“That was a blast from the past, eh?” Heath said.
They’d cleared the dinner plates and were sitting on the windowed porch overlooking the woods, the ones Romy had used to sneak down to the country club pool. After that night, it made her supremely uncomfortable to look at them, yet here she was, glass of wine in hand, admiring them as if they were nothing but a serene and bucolic tableau.
“You mean Mr. Sands?”
“Yeah. Misty was taking his summer class when I met her. Well, I’d known who she was, had seen her around… but I mean, when we…” He trailed off, tipping a bottle of ale up to his mouth.
Romy was silent and averted her eyes from the woods, pretending to be inspecting scuffs on the porch’s wood-planked floor.
“She didn’t like school much, you know,” he continued. “Neither did I. But she liked art class. Wait, were you in it with her?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she said, intensifying her floor inspection. “Not the summer class but my freshman year. I should try to shine this floor up. Do some work while we’re here.”
“Sure, I could help.” He paused. “Sorry, Romy, does it bother you when I mention her?”
“No, no, not at all. I wasn’t sure…”
“It’s that you’re the only person I still talk to who knew her. My parents hardly paid attention to her. We didn’t date for long. I don’t keep in touch with anyone from school.”
“No, it’s fine.” She straightened back up, sipping at her wine. “I hadn’t thought about how we might run into people from high school while we’re here.”
“Neither had I. I left right after it happened. To D.C. My parents thought I might want to stay, put off school for a semester or a year. But I couldn’t be here. I barely came home for the holidays.” He laughed a little. “I tell you, nothing but something as lunatic as a killer virus would have made me come back. That and I’d heard Misty’s parents moved. They never spoke to me again after it happened, and I can’t blame them.” He looked at her. “But I’m actually enjoying it here. Thanks to you.”
He held up his bottle in a cheers gesture. Mack snorted awake from his nap, looking at them expectedly.
“I’ll take him this time,” said Romy.
She couldn’t sleep and was scared to look at the time because it would confirm how long she’d been unable to sleep, and the anxiety of this would make it even more impossible to sleep.
What had made her think she could stay in this house? Sleep in her grandmother’s old bed? Maybe she should move to the couch. But what would Heath think if he saw that? He’d wonder why she didn’t sleep in her old bedroom.
She got up and wandered down the dark hallway. Mack, who was snoozing on a ratty, orphaned old couch pillow she’d retrieved from the basement for him, stirred, and seeing it was her and not an intruder, put his big nose back on his chunky paws.
“Wanna go for a walk, Mack?” she stage-whispered, not wanting to wake Heath.
Romy put on a jacket—it was at least ten degrees colder than in the city—and went outside with Mack. The air smelled so fresh. The stars were so twinkly and bright, the sky so velvet dark. It was so quiet. None of the keening wall of sirens she’d heard in the city.
But she worried for everyone there.
As she worked from home, she’d never made close friends other than Suzie, who was also away but she still loved her city and its people. The guy at the deli counter who always said, “Coffee?” with a big smile. The woman she always saw sitting on her stoop with a small, blind white dog. Her postman, whose name was Charlie. They would chat while he put everyone’s mail into the metal boxes. He needed to go into dozens of buildings a day. Was the surface of the mail itself crawling with the virus?
Would they all end up like her neighbor? And… Bill. She looked down at Mack, who was intensely sniffing at what was probably a gopher hole.
Would Bill make it out of the hospital? And what if he didn’t—had she adopted a dog?
Suddenly, Mack’s nose sprang up from the gopher hole and he stood rigidly staring off past the dark mass of trees lining the side of the house. He must have heard a critter. The country must be a sensory jubilee for a city dog like Mack.
“Come on, Mack,” she said, pulling on his leash. Her plan was to walk around the edge of the property. Ironically, she felt safer in the city, with its hordes of people and bright lights, than she did out here in the quiet, dark country.
She needed time to readjust to its stillness and darkness. There were only a few streetlights on her street, one of which happened to be in front of the house but walk in one direction or the other and you walked straight into a black abyss.
She took Mack about fifty feet, then he stopped again, muscles tensing, snout directed towards the woods. This time, he emitted an unmistakable low growl. She watched, somewhat amused—no doubt he was growling at what was probably a deer frozen in terror somewhere beyond the tree line. But she noticed her body flushed with tingles of fear.
Mack began barking, loudly and aggressively. Worried he would wake up Heath, she wanted to shush him but fear paralyzed her vocal cords. She pulled on his leash, intending to go back inside, but he started to yank in the opposite direction.
He was strong and dragged her at least twenty feet, barking more loudly—a dark-timbred, surly and threatening bark, not the one she’d heard when she’d stood outside Bill’s door. It wasn’t a bark that said, I’m hungry. It was a bark that said, I’ll hurt you.
“Mack, Mack, come on!” She dug her heels into the ground and, realizing she needed to seize control or he was going to seize it from her, commanded, sharply, “Mack!” in a voice that told him she was done fooling around. She was the boss here.
He stopped, sniffed several more times, then looked up at her as if nothing had happened. Whatever was out in the woods had either darted off or Mack had grown bored with it.