  .  . ordinary. That was really the only way Charlotte could think to describe him. If not for the pallor, he might have been just any one of a dozen men—clerks and waiters and fellow guests—she’d encountered at the hotel. Eyes, a nose, a mouth. She waited for him to blink as he looked around the room one more time, but he didn’t.

He crossed his legs. He draped the arm with the bandaged hand over the back of the chair. He rested the gun on his knee, the barrel angled casually at a spot a few feet to her left.

He wasn’t nervous. Why was he sweating? He wasn’t drunk either.

“You understand what happens if you give me any trouble?” he said.

She forced herself to ignore the gun. She concentrated on the nodding toe of his black oxford. The girls, the girls, the girls. What if Rosemary had one of her nightmares and could not be consoled? Joan knew what to do. Let’s go get Mommy. What if Joan woke with a tummyache? Rosemary knew what to do. Let’s go get Mommy. She’s just across the hall.

A soft, tentative knock on the door. Any minute now. The man would turn. Charlotte would scream as loud as she could. Run! She’d throw herself at the man and grab for his gun and keep screaming. Run!

Would they? Would the girls run? Almost every decision that Rosemary and Joan made together required much discussion. How many times had she come across them whispering, their heads together, deliberating like a pair of lawyers in the courtroom? Charlotte’s scream might blast them into action, or it might freeze them in place.

She wouldn’t live long enough to find out which. She would die without knowing if they were safe or not.

“You understand what happens if you give me any trouble?” the man said again.

She looked up at him. “Let me go,” she said. “Please. I’m leaving. I’ve already packed my bags. Whatever it is, whatever you want with Frank or with Ed, I don’t have anything to do with it. I .  .  . I don’t care.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.” But the man said it only after a pause, as if he were an actor prodded from offstage to deliver a line required of him.

“Please,” she said. “Let me go.”

His shoulders sagged. His eyes softened. What was happening to him? One time Charlotte had taken a chocolate cake from the oven too soon, an early poor effort, and watched it slump in on itself before her eyes.

The man managed to steady himself. He straightened back up. He didn’t drop the gun.

“Ted?” he said.

“No,” she said. “His name is Ed. I don’t know his last name. He’s Frank’s friend.”

A shiver rippled through the man. Rippled away. Color, a little, returned to his cheeks and his lips.

“You’re ill,” Charlotte said. “You have a fever.”

“I’ve been worse,” he said.

“My name is Charlotte. What’s your name?”

She knew that it was hopeless. He looked at her the same way he looked at the goosenecked lamp on the desk or the glass ashtray on the nightstand or the blank wall behind her.

“If anyone asks me,” she said, “I’ll swear that I never saw you.”

“Shut up,” he said.

“Would you like me to bring you a glass of water?”

What could she do? The girls, the girls, the girls. The knock on the door, any second now. What would happen when Frank returned?

“Where are your kids?” he said.

Now the shiver rippled through her. He could read her mind. No. She remembered that she’d told him about the girls, even before he entered the room. So stupid. She’d been so stupid from the beginning.

“I said where are your kids?”

“Downstairs,” Charlotte said. “In the nursery.”

“The nursery’s closed.”

He didn’t know if the nursery was closed or not. But Charlotte realized it too late. He caught her initial hesitation.

“Are they next door?” he said. “Across the hall?”

“What happened to your hand? I have aspirin in my purse.” Anything to change the subject. “Is Frank Wainwright his real name? He told me that he sold insurance in New York. I’m so stupid.”

The man uncrossed his legs and planted his black oxfords on the carpet. He braced his elbow against the back of the chair but managed to lift himself only a few inches before he sank down again. Charlotte thought he might set his gun on the floor or the dresser, so that he could use his good hand to pull himself up. He didn’t, though, and when he tried a second time to stand, he succeeded.

“Toss it here,” he said.

“What?” she said.

“The aspirin.”

She unsnapped her purse. The stack of photos, an emery board, a box of matches, her compact and lipstick, a room key attached to a diamond-shaped plastic tag. Nothing that Charlotte could use as a weapon. A stick of gum. Rosemary’s beloved Rickshaw Racer, a snap-together toy from a box of Rice Krinkles.

“Toss it here,” he said.

He caught the bottle between his bandaged hand and his chest. He unscrewed the lid with his teeth. He shook tablets into his mouth and chewed them.

“I can bring you a glass of water,” he said.

“Let’s go see your kids.”

He might have said something else, too, but Charlotte didn’t hear it. For a moment she went deaf. Just a thin, whining buzz in her ears, growing louder and louder, the steam pressure building and building. How long, after your heart had stopped beating, could you stay alive?

“No,” she said.

“Take me to your room,” he said. “We’re going to wait for Frank there.”

“We can wait here.”

“Don’t you want to be with your kids?”

He was going to murder her and the girls. Charlotte knew that without a doubt. She could see it. Could see the gleam of porcelain and tile and mirrored glass. Rosemary’s lifeless body in the bathtub. Joan’s lifeless body nestled against her. Two peas in a pod. The plastic shower curtain torn from its rings. Charlotte’s own lifeless body on the floor. The sink faucet running and a man’s hand cupping the water.

Charlotte saw exactly what the man with the gun saw. It was as if the two of them stood side by side at a window, gazing out together at the future they would share.

“Get up,” he said.

“No,” Charlotte said.

He lifted the gun and pointed it at her. She panicked. She came apart at the seams. The girls, the girls, the girls. And yet, at the same time, something more powerful than panic held her still, calmed her mind, emptied it of every fear, every dread, every distraction.

Let him shoot her. The girls would hear the gunshot, but so would the other people in this wing of the hotel. Someone would call the front desk, the police. The man would have to flee. He knew that. That was why he didn’t want to shoot her. He wanted to take her across the hall and keep everything quiet. He expected Charlotte to keep the girls quiet for him. Shhh, he expected her to tell them. It’s all right, he’s not going to hurt us.

“Get up now,” he said.

She knew that he would shoot her. She didn’t care. Charlotte saw him for what he was: a weak man, powerless to move her as long as she refused to budge.

And she could do that. She had not a doubt in her mind.

“How did you hurt your hand?” she said.

“Get up or else,” he said. “I won’t tell you again.”

“Do you have someone?”

“Do I have someone?”

“A wife. A girlfriend. Someone who can take care of your hand.”

He was unsteady on his feet. Sweating, shivering. She watched as it began to happen again—the sag, the swoon, his fever bursting into fresh bloom. He watched, too. They stood side by side at their window and looked into the future together. His eyes glazing, his knees buckling, the gun slipping from his grasp and thudding to the carpet.

“You’re very ill,” she said. “Don’t you think you should sit down again?”

He set the gun on the dresser. And then he was across the room, two startlingly swift strides—he was standing above her, he had his hand around her throat, he’d shoved her backward onto the bed. The weight of him astonished her. A thousand crushing pounds falling from the sky. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to twist away, but that made it worse. Her throat. The steady crushing strength of his fingers astonished her. He’d pinned her shoulders. She couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t move. Her vision started to warp and pulse.

“Shit,” he said. His voice in her ear. She smelled the aspirin on his breath. She smelled the sweet, rotten tang of the dirty bandage. His sweat dripped down and stung her eyes. “Shit.”

Because he’d begun to float. That’s what it felt like. Like he was lifting slowly away from her, all that weight, ounce by ounce, flakes of ashes scattered by the breeze. He struggled to hold on. He shivered, his eyes glazed.

She could move one arm now, just a little. What was she searching for? She didn’t know. His gun, tucked into his waistband. No. He’d left the gun on the dresser. He was too smart.

Ounce by ounce, flake by flake, he lifted away, the pressure on her throat easing. The fever had taken him again. But not far enough, too slowly. She still couldn’t breathe.

Her searching hand was trapped now—tangled in a pocket, the pocket of his suit coat. She touched a smooth wooden handle. She touched a steel shaft attached to the handle, slender as a needle. The sharp tip pricked the pad of her index finger.

She gripped the wooden handle, and then with the rest of the life left in her she thrust the ice pick into his side. Into his stomach? His thigh? Between his ribs? She didn’t know. She didn’t know if he even felt it. His breathing quickened slightly, but that might have been the fever and nothing else.

And then she felt his grip on her neck go slack. He slid off her, turning to recline languidly on his side, head resting on his arm. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead. He might have been a man just waking from a nap, about to open his eyes and yawn, if not for the dark stain spreading out from beneath his belly.

She rolled off the bed and stumbled to her feet. Her throat was on fire. She had to learn how to breathe again. In, out. She was alive. She was fairly sure of that.

She found her purse and closed the door of Frank’s room behind her. At some point, soon, all this would overwhelm her. Whatever black magic that Charlotte was using to keep away the panic, the fear, the horror—soon it would vanish with a thunderclap, and in the flood that came afterward she’d be lost for hours, for days, she’d not be able to remember her own name or put one foot in front of the other.

Soon, but not yet.