I’ve been here too long. The longer I stay, the more likely it is that someone will see me.
But I have to do this now—it could be my only chance.
Mark clicks the car seat into the base in the back of the car, and Anna slides into the adjacent seat. Mark closes the car door. He stands for a second with his palms flat on the roof of the car. Like that, he’s concealed from Anna, but I can see the anxiety on his face. Is he worried about Anna? The baby? Or something else?
He walks back to the side of the house, where Robert is lingering, pretending to move some pots about. I feel panic building inside me, even though he can’t touch me, can’t even see me. The two men talk in low tones through the railings, and I wonder if Anna can hear the same snippets I do.
“. . . still grieving . . . very difficult . . . a touch of postnatal depression . . .”
I wait.
Mark drives away. Robert abandons his plant pots and goes back inside.
And then it’s time.
A single breath later I’m through the locked door and standing in the hall. Instantly I’m overwhelmed with sensation, assaulted by memories I never imagined would have lingered.
Painting the baseboards, kneeling awkwardly over my growing bump. Piling duvets on the stairs for a pint-sized Anna to sledge down, you egging her on, me with my fingers over my eyes.
Playing happy families. Hiding how we really felt.
How easily life changes. How easily happiness disintegrates.
The drinking. The shouting. The fights.
I kept it from Anna. I could at least do that for her.
I check myself. The time for being maudlin is long gone; too late now to dwell on the past.
I move quickly and silently through the house, my touch featherlight. I leave no mess, no prints. No trace. I want to see the papers Anna put to one side. My appointment book. The photographs that tell a story only when you know the way it ends. I look for the key that will tell everyone why I had to die.
I find nothing.
In the study, I work my way efficiently through the drawers. I ignore the stab of nostalgia that pierces deeper with each trinket and notebook I pick up. You can’t take it with you; that’s what they say. I remember an old school project of Anna’s on the grave goods selected by ancient Egyptians, designed to smooth the deceased’s passage to the afterlife. Anna spent weeks on a painting of a sarcophagus, surrounded by carefully drawn images of her own precious belongings. Her iPod. Salt-and-vinegar crisps—six packets. Portraits she’d drawn of you and me. A favorite scarf, in case she got cold. I smile at the memory and consider what I would have taken, had it been possible; what would have made my afterlife more bearable.
There is no key. Not in any of the bags dotted about downstairs, or in the drawer of the dresser in the hall where everything accumulates when it doesn’t have a home.
What has Anna done with it?