SHE OPENED THE door. Her legs threatened to fall under her, collapse like stacked cards, but she took a long breath in through her nose, exhaled through her mouth, four counts, four times, then she straightened herself up and stepped in.
The faces looked at her from a dozen different angles, a dozen photos, on the walls and piled in boxes.
And in an instant she was back in the nightmare, in that fire with Paul. The close air of the room was the burning fuel oil dripping over her body, flames twining red and yellow, and the hitch in her chest was a joist, forcing the air out of her lungs. She closed her eyes.
And then she was in her childhood home in Singapore, paralyzed with fear, as she heard her mother cry out and the crack of the belt.
Open your fucking eyes, Claire. The only monster is you. The only one hurting anyone is you. They’re dead and no one is here.
The carpet felt like sponge under her first unsteady step. She opened her eyes and took four more deep breaths.
She picked up a photo from their wedding day, a candid of her fixing Paul’s collar. Then she lifted a faded shot of her mother, pregnant with her, twisting the spiral cord of a telephone around her finger. Claire ran her thumb over the cool gloss finish of the print and studied her mother’s face.
No one reached for her. No one cried out, Why did you let me die?
She was just alone, in a home that she felt nothing for, with salt tears running down her face.
Eeee.
Hallway floorboard. A long nail. She knew that noise. The house wasn’t settling. She wasn’t alone. The training saved her. She shot across the room.
The photo fell to the ground as she drew her pistol to her chest and hauled open the door. She moved as if on invisible rails through the dark.
Whoever was in here was moving just as fast, must have had night-vision on, the way he was navigating through the house.
She closed on the thudding footfalls, heard the sound of the bedroom door ahead of her creak open, then shut. As the lock rattled, she threw her shoulder into it and blew the frame out in splinters.
A black figure turned, silhouetted by the window, almost beside her, in too close for shots.
“Claire, no.” But the gun was already driving toward his temple. She pistol-whipped him and landed with her full weight on his chest as he slumped to the ground.
She gathered a fistful of the man’s shirt and pulled the body toward the light. She kept the pistol trained on his eye, an easy kill. Blood dripped from his temple across his face, onto the carpet. She smeared it away.
Her hand tightened on the grip of her pistol as her teeth buried in her lower lip and her eyes grew wide with shock. No. That body was burned and buried.
Her whole arm trembled. She let him fall back and brought her left hand to the pistol to steady it.
“Claire,” the man said.
She moved closer to him. The blood smelled like cast iron. There was no mistaking that face.
“Paul?”