Page 103 of The Quiet Tenant

Maybe he thought I’d be older. Or younger.

Who knows?

Not me.

I made him work for it. I fought. I didn’t know I had those reflexes. They just found me when I needed them. When he leaned over me and my elbow had a clear path to his nose.

I went for it.

He ducked before my bones could make contact with his. But the sway it had over him, this one tiny thing. The spark of life on the other end.

He wasrattled.

I think he was mad at himself more than me. I have a daughter, he told me. I have a—I have a someone. A tenant. I have a life.

He told me he had a life. I didn’t say I did, too.

He knew.

And then he did it. I fought, and at the end of it all, he still did it.

Like he had decided I was a force of evil and he needed to end me.

The last thing I remember: him, staring at my face like it was an abyss.

Clinging to my body like it was the end of everything.

CHAPTER 71

Emily

The house looks beautiful. Finally. Sophie and I came around earlier today and put up some string lights in the yard, around his plants and in the sole tree. We switched on the restaurant’s heaters, tall flames inside steel cages. It snowed last night, barely an inch, but some of it stuck to the ground.

I take it all in, and my mood lifts a little.

He’s at the door. Instructing people on where to park, directing them to the mulled wine Sophie and I brought over. Everyone joyful, everyone bundled up. That includes him, parka zipped up to his ears, and always that gray trapper hat.

I can’t look at him for too long.

There was the question of whether to wear his scarf. I didn’t want to be too obvious. Then again, he gave it to me. And it’s a good scarf. The kind that actually keeps you warm. I figured if I wore it, people would see. They might recognize it, his scarf around my neck, and connect some dots.

Plus, he said he would get it back at some point. Maybe that point is today. Maybe if I wore it, he’d talk to me.

I decided to go with the scarf.

I’m wearing it now, with my white down coat and the good snow boots. Earmuffs to avoid messing up my hair with a hat. Some makeup—enough to feel put together, not enough to look like I tried.

When Sophie and I arrived, he hugged me hello. “Glad you could make it,” he said. I want to believe his hands lingered a little longer than necessary around my arms, but I don’t know.

Everyone’s here, from the judge to Mr.Gonzalez. Even Eric and Yuwanda made it. (“Party at the Widower’s?” Eric said on the group text. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”)

The daughter’s here. Wrapped in her purple puffer jacket, white scarf covering the bottom half of her face. She has that long reddishhair like her mother’s. Her mom’s freckles, too. Sometimes it’s hard to see him in her. In other circumstances—if he were a different kind of man, if he and his wife had formed a different kind of couple—you might wonder if she’s actually his.

She’s standing in a corner, next to some kids I’ve seen around town. Not really mingling. She’s shy, like I imagine he was at her age. Like he can still be, at times.

If you observe him closely, you’ll notice. How he takes little breaks to collect himself. How he ends a conversation, retreats into a corner, and pinches his temples for a second, before he’s ready to go again.

We’re not supposed to go inside. That was the only condition, related to us in a group email. “Aidan kindly requested that we keep the party to the front yard,” the judge wrote. “I do hope we can all oblige. We’re all very busy with the holiday season, and we don’t want to create more work than necessary for anyone.”

---