Page 40 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

I put everything aside for Valentine’s Day.

Several people who didn’t know about our breakup reached out to me about Noah’s disappearance.

This must be so hard for you. It was, but not in any of the ways that they expected.

In a way, it was nice to be a matchmaker on February fourteenth, because it didn’t allow me any time to think about his death.

The lobby had been refurbished. Serena had opted to paint the back wall a cheery pink.

Everyone complimented her on the choice, but it made me think of the fake blood that had been smeared around with the mannequin parts.

My hands still smelled like bleach from the day before. Nothing would ever be clean enough.

The conference room was turned into a “war room,” with multiple people stationed at phones and on computers to process new clients. The clients wouldn’t be matched immediately, but Serena understood that when people signed up on that date, they needed the promise of love at the very least.

Married people, even those who’d had a difficult time landing partners, forgot how much of society was designed to remind people of their loneliness.

Tables in restaurants were set for two. Wedding invites allowed for plus-ones.

There were actors who made entire careers starring in made-for-TV movies about two people falling in love.

During the month of February—a month when seasonal depression was at its deepest—stores were flooded with flowers and chocolate.

I’d thought that it would become easier to cope with Noah’s death, but every sign of romance rubbed it in my face.

You’re alone, hissed the heart-shaped boxes as people walked through stores.

You’re alone, said the marketing emails delivered from every store they’d ever shopped at.

You’re alone, said their parents, their friends, the silence of their phones.

You’re alone, the mirror said when I got up that morning.

In my most despairing moments, I worried that I would never recover. I’d thought of trauma as a cup that, once full, couldn’t hold any more. I’d misjudged; trauma was a limitless pool that expanded to contain whatever filled it.

I threw myself into my work. I matched clients, arranged dates, shoved chalky candy hearts into my mouth until I felt sick.

Each accepted match gave a little rush of dopamine.

I was good. I was kind. I wanted people to be together.

I wasn’t the grim reaper that my parents’ actions had ordained that I would be.

I’d buried the heart because I’d been forced to.

I was only doing what I needed to in order to survive.

What are you doing tonight? I texted Rebecca. I hoped that the two of us could watch a romantic comedy and eat junk food as single women. We couldn’t replicate the times I’d spent with my mother, but she could be something better than my mother—a friend.

Sorry, I’m going out with Tyler. We should hang tomorrow!

I frowned. I hadn’t set up a date for them, and they were still several weeks away from graduating from the program. Rebecca was good at a lot of things, but complying with Better Love’s instructions wasn’t one of them.

Yeah, tomorrow! I replied. I hid my hurt.

I’d been counting on seeing her that night, as I didn’t want to be alone, and my only romantic prospect was with a psychopath who had probably murdered my ex-fiancé.

Matching her with Tyler had been my own downfall.

I was just happy that I’d never tried to pair her with Aidan.

The two of them together would’ve been explosive.

I bought sushi for one on the way home from the Better Love office when it had finally closed for the night. I did a good job of pretending that it was enough. What did I need a man for when I had raw fish?

There was nothing at my doorstep when I arrived home, and nothing waiting inside.

I should’ve felt relief, but somehow it exacerbated my feeling of isolation.

I’d once matched a client who was into taxidermy.

Personally, I found the practice disgusting, and before I set up her first match, I confirmed that the animals she stuffed had died of natural causes.

However, those pieces of Noah were all that I had left of him, and they helped me understand the impulse to dress up something dead until it looked alive again.

As gruesome as they were, they were a continuation of our story.

One way of looking at the spot in the woods where I’d left them was as a dumping ground for remains; another way of looking at it was as a shrine.

My empty doorstep was an indicator that not only had I lost Noah, but the person who killed him was busy that night.

I was left behind, forever the forgotten child.

Hoping that it would relax my nervous system, I put on a romantic comedy that I’d seen dozens of times before. Based on the number of pieces of sushi that slipped out from between my wooden chopsticks, it was doing a poor job.

I dropped the chopsticks on the floor when my phone buzzed.

In theory, smartphones made socializing easier.

In lived experience, however, they did so only for people who were already sociable.

For everyone else, their stillness emphasized how little anyone cared to contact them.

That hadn’t been a problem when I was friends with Molly, because she was needy and texted me constantly, even when she was at work.

While Rebecca and I messaged each other frequently, it wasn’t in the same rapid succession as with Molly.

When Rebecca was in a room with someone, she liked to look at their face instead of the glowing rectangle in her hand.

Because Rebecca was on a date with Tyler, I knew that she hadn’t caused the buzz, and the possibility of an unexpected text excited me more than I cared to admit. Maybe someone had reached out to confess their love on Valentine’s Day.

I looked at the screen. The message was from a number that I didn’t recognize. Despite this, I was unmistakably its intended recipient.

Want to find out what happened to Noah? Meet me at Better Love at 10pm.

I didn’t bother cleaning up my sushi or pausing the romantic comedy I was watching before gathering my boots, jacket, and hat and heading out the door.

I knew there was a possibility that the message drawing me to Better Love was a setup, but I couldn’t bring myself to care, because I wanted answers.

If I was potentially going to prison, I needed to know who wanted me there.

Also, I was lonely. Loneliness wasn’t treated as a crisis, like drug addiction or depression, but I knew from my years as a matchmaker that it could make people act just as irrationally.

That was why people gave up everything to travel across the world to meet strangers they’d only conversed with online, or agreed to go on reality dating shows on which they got engaged to someone without ever seeing their face.

We were all so desperate for companionship.

I was desperate enough that I was willing to risk my life.

I parked down the street from the office. The world around me was frozen in more ways than one. The streets were quiet as couples shared romantic candlelit meals or snuggled together under the sheets. Outside, ice crunched beneath my boots, and I nearly tripped as I approached the entrance.

Better Love was dark. I slid my key into the lock and cautiously opened the door. The alarm system beeped in warning, and I quickly entered the code to silence it. There was no sign that there was anyone else in the building.

The lobby was decorated for Valentine’s Day, with heart-shaped balloons floating around the room and paper Cupids stuck to the newly painted walls.

“Hello?” I called out.

Nothing.

I crept through the darkness, unwilling to draw too much attention to myself with the overhead lights.

I walked through the corridor, doing checks in each room as I went.

I couldn’t escape the feeling that someone might be hiding somewhere, waiting to pop out and surprise me.

The break room was empty, as was the conference room.

I made my way down the hallway between the offices.

Some matchmakers had left their doors open, and the blackness within glowed eerily.

In my own office, I grabbed the letter opener that Noah had given to me. It was comically small. Noah had never really known how to keep me safe.

I began to relax when I reached the end of the hall. No one was there. The message was a prank, a way to lure me out of the coziness of my home and into the chilliness of the night, and in my loneliness, I’d fallen for it.

My parents used to do extravagant things on Valentine’s Day: expensive restaurants, shiny jewelry, murdered women.

One year my father bought my mother and me matching diamond earrings.

None of my shoes fit, and I was wearing last year’s clothes, but I walked around with the equivalent of a car in each of my ears.

Another year, he whisked my mother away for a vacation, both of them forgetting about me until they got home a couple of days later.

There were two wolves inside me. One of them wanted me to be loved as passionately as my father had loved my mother.

The other went after men—had wanted Noah—only when it understood that my life with them would be devoid of that level of obsession.

Noah and I would be safe. We would be good.

No one would ever suspect that I was related to serial murderers.

For now, I tamed both beasts with a sigh and walked back down the hallway.

I would go home, finish watching my movie.

I wondered how long sushi could sit out before it would poison me.

Back in the lobby, a hand reached out from the darkness and grabbed my wrist.