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FORTY-TWO

She sinks into her desk chair still upset from her run-in with Tom. What right did he have to show up at her office? She wants desperately to be left alone. To just disappear into her job. She is surprised to find that she is looking forward to work, that it is possibly the only thing she wants to do. She craves the escape of the letters. She wants to dissolve into other people’s worlds, into problems unlike her own, ones that she might actually have a chance of helping people solve.

But despite her best efforts, she can’t focus. Her mind is still circling with thoughts of Howard and Tom and the young girls and the missing knife. Wondering if there is anything she should do, if there is anything that can be done. Absently Alex pulls the next letter from the bin. She doesn’t pay attention to the lack of writing on the front, the absence of any postmark, as she slides the blade of the letter opener through the fold and withdraws the contents. There are two sheets of paper folded together. The first is clean and white, like a fresh piece of printer paper. It holds only two lines of text, printed like the others in the center of the page.

You aren’t taking me seriously. It seems I need to prove to you that I am not joking.

Alex stops breathing as her fingers grope for the second sheet of paper. It is lined, yellowed slightly with age. Alex unfolds it carefully, her fingers weak with fear. Her brain tries to make sense of the handwriting, fast and sloppy across the page. The letter is written with one of those glitter pens young people like to use. The kind used to love.

Dear Constance,

He’ll be back now at any moment. I know that he’ll be angry. I should be leaving. I should be packing my bags and getting out of the apartment, but instead I’m sitting here, paralyzed and replaying the whole thing in my mind. I should have known better than to think I could outsmart him. It’s impossible. I can’t think the way he does. He has his own logic.

And he knows me so well. He has all of my passageways memorized, places I don’t even know myself, dark corners where he can hide and wait for me. You were wrong about him—

Alex can’t believe what she is looking at. She blinks, holding the paper out away from her as if keeping her distance from it will make it less real. She feels like she might throw up. The words aren’t just familiar. They are her own.

The room spins as she puts down the letter she hasn’t seen in eight long years. She tries to absorb the words she’s been running from for most of her adult life. A new terror takes hold of her as she realizes that the letter in her hand is the only one she had never sent.

Who could possibly have gotten hold of a letter abandoned years ago in an apartment halfway across the country? There is only one other person who knows what Alex went through back in Wickfield. Only one other person who was right there through all of it. The one she’s been hiding from all this time. Her body begins to tremble. The letter can only mean one thing. She’s been found.