Page 12 of The Quiet Tenant

Above all, you are to act normally. He stresses this point several times, between the shower rules and the sleeping rules and the eating rules. You cannot give away any sign of the truth. If you do, you will get hurt.

You nod. It is all you can do. You try to picture it—you, him, and his kid, all in one place. A bed. A mattress. A pillow. Blankets. Furniture. Breakfast and lunch. Food served on a plate. An actual shower. Hot water. Conversations. A window onto the world. A third person. For the first time in five years, someone other than him.

He stops pacing and crouches in front of you. The skin around his fingernails is raw, freshly bitten. He lifts your chin again, brings your face up to his. The whole world, right here in his eyes.

His fingers travel down to your neck, his thumb against your throat. He could do it. Now. It would be so easy, like crumpling a piece of paper.

“No one will know.” His face flushes in the glow of the camping lantern. “That’s the whole point. Do you understand? Just me. And Cecilia.”

Cecilia.

You go to say it out loud, but the name catches in your vocal cords. You swallow it back. His daughter, his child. There’s something so organic about it. So noble. Him in a hospital, wrapped in a paper gown, holding up a bloody newborn with trembling hands. A man becoming a father. Did he get up at two, three, five in the morning to feed her? Did he warm bottles in the dark, his brain fuzzy from sleep deprivation? Did he take her on a carousel, help her blow out her first birthday candle? Did he sleep on the floor next to her bed when she was sick?

It’s just the two of them now. Does he let her have a phone? When she cries, if she cries, does he find the right words? At her mom’s funeral, did he know to put a hand on her shoulder? To tell her things likeThose we love are never really gone, our memories keep them alive, all you have to do is live a life that would have made her proud?

“It’s a beautiful name,” you say.

But you should never have let me know it.

CHAPTER 8

Emily

He knows my name.

Thursday comes and he doesn’t show. I think I have lost him. But then, a delightful surprise: on Friday evening, when I’m not expecting him, he materializes at the bar.

“Emily,” he calls out, and it’s my name in his mouth, a stream of familiarity linking him to me.

I tell him hi and—before I can stop myself—that I didn’t see him yesterday. He smiles. Tells me sorry. A work emergency out of town, he says. But he’s back now.

And all is right in the world,I tell myself. Silently this time.

I keep it with me. His surprise visit, the sound of my name on his breath. I allow it to carry me through the night, through the next day, all the way into Saturday evening.

At the restaurant, Saturdays are a battlefield. Folks drive up from the city, compete with the locals for reservations. They’re happy until they’re not. Food flies out of the kitchen—hot, cold, it doesn’t matter. What we need is plates on tables, plates on tables. Behind the bar, I grow a second pair of arms. Everyone wants mixed drinks on a Saturday. It’s one martini after the other, an endless streak of twists and olives. I peel the back of my thumb along with the skin of a lemon. My wrists protest each time I raise the shaker, carpal tunnel settling in my joints with each clatter of ice cubes.

A rare good thing about the restaurant: when it’s that busy, it numbs me. There is no time to think, no time to care that Nick ignores most of my orders, that he’s a dick to everyone, including me, that I should have fired him a long time ago but worry a different chef would be even worse. It’s just me and the bar until the last customers leave and Cora locks the door behind them.

When it’s all over, we go out. It doesn’t make sense, but it must be done, even if we’ve all had enough of one another for the evening.Because if Saturday nights are a battlefield, then we are soldiers, and we must be able to exist together. And the way to do that is to drink.

By the time I show up, everyone is already sitting at our usual table. I wave to Ryan, the owner—not a bad guy, just someone who thinks naming a dive the Hairy Spider is a good idea—and pull up a chair between Eric and Yuwanda.

“They say it was an accident, but I don’t buy it,” Cora’s saying. “Have you seen the trails over there? It would be really hard to fall.”

Ryan brings me his beer of the week, a pumpkin sour. I take a sip and give him what I hope passes for an appreciative nod.

“What are we talking about?”

Yuwanda fills me in. “That woman who went missing last week.”

I read about her in the local weekly: mid-thirties, no history of mental illness or drug use. A painter with a little workshop about forty miles north of here. Disappeared overnight and hasn’t been seen since. No activity on her phone or credit cards.

“One of the cops told my sister they think she went for a hike and fell down a ravine,” Sophie says. “Apparently she liked the trails.”

Yuwanda cuts in: “But don’t they have surveillance video of her at some convenience store around seven that night?”

Sophie nods.

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