Chapter 4: The Tan House with the Blue Door

Terry drove to Beechwood Street violating approximately seven traffic laws (running one definitely-red light, two arguably-yellow lights, exceeding the speed limit by margins that varied between "moderate" and "prosecutable") while his mind performed the kind of rapid-fire analysis that evolution had presumably designed for fleeing predators but which modern humans deployed mostly for social anxiety and, apparently, situations involving unexplained midnight activities and photographic evidence of ceiling fans with rope.

The tan house with the blue door was exactly where the woman had said it would be, which somehow made everything worse—the fact that this stranger knew not just where Karen was but also the color of Diane's door, the specific shade of blue that Diane had spent three weeks deliberating over (Benjamin Moore's "Pacific Coast Blue," which Karen had reported cost $67 per gallon and which Diane had described as "simultaneously calming and energizing," a combination that Terry had privately thought was semantically impossible).

There were four cars in Diane's driveway: Karen's Subaru (Outback, forest green, a vehicle that announced its owner's commitment to both practicality and a certain outdoorsy self-image that Karen maintained despite having gone camping exactly once in the seven years Terry had known her), Diane's Mercedes (because Diane was that kind of book club person), and two others Terry didn't recognize.

He parked on the street. Sat for a moment trying to decide what exactly he was doing, what he was about to do, whether showing up at his girlfriend's book club to ask if she knew about ceiling fans and 3:17 AM text messages constituted reasonable behavior or the kind of behavior that would later be described by therapists as "a red flag" or possibly "an incident."

His phone buzzed. The unknown number again, but this time a text: "Go to the back door. The one by the kitchen. Don't ring the bell."

Terry got out of the car. The October air was cold in that particular New England way that felt designed to remind you that winter was coming and would not be gentle about it. He walked around the side of Diane's house, through the little gate (white picket, naturally, because Diane's entire aesthetic was "upscale New England nostalgia"), past the garden where some late-season mums were making a doomed stand against entropy.

The back door was blue too—the same Pacific Coast Blue—and it was unlocked.

Terry opened it slowly, feeling like he was in someone else's life, some other Terry's narrative, one where normal Thursday evenings in Brookline somehow involved breaking and entering and mysterious phone calls and photographic evidence of crimes he couldn't remember committing.

The kitchen was empty but he could hear voices from the living room. Female voices. Laughter. Someone—probably Diane—saying something about "patriarchal narrative structures" in a tone that managed to be both earnest and performatively earnest, as if she was simultaneously making an argument and commenting on the fact that she was making an argument.

On the kitchen counter, next to a half-empty bottle of Pinot Grigio and a cheese plate that had been devastated except for the blue cheese (nobody ever ate the blue cheese at these things), there was a laptop. Open. Unlocked.

The screen showed a video feed—multiple video feeds, actually, in a grid pattern. Security cameras, Terry realized. And one of them showed Karen, sitting on Diane's couch, wine glass in hand, looking completely normal, completely fine, completely alive and present and not at all like someone who knew anything about ceiling fans or rope or whatever Terry had or hadn't done in those forty-seven missing minutes.

But another camera—the one in the upper right quadrant—showed a different room. A basement room, Terry thought, based on the concrete walls and the exposed ceiling beams. And mounted in that ceiling was a white ceiling fan. The same ceiling fan from the photo.

As Terry watched, the camera angle shifted slightly, tilting down. And he could see, in the corner of the frame, a figure. Sitting in a chair. Hands bound. Head slumped forward.

Terry leaned closer to the screen, his heart doing something that felt less like beating and more like seizing.

The figure was wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt. The vintage one. The exact same shirt that—

"You really should have deleted that text message," a voice said behind him.

Terry spun around.

Karen was standing in the kitchen doorway, and she was holding something that took Terry's brain several seconds to process, several seconds during which time seemed to acquire the thick, resistant quality of syrup or honey or blood.

She was holding his phone. His actual phone, not the one currently in his pocket (which Terry now understood, with a clarity that felt almost narcotic, was not his phone at all, had never been his phone).

"The thing about sleepwalking, Terry," Karen said, and her voice was different now, flatter, stripped of all the familiar inflections that he'd learned to read over seven years of cohabitation, "is that it's such a convenient explanation. For all sorts of things."

Behind her, in the living room, the book club continued. Someone was talking about Atwood's use of color symbolism.

"Who's in the basement?" Terry heard himself ask.

Karen smiled, and it was the smile of someone who'd been waiting a very long time to be asked exactly that question.

"The real question, Terry, is: which basement?"