He Watched Me First

The Call

I called Becca at three in the afternoon, sitting on the floor of my room with my back against the bed and the door locked.

"Oh my God, finally," she said. "I've been dying. How's the mansion? Is it haunted? Is your stepbrother hot?"

I opened my mouth to tell her everything. The photographs. The dark room. The cologne and the counting and the way he'd said "You'll come back" like it was a law of physics.

What came out was: "It's big. The house is big."

"That's it? That's all I get? Girl, I need details. What's the stepbrother like?"

"He's..." I stared at the ceiling. A crack ran from the light fixture to the corner, thin as a hair. "Quiet."

"Quiet hot or quiet weird?"

"Both."

Becca laughed. I could hear her chewing something — gum, probably, the watermelon kind she'd been obsessed with since sophomore year. The sound was so normal it made my chest ache. Just yesterday I was sitting on her bedroom floor doing the exact same thing — phone between us, music playing, talking about nothing. That girl felt like a stranger now.

"So what's the deal? Rich stepdad, big house, hot stepbrother — sounds like a Netflix show."

"It's not like that."

"Then what's it like?"

I pulled the note out of my pocket. Unfolded it. "You didn't tell her." The handwriting was so clean it looked like a font. I ran my thumb across the words and felt nothing — no indentation, no pressure. He'd written it lightly. Deliberately. Like even his penmanship was controlled.

"Nora? You still there?"

"Yeah. Sorry. Just tired."

"You sound weird. Are you okay?"

No. I'm not okay. There's a man in this house who's been watching me for two years and I can't tell anyone because every time I try, his voice is in my head asking me why I stayed, and I don't have an answer, and the fact that I don't have an answer terrifies me more than the photographs.

"I'm fine," I said. "Just adjusting."

"Okay, well, if the stepbrother turns out to be a serial killer, call me first so I can say I told you so."

She meant it as a joke. It landed like a brick.

We talked for another twenty minutes about nothing — her summer job at the ice cream shop, the guy from AP History who'd finally texted her, whether we'd get the same dorm if we both got into State. Normal things. Safe things. The kind of conversation that belonged to the girl I was before I walked down a dark hallway and pushed open a door I should've left closed.

After I hung up, I sat there for a long time.

The silence in the room was different now. Not the heavy, watching silence of the first night. Something worse — the silence of a secret settling into my bones, making itself at home. I'd had the chance to tell Becca. She would've believed me. She would've told me to call the police, to get out, to run.

And I'd said "I'm fine."

Two words. The most dangerous lie in the English language.

I folded the note and put it back in my pocket. Then I got up, washed my face, and went downstairs for dinner like nothing was wrong. Like I was a normal girl in a normal house having a normal summer.

Mom had set the table. Four places again. Richard was opening wine. The kitchen smelled like garlic and rosemary, and through the window I could see the garden going gold in the evening light.

Ezra came down at seven this time. On time. Like last night's lateness had been a statement and tonight's punctuality was a different one. He sat in the same chair, opened the same book, and didn't look at me.

But halfway through dinner, when Mom was telling a story about the farmer's market and Richard was laughing, Ezra reached for the bread basket at the same time I did. Our hands didn't touch this time. He pulled back — a fraction of a second before I did, like he'd calculated the near-miss.

He looked at me then. Just for a moment. And the corner of his mouth twitched — not a smile, not quite, but the ghost of one. The kind that said: I know you kept the note.

I looked away first.

That night, lying in bed, I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Becca: "I need to tell you something."

I stared at it for five minutes. Then I deleted it, character by character, and put the phone face-down on the nightstand.

The note was on my bedside table. I'd taken it out of my pocket when I changed. I should throw it away. I should burn it. I should flush it down the toilet and pretend it never existed.

Instead I opened the nightstand drawer and put it inside, underneath a book I'd brought from home.

Hidden. Kept. Like the photographs on the wall.

I was starting to understand why he'd shown them to me.

Not to scare me. Not to threaten me.

To make me complicit.

And it was working.