Page 60 of The Intruder

After Rudy leaves, I can barely keep my eyes open. I didn’t sleep at all last night, and the night before, I was having those nightmares about being on fire. If I don’t get some sleep soon, I’m going to get sick. But just as I’m heading toward my bedroom, there’s a knock on the cabin door.

Of course, the first thought that again pops into my head is that it’s the police. How long is it going to be before my heart doesn’t start racing every time I hear a knock at the door? But when I get there, I see the one person who I want to see even less than the police.

It’s Lee.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” He’s wearing his black beanie, and he puts his hand on it, almost ready to take it off but waiting for permission. “Can I come in?”

I don’t take a step back from the door. “Maybe we should just talk here.”

His voice is almost cold. “That’s fine with me.”

He has a strange stony expression on his face that is unreadable. Especially after what Rudy told me about him, the whole thing makes me uneasy. Why was he asking questions about me? How did he know who I was before I moved in?

He doesn’t look familiar to me. At least, I don’t think so…

“How is Nell?” I finally ask. “Did you tell her?”

“I told her.”

“How did she take it?”

“Lots of tears. But she seems okay now. I’m sure she’s got a lot of therapy in her future. We’ll get through it though.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Yeah…”

He still has that funny expression on his face. I can’t quite tell what he’s thinking, and it’s making me nervous. “Everything okay, Lee?”

“Not exactly…”

My stomach churns, and I’m suddenly very glad I didn’t invite him inside. I quickly scan Lee up and down, wondering what I’d do if he attacked me. He’s a lot bigger than Rudy, and I get the feeling he’d be ready for any of the moves I learned in my self-defense class.

“What’s wrong?” I manage.

“So here’s the thing.” He cocks his head to the side. “The power came back on, as you’ve noticed. And Nell and I were watching some TV. And there was a news story about her mom being found.”

“Oh…” As if I needed another reason to hate television. “Wow, that must’ve been hard.”

“Yes…” He frowns. “Except in the news story, they kept saying that Jolene Kettering was killed today. Today. Not last night. Not yesterday. Today.”

“Huh,” I say, as if I find this perplexing. “Well…maybe she got stabbed yesterday but didn’t die until today?”

“You think?”

Lee and I stare at each other. As our eyes connect, my stomach sinks.

He knows. Oh God, he knows. He knows what I did. He knows everything.

But even if he threatens to turn me in, what can I do? Maybe I set my mother on fire and gave Jolene the same pain she dished out, but I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Lee. I’d never do that. Nell needs him.

Will he rat me out to the police? I have no idea. I don’t know Lee at all, even if he apparently knows me.

“I’m not sure what you think happened,” I finally say. “I know I was gone for a little while today, but I was at the police station.”

He blinks at me, knowing very well how easily this lie will unravel. It would be easy enough to prove I was never at the police station. My alibi is nonexistent.

“You never went to the police station, Casey,” he says. “I know you didn’t.”

Any hope that I might have misread him flies out the window. He’s really doing this. I keep my voice even. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he says in a slow, pointed voice, “you were with me and Nell all afternoon at my cabin, so you couldn’t have gone to the police station. Or anywhere else. How could you be in two places at the same time?”

What?

That was the last thing I expected him to say. I stare at him. “Lee…”

“Nell and I were both with you all afternoon,” he says, more firmly this time.

“We both agree on that. You were never out of our sight except to use the bathroom. So like I said, you couldn’t have ever been to Jolene’s apartment.

And if there’s ever a police officer asking about it, I’ll make sure they know that. ”

“Thank you,” I say softly.

“I’ve got your back, Casey,” he says. “I hope you know that.”

“I…I appreciate that.”

“Also,” he says, “it’s just my opinion, but anyone who could do what that woman did to a little girl doesn’t deserve to be alive.”

When he says it, his eyes flicker down to my arms. At some point, he must have seen my own burns. I’ll have those forever—a reminder of that awful woman. I’m glad he doesn’t say the words though. It’s the last thing I want to talk about.

“Anyway,” he says, “I better get going. I don’t want to leave Nell alone for too long.”

“You’re going to do a great job with her,” I tell him. “And if you need any help, I’ll be here. Anything bra or period related, I’m your woman.”

He cracks a smile—the first I have seen from him the entire day. “Thanks. Believe me—I’m going to need all the help I can get. What the hell do I know about raising a teenage girl?”

“Well, the first thing you need to know is that it’s going to be horrible,” I say, “but it’s also going to be great. And I’ll be over all the time to help. You’re going to be completely sick of me.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, Ella.”

I smile back at him. For a second, I allow myself to feel a surge of happiness, which lasts for exactly two seconds until something very unsettling hits me:

He called me Ella.

A smile has never vanished so quickly from my lips.

“You called me Ella,” I spit at him. “Why?”

Lee’s blue eyes widen. “I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “But…that’s your name, isn’t it? Your first name? I…I saw it on a letter on your kitchen table.”

“My first name is Elizabeth, actually.” The name Ella wasn’t on my letters. Nobody has called me that in years.

“Well, I’m sorry.” He drops his eyes. “I guess I just…”

He doesn’t complete that sentence, which is just as well, since I can’t imagine what bullshit explanation he could possibly come up with.

I narrow my eyes at him. “Do we know each other?”

“Sure. You’re my closest neighbor.”

“No. I mean from before you lived here.”

He shakes his head without hesitation. “Not that I know of.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “Rudy told me that when you first met with him, you asked about me. By name.”

“Did he?” He doesn’t bat an eye. “Casey, he’s clearly remembering wrong.”

“Is he?”

“Sure. It’s not exactly the first thing Rudy’s gotten wrong. Didn’t he leave you in a huge storm with a roof that was about to cave in and an unstable tree that could have killed you?”

Lee was thrown for a moment when I first called him out on saying my first name, but he got his composure back, and now he’s sticking to his story.

I study Lee’s features—his crystal blue eyes, the beard concealing the bottom half of his face, his tousled brown hair. For a split second, I feel a flicker of recognition, but before I can grasp it entirely, it’s gone.

No, I don’t know him. And if he somehow knows me, I can’t imagine how.

“Anyway,” he says. “I’m heading out now. But maybe you’ll come by sometime tomorrow?”

“I will,” I say. “I promise. I want to see how the two of you are doing.”

Lee turns around and heads back outside. He turns once to wave to me—I wave back—then he disappears into the clearing in the woods that connects our cabin.

I still don’t trust him. But that’s okay, because I don’t trust anyone.