Page 41 of The Art of Dying

I stood. “I’m going to make some hot tea. Want some?”

“Yeah. Call Lucas, would you? Let him know I’m staying here tonight?”

I filled the kettle, started the tea and then picked up the phone from its base. I stared at the numbered buttons for a moment, trying to remember his number and then punched them in.

A loud tone rang in my ear and then Lucas’s sleepy voice answered.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s Mack.”

“Is everything all right?” Lucas asked, suddenly awake.

“Yeah. Alecia had a lot to drink. Pretty sure she’s going to pass out on my couch.”

“Should I come get her?” He yawned.

“Nah, I have extra scrubs here. I’ll take her to her car, and she can drive straight to work.”

“Thanks, Mack,” he said, hanging up.

I turned to see Alecia asleep, one arm up and over the arm of the sofa, the other off to the side. I walked over and pulled her glasses from her face, placing them on the coffee table.

She stirred. “I think… I think I’m just going to go to bed,” she said, standing up. She trudged to the bedroom, holding on to the corner as she rounded it for the hall.

Once the kettle began to whistle, I poured the steaming liquid into my favorite skeleton mug and sat alone on the sofa.

I took a sip and fantasized what it would be like to live on base in Camp Pendleton. Next time I spoke to Kitsch, I was going to make him give me more detail. He was right. Even Alecia couldn’t think of many reasons not to live in sunny California, near the beach, sleeping next to Kitsch every night. Well, except that to do it we’d have to get married, and we’d basically just met.

I reached for the remote and switched on the TV, staring at a half-finished episode of ER, the volume so low I could barely make out what they were saying. Just as the credits began to roll, I heard someone walking around on the porch. I froze, waiting to hear it again. After a few minutes of silence, I took the last sip from my mug and walked it to the sink in the kitchen. After turning off the lamps, I heard another noise.

The miniblinds snapped too loudly when I peeked through them, trying to see anything moving in the dark. Nothing.

After another minute dragged by, I went to the kitchen, checking the monitors Kitsch had set up. My car was in the drive, surrounded by a yard covered in snow. The side yards were clear, and so was the backyard. The monitoring status caught my eye, and I scrambled to turn on the system. I’d gotten distracted when Kelita had gotten up to leave and forgotten to turn it on.

Once it beeped, I leaned against the counter and sighed. Now that Mason was in town, I couldn’t afford those kinds of monumentally stupid mistakes.

I turned off the light on my way out, glancing over my shoulder before leaving the kitchen, and for just a second, thought I saw something scamper across the backyard’s camera. I rushed back to the monitor, leaning on my elbows and furiously pushing buttons, trying to remember how to enlarge that section. After a few tries, the live image of the backyard filled the screen. My eyes poured over every bush, every shadowed corner and then I played back the last ten minutes, scrolling through until a dark figure passed the field of view. I pressed the arrow keys, reversing the feed, moving it forward, until I could make out what it was.

I gasped, realizing it was a person, hunched over while he or she ran my yard and then escaped over the fence. It could’ve just been a kid out past curfew, but I knew in my heart it was Mason. Still, there was no point in calling Kelita or the police. Whoever it was, he was gone. There was nothing the police could do, and even if they could, I had no way of proving it was Mason. I double checked all the locks on the windows and doors and then hurried into my bedroom, changing into sweats and then crawling into bed next to Alecia. I pulled the blankets up to my chin, staring at the ceiling, my ears attuned to every creak in the walls, every branch the wind touched outside.

The next morning, Alecia stood next to me in the kitchen. Although it was still fifteen minutes before sunrise, she was wide awake, chewing on her thumbnail as I showed her the footage.

“It’s Mason,” she said, definitive.

I took another drink of coffee and shook my head. “I thought that at first, too, but that’s not what he was wearing at Ody’s.”

“He had plenty of time to change, and he’s just psychotic enough to do something like that. You need to file a police report. Today, Mack.”

“And tell them what? That a black blob drifted across my monitor?”

“A blob? Look at the footprints in the snow! It’s clearly a person hunched over and running across your yard.”

“But no crime was committed. And we have no proof it was Mason.”

“He’s been back in Quincy for all of adayand he’s already sneaking around in your backyard. That’s creepy as hell, Mack! At least start a paper trail!”

“If I file a report, I’ll have to tell Kitsch, and—”

“Why are you so hellbent on keeping this from him?”

---