Page 28 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

As though it had transformed into a centipede between my fingers, I dropped the card and it landed on the desk.

Rather than being a message of love from Noah or Aidan, it was a secret third thing.

I could feel dread creeping up my throat, wrapping itself tightly around my airways until I could hardly breathe.

I’d gone through a lot since my birthday dinner, when my best friend and my fiancé announced that they were sleeping together, and seeing this card was like spilling an expensive latte when I was already having a bad day.

While it might have been manageable during ordinary times, it was a death blow to me in my vulnerable state.

It brought me back to my teenage years, when I’d been isolated and alone, separate from my parents and ostracized by my peers.

I’d done everything I could to escape, but somehow I hadn’t gotten anywhere.

I experienced all kinds of torment after my parents were arrested.

My father was long estranged from his family, and my mother’s parents had died in a house fire when she was in her twenties, which left only my aunt to care for me.

My aunt worked for the DMV, and she had the demeanor of someone who dealt with angry, impatient people all day long and had no patience reserved for the rest of her life.

She owned a modest house that she’d once shared with her ex-husband and then resided in alone until I moved in with her.

To establish my bedroom, we had to move all her junk into the garage.

At the time, I didn’t see the way that my aunt suffered.

She’d deliberately decided not to have children, and she enjoyed a mundane existence of going to work, returning home, and eating dinner in front of the television.

Though we’d lived in the same area my entire life, I’d seen her on only a couple of occasions, as she and my mother weren’t close.

My aunt rarely spoke of her sister, except to make vague references to how difficult it had been growing up together.

“You look just like her,” she told me the day that I arrived.

Though adults usually had a better sense of decorum than children, she likely suffered some of the same kinds of nosy glances that I did from people who knew who her sister was.

However, my aunt had the advantage of having a different last name than my parents, as my mother had changed her name after getting married, which meant that strangers couldn’t make the connection. I wasn’t so lucky.

Everyone at school knew immediately. People might assume that fifth graders were too young to know about serial killers, and they would be wrong.

In my experience, people of all ages were obsessed with what my parents had done.

The story had it all! Love! Sex! Murder!

Beautiful victims! They were exhilarated by it.

Meanwhile, I was trying to adjust to the smell of my aunt’s laundry detergent.

My parents had never made me do homework or go to bed at a particular hour, and my aunt was insistent on both.

This was the first time I’d had a parental figure suggest that I might not be a beautiful genius, and that I needed to follow the rules.

The girls I had longed to befriend were suddenly paying attention to me, in the worst of ways.

“My mom said I’m not allowed to talk to you,” they told me.

They placed “kick me” signs on my back, wrote about me in their burn books, and dared boys to ask me to dance. In middle school someone vandalized my locker with red handprints, and in lieu of finding the culprit, the principal gave me a suspension.

I didn’t tattle on the bullies, not to my aunt, my teachers—who certainly knew about some of what was happening—or the principal, because I wasn’t a weenie.

I figured out how to be happy on my own.

I started stealing my bullies’ wallets when they left their purses unattended, and I used the funds to buy a television and DVD player for my bedroom.

I bought all the movies that my mother and I used to watch together.

I became involved in the lives of fictional characters, who were better friends than anyone in real life could ever be.

In high school, I got a fake ID and began wooing men in bars. They affirmed what I already knew to be true: I was beautiful, smart, and funny. The sole reason that my peers didn’t like me was what my parents had done.

My junior year, other students tried to Carrie me by nominating me for prom queen.

When the names were announced, I watched their heads swivel in my direction as though they were expecting some kind of joyful reaction.

These fucking idiots, I’d thought. Don’t they know that I spend all my time watching movies?

Needless to say, I didn’t show up for the prom.

Later, I heard that I’d lost the title to Katie Franzen, one of my primary tormentors.

Things became really dire when I started dating Josh, a man fifteen years my senior.

He gave me all the usual lines: You’re so mature for your age, blah, blah, blah.

I bought them because I knew I was mature for my age.

I’d heard people die, seen body parts scattered about the house.

I hadn’t seen my parents in six years. I’d gone through worse than most people experienced in their entire lives.

I figured out that Josh was obsessed with my parents when he started trying to choke me when we were having sex.

I played it cool for a couple of minutes, because that was what girls were supposed to do.

We were supposed to go along with whatever men wanted, lest we be viewed as hysterical.

Then my airways started to feel seriously constricted, and I was grateful that Josh was one of those thin, malnourished men, because it meant I managed to push him off of me and gasp, “What the fuck!” Josh’s response was to ask if there was a way he could meet my father.

That was when I realized that, in addition to being a social outcast, I was in physical danger due to my link with my parents.

When it came time to apply to colleges, I applied only to schools in other regions of the country, and on my eighteenth birthday I promptly changed my last name.

I left for school thinking that I was finally safe.

Unbeknownst to me, Josh had published a picture of me online.

It was of poor quality, grainy and dark, but it was good enough that people—men—occasionally recognized me.

For several years I dyed my hair blond and did everything I could to distance myself from my former appearance.

When I was in my twenties I figured I looked different enough from the image that Josh had circulated to let my hair grow out to its natural brown.

It was so freeing to become an autonomous adult. There were still nights when I woke up and thought that I heard the sounds of death in another room. When Noah lived with me I’d snuggle up next to him and listen to his breathing.

“I like it when you do that,” he told me. “It’s a reminder of how much you love me.”

I didn’t say that for me it was a reminder that I was away from my serial killer parents, the girls who had tormented me in high school, and the men who wanted to have sex with me because they idolized a murderer.

I’d crafted an entire life for myself, one in which I had a normal fiancé, a monthly mortgage payment, and a steady job.

Now all of it was falling apart. My fiancé was missing, an organ had been delivered to my door, and I’d received threats at my workplace.

All of that combined seemed like a plot to destabilize me completely.

I was still trying to process what the card said when the door to my office burst open and a man rushed in. I flipped through my mental Rolodex of men and tried to put together what was happening— Noah? No. Aidan?

Wait a minute.

“Paul?”

It had been a couple of months since I’d seen Paul in person, as we did most of our communicating over email.

He looked bad. His breath reeked of liquor, and he wore a T-shirt that was streaked with stains that were just as likely blood as ketchup.

It had been only a few days since his date with Rebecca, during which she’d commented on his handsomeness. What had happened in the meantime?

The receptionist hurried after him.

“I’m so sorry. I tried to stop him. He said that it’s important to talk with you right away.”

Paul was gasping like he’d sprinted to the office.

I glanced at his feet and noticed he wasn’t wearing shoes.

His toes were a deathly kind of white, probably due to the chill outside.

Dirt marred the floor behind him. I grabbed the letter opener off my desk and held it in my hand as a weak form of protection.

It wasn’t optimal, but I would do what I needed to in order to survive.

“You have to set me up on another date with Rebecca,” he said.

I stifled a laugh. That’s what this was about?

I’d gotten so deep in paranoia that I was convinced that he was there to kill me.

It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t have to.

My parents didn’t kill women because they were vigilantes or they followed a creed.

They did it because they wanted to. That was all the reason they needed.

Paul wasn’t that kind of crazy though. He was a more common kind of crazy—he was in love.

“Why don’t you sit down, Paul?” I suggested calmly.

“I don’t want to sit down,” he replied. “I need to see her again. I can’t stop thinking about her. She won’t reply to my calls or texts. Can you give me her address?”