A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay

could come back and bite her in the ass.”
    “It has nothing to do with Claire Sanders,” Chris Rodomski said. “I think we’ve helped you out as much as we can.”
    They showed me to the door.
    As I walked back to my car, I took a small detour down the side of the house to get a look at the backyard. Even in the darkness, I could make out several garbage cans and an old rusted swing set. It had to have been years since Hanna had played on that. I thought of Chris Rodomski’s nice suit, the hole in his sock. Perfect living room, messy kitchen. Beautiful front yard, a jungle out back.
    The Rodomskis liked to make a good first impression, but didn’t give a damn what you thought once you got to know them.

NINE
    When
she pops in from work to see that he is okay, and to bring him some takeout—Buffalo chicken wings and fries—he is sitting in the chair with a car magazine open on his lap.
    “I don’t understand these what-they-call-’em nav systems,” he says. “All the cars have them now. Never had one of those in a car.”
    “I hear they don’t work that well,” the woman says. “Heard about some idiot woman, she kept doing what the system told her and drove right into a lake.”
    The man laughs softly. “That smells like wings,” he says, taking the Styrofoam box and opening it. “Looks delicious.”
    “I brought you lots of napkins and wet wipes,” she says, handing them over. “Try not to drop the bones all over the room.”
    Like it would matter. He’s always spilling his food. Once a week or so she tries to get in here and clean up the mess, but honestly, doesn’t she have enough to do? The room reeks, but she stopped noticing the smells long ago.
    “Did you think about what I said this morning?” he asks, biting into a wing, tearing at the chicken with his gray teeth.
    “What did you say this morning?” she replies. She remembers—she always knows what it will be about—but feigning ignorance stalls things for a while.
    “About going in to work? Or just going out?”
    “Enough. You’re wearing me out.”
    She gathers some magazines on the bed—car magazines, a
People
and half a dozen
National Geographic
s—and sets them neatly on the bedside table. “You can’t ask me the same thing every day and think you’re going to get a different answer. You—oh for God’s sake, there’s toast crusts in your bed.”
    The man says, “If it’s getting me out that worries you, I think I could manage the stairs myself. It’d just take a while, that’s all.”
    “It’s not about that,” she says. “You know that.”
    Something that troubled her that morning is eating at her again. Where’s the book? The one he writes in three times a day, or more? Now that she thinks about it, she hasn’t seen it for days.
    “Where’s your stupid little notebook?” she asks.
    “I told you, I write in it after you leave.”
    “Since when?”
    “I just do.”
    “Where is it right now?”
    “I think it fell under the bed. Might be stuck between the bed and the wall.”
    “Move aside, I’ll find it for you.”
    “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
    “Better find it fast or you’ll forget what to write,” she says, deciding to drop it, at least for now. She has to go.
    As she turns to leave, he says, “Wait.”
    She stops. “What?”
    “The boy,” he says. “What’s up with the boy?”
    She is confused for a moment, unsure which boy he’s referring to. His stepson, or the one who’s caused them so much trouble lately. She decides on an answer that covers all the bases.
    “Everything’s under control,” the woman says. “We’re doing our best to sort things out.”
    “Maybe,” the man says, allowing a naive sliver of hope to creep into his voice, “it’s a good thing, what happened. I mean, it might mean things will change.” He smiles at her with those gray teeth. “I could use a change.”
    “No,” she says. “It doesn’t mean that at all.”

TEN
    He was