Page 70 of The Tenant
Why won’t she answer my text?
It’s close to five when a Chevrolet pulls into the driveway of the yellow house. I duck down in the car, watching a woman in her sixties with dark blond hair climb out of the vehicle and walk to the front door. That must be Whitney’s mother. She looks a little like her.
I wait another few minutes. I don’t want to pounce on her the second she walks in. I’ll give her a chance to take off her shoes and relax a bit. Then I’ll go knock on the door once she’s settled. I eat another cookie.
Once she’s had ten minutes in the house, I climb out of the car. Just like before, I stride down the path to the front door, this time knowing that somebody will answer. I just hope she doesn’t tell me something I don’t want to hear.
I ring the doorbell, and there is a scuffling of feet behind the door. I haven’t quite decided what to say to Whitney’s mother. I have a few cover stories in the back of my head, but all of them sound weak. If she recognizes that I’m bullshitting her, she will slam the door in my face, and that will be the end of it.
When the door opens, a woman who I presume is Mrs. Cross stands in the doorway. Up close, she looks less like Whitney than I thought—I guess Whitney looks more like her father. I had gauged her age to be in her sixties from afar, but now that I’m close up, I can see the spiderwebbing of wrinkles around her eyes and a haunted look that reminds me of what I see when I look in a mirror.
That’s the moment I decide to tell her the truth.
“Mrs. Cross?” I say.
She gives me a wary look. “Yes…”
“My name is Blake Porter,” I say. “And…the thing is, five months ago, I took in a tenant named Whitney Cross. And I…”
For a moment, I can’t go on, thinking about all the terrible things that have happened since Whitney moved into my beloved home. The rotting food in the kitchen. Krista leaving me. The murder of Mr. Zimmerly. And now those disembodied fingers belonging to God knows who. (Please not Krista.) It’s overwhelming. And while driving here seemed like the answer at the time, now I’m not sure anymore.
What if this doesn’t fix anything?
Mrs. Cross looks up at my face, and she seems to see the same thing in me that I saw in her. She reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder, and all I can think is,This woman gets it.
“Come in, Mr. Porter,” she says. “We need to talk.”
43
Mrs. Cross offersto take my jacket, but I keep it on, feeling like there’s a chance I could need to make a quick getaway. She leads me to the living room and sits me down on a flawless white sofa with big, puffy cushions. Like the rest of the house, the living room has a quaint, cozy appearance. I can just imagine sitting here in the middle of winter with the fireplace blazing and a cup of hot cocoa in my hand.
Whitney’s mother sits across from me on a matching love seat, keeping her eyes pinned on my face. When she speaks, her tone is measured, her true feelings only revealed by the slightest tremor in her voice. “You’re living with Whitney,” she acknowledges.
“Yes,” I say.
She looks down at her lap, carefully smoothing out a crease on her beige skirt. “I thought she might be dead. I should have known better.”
It’s shocking to hear a woman comment so cavalierly on the death of her own daughter. But now that I know Whitney, it’s not all that surprising.
“I need help,” I say. “She’s ruining my life, and I don’t even know why.”
“That sounds like Whitney.” She gives me a humorless smile. “But if she has decided to ruin your life, she has a reason. There is always a reason.”
I can’t think of what the reason could be. I’d never met Whitney before the day she showed up looking for a place to live. Yes, I was rude to her at the diner, but it doesn’t seem like enough. She must have some other reason.
“Let me tell you a little story about my daughter,” Mrs. Cross says, sitting up straighter. “I have a younger son. When he was four years old and she was seven, he accidentally broke one of her toys. It wasn’t intentional—he wasfour. The next day, I took the two of them to the playground, and she waited until they were at the highest point on the jungle gym, and she shoved him off. Joey told me what happened when they were setting his arm in the emergency room.” She crosses her legs. “When I asked Whitney about it later, all she said was, ‘That’s what happens to you if you’re not careful.’ I put her in therapy after that, but she didn’t like it, so she made it stop.”
“Made it stop?”
A haunted look fills her eyes. “She would steal things from me—items that I treasured like my grandmother’s diamond necklace or an old letter from my late father. And she would destroy them, leaving the remnants in a place she knew I’d find them.”
“Jesus.”
“I learned to be very careful around my daughter, Mr. Porter. And believe me when I say that isn’t the worst thing she has done. Not even close.”
I swallow. If only I had known some of this—any of this—before I let Whitney move in with us. Now I suspect I have opened a door that can’t be closed. “I heard about Jordan Gallo.”
She flinches. “Yes, that was a terrible situation.”
