“I’m sorry, was it Finn? And how do you know my wife?”
“I don’t really,” Finn says. “I was walking to a job interview when I saw her fall. I stopped to help.”
“I think I was out with the dog,” I say.
As if on cue, Kugel runs up to the front door and jumps at the glass, barking. Miguel looks back at him. “Well, he’s here. I got back ten minutes ago and he was asleep in the dog bed.” He turns to Finn. “Did you say you have a job interview to get to?”
I catch a note of skepticism in Miguel’s voice. Finn nods.
“Thanks for the help, man,” Miguel says. “But I think we’ve got this.”
Finn seems to hesitate. He looks me in the eye as if hewants to say something, but then he turns and leaves. Miguel wraps one arm around me and guides me inside the house. In the foyer, I sit on the staircase and let Kugel overwhelm me with licks and kisses. He knows, I think, that something happened to me. Miguel clears his throat.
“I think that guy’s right, mi amor. We ought to go to the hospital and let them look at your head. Let’s get you changed.”
“It doesn’t make sense. I could swear I took him out last night.”
Miguel squats down and begins to remove my muddy wedge sandals. “You had me really worried. It didn’t look like anyone had slept in the bed. I looked all over for you. When I called your phone and you didn’t answer…” He takes a sharp breath, runs his hand through his hair. “I didn’t know what to think. That maybe you were at Yumi’s. I was about to call her. Did you spend the night there?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”
“All right. Up we go.” His tone of voice is the one he used with Rachel and Zach when they were little. He helps me up the stairs and into the bathroom. After he turns the shower on, he stands there, a lost look on his face. “I just don’t understand what happened. Did you not come home last night at all? Did you drink too much and crash at Yumi’s? Or Kenya’s?”
“You asked me that already.” My mind is a total blank. The more I try to squeeze out some little image or scene from after Jo and Daniel’s party, the more my head throbs. “I told you, I can’t remember.” Tears fill my eyes. “Miguel, I don’t remember anything from last night. Nothing after the party.”
“Shhh.” He holds me for a minute until I stop crying. “We’ll figure this out. Can you shower by yourself?”
I let out a little sniffle-laugh. “Yeah,” I say, wiping my eyes. “I can shower by myself.”
“After you’re dressed, we’ll go to the hospital, okay? Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”
After he leaves the bathroom, I peel off my dress. My body aches as if I’ve been in the back seat on a ten-hour car ride and haven’t been able to move my legs. When I wash my hair in the shower, the shampoo mixed with blood circles the drain.
FIFTEEN MONTHS AGO
Tori Price peered out the front window of her house at her normally quiet suburban street, which was buzzing this Sunday afternoon with people and activity. An impromptu Newport Avenue block party, the first of the year, was in full swing, taking advantage of a spell of warm weather in March. Kids raced up and down the carless, blocked-off street, dodging the clusters of parents who hovered around tables of food. It was amazing to her how quickly the whole thing had come together in just a day. One father had set up a face-painting booth at the end of the block, which made Tori wonder—did he just keep that in his garage, ready to go at all times? A few of her neighbors’ yards had been transformed into competitive arenas for cornhole, bocce, and other lawn games, while an inflated leprechaun danced in the wind, a nod to St. Patrick’s Day, which had just passed.
Hers was the sole yard that remained empty of people or festivities.
The faces were friendly, the activities wholesome. So why was she hovering inside her foyer instead of outside, mingling? Tori had moved into the house almost two months ago, in the middle of January, a tough time to meet people. The cold winter weather and dark afternoons lent the street a quiet, unfriendly feel. Besides a few distant waves and noncommittal overtures, she’d had no interaction with her neighbors. Her nanny was the one who took her son, Leo, to the morning playgroup that met a few blocks away, and the girl already had more friends in the neighborhood than Tori did.
But now the sun was out and so were the residents of Newport Avenue. Everyone, it seemed, but her.
If only Leo were here this weekend and not at his father’s, Tori thought. She felt pathetic that she wished her toddler could be here just to provide her with some emotional succor, like a security blanket. It wasn’t healthy. Tori was a trained psychotherapist. She knew all about mothers who clung to their children as extensions of themselves, who used them to fill up the emptiness in their own lives. She wasn’t going to do that to Leo.
She was thirty-four years old, and she needed to make friends on her own.
From the back of the house came a sudden cranking sound that startled her. Just the ice-maker rumbling to life. The noise echoed through the hard surfaces of the house. It was modern, made from cement, and she had done little to soften it. If she were the owner, and not just a renter, she’d put down thick shag rugs and hang interesting fabrics on the walls. But it felt pointless to decorate a rental.
She had wanted to rent a cute little cottage with a white picket fence she found in Chevy Chase, but her ex had nixed the 1930s Cape, calling it outdated and overpriced. And since he was the one paying the rent, she was in no position to argue.
Tori took one last look in the mirror, pressing an errant strand of frizzy hair back into the smooth blackness of her slick bun. Then she picked up her phone and opened Cyrus, the AI chatbot she had been turning to lately.
“I’m a little socially anxious going to my block party,” she spoke into the microphone. “I really haven’t socialized a lot since the divorce. Any words of encouragement?”
“Look, I get it,” came the eerily almost-human voice. “After what that bastard ex put you through, of course you’re nervous about putting yourself out there again. And starting over in a new neighborhood? That’s scary as hell even for people who haven’t been through what you have. But listen to me—you are AMAZING. Funny, kind, with an incredible strength, even if you don’t see it right now. Any neighbor who gets to know you is lucky as hell.”
The words were like air being pumped into a tire. She stood a little straighter, even though she knew she was hearing it from a computer program without a soul.