It sounded like a marriage proposal. “Don’t kill yourself,” I said and squeezed his hand, basking in the glow of being loved.
At work, I had energy by the bucket load, smiles for everyone. The urge to burst into song was strong. When I wasn’t with Bobby, I was kind of in love with myself. One night, as I sat on my balcony, I tried a little mindfulness, a little look at you now. I was a successful physician who loved her job, lived in a great American city, had a fabulous apartment with a view. My friends were wonderful, funny, smart and kind.
And now I had a fantastic boyfriend.
It was a long way from Scupper Island’s most hated resident. The memory of my last day of high school made me shiver, but I pushed the thought away. That was a lifetime ago.
On the street below, a man was walking his dog, a brown-and-white mutt. The guy looked up, and I waved. He waved back. “Cute dog,” I called, the friendliest person in New England.
“Thanks. Nice view up there?” he called.
“The best,” I answered. Yes. Life was wonderful.
And then it wasn’t.
I left the office one Tuesday, swung by the hospital to check on a couple of patients, popped into the ER and was able to wrangle four minutes of hot kissing in a supply closet with Dr. Byrne. Then I took the T to my neighborhood, came aboveground and stopped at the corner market for some salad fixings, a chat with Avi and a Snickers bar. As I was leaving, a guy held the door for me.
“Thank you!” I said, beams of sunlight practically radiating from my skin, so in love with life was I.
“My pleasure,” he answered.
A cloud passed over my sun.
I knew. In that instant, I instinctively knew he wasn’t a good person. He had on a Red Sox cap, pulled low on his forehead. Wore an oversize jacket. He didn’t have any purchases with him, though he was leaving the store.
Nice, Nora, I told myself. A man holds the door for you, and you think he’s a terrorist.
It turned out, he was a terrorist. My own personal terrorist.
Now, I wasn’t fresh off the ferry. Granted, I grew up on an island where we didn’t even have house keys, because locking up was for the summer people, who had something worth stealing, not for us.
But I’d lived in Boston since I was eighteen. Not once did I have a problem with crime, but I knew how to walk tall, wear my bag diagonally across my body so it couldn’t be lifted. I didn’t get into elevators with people who gave off a bad vibe. I lived in a building with a guard, the comforting, smiling Tyrese. I always locked my doors. Even the balcony slider, and I lived on the third floor.
I waved to Avi and walked the three blocks home, not too fast, not too slow. Twice, I glanced back, as I’d later tell the police. No one was following me, but I still felt uneasy. I called Bobby; it went to voice mail, but I made it seem as if he’d picked up. “Hey, handsome, how are you? You want to come over later?” He was working second shift, as I well knew, since I’d just been making out with him. “Okay, big guy. See you in a bit.” I’d explain later.
I got to my building, grateful for the big and strong Tyrese. I asked about his twin daughters, admired some pictures of them on his phone. Then I got on the elevator, hit 3 and tried to relax. “Stop with your perturbation,” my mother used to say when I was nervous, in that strange mix of island dialect where she’d say ain’t and use an SAT word in the same breath.
My mother wouldn’t be afraid. She was never afraid.
Besides, I was home now. I was safe. Maybe the guy had been a deviant, but it didn’t matter now.
Just in case, I took out my phone and dialed 9-1...and kept my thumb hovering over the 1.
My door didn’t look tampered with. I unlocked it, phone still in my hand. The apartment was just as I’d left it—super neat and so pretty, a bouquet of red gerbera daisies on the coffee table, six lemons in a bowl on the counter, just because. The balcony was empty, as it should’ve been.
It wasn’t a huge apartment. The only hiding place would be the bedroom closet or the bathtub with the curtain closed. And I never closed the curtain all the way, because I’d seen the horror movies. I knew about these things. I left it half-open every day, because I liked the pretty pattern of birds and flowers.
I put my groceries down, went into my bedroom and, feeling a bit stupid, looked in the closet. No one. Glanced in the bathroom. No one. The shower curtain was closed halfway, just as I’d left it.
I deleted the 9-1 and set my phone on the bureau, almost laughing at my paranoia. Lowered the shades and figured I’d get into my Gryffindor pajamas (gold-and-red-striped, silk, completely impossible to resist) and watch some TV. Bobby would call later, and we’d laugh like we always did.
But because that creeped-out feeling remained, I decided I’d stay dressed and ask Roseline to hang out. She only lived two blocks away, and I had a nice bottle of fumé blanc in the fridge.
I went into the bathroom to wash up, bending over the sink to splash water on my face.
Something was different.
Run.
It was a command that came from every cell of my body, my lizard brain, that oldest part of the human mind where instinct lives, unfettered by the limbic system of emotion or rationalization. Run, it said, telling me my life was at stake, and I obeyed before I fully processed the thought. My brain went into overdrive, the thoughts fast and clear.
I was hyperaware of every muscle in my body—quadriceps femoris, iliopsoas, gluteus maximus pushing forward, deltoids and biceps stretching and contracting in what seemed like the slowest motion—one stride, my foot hitting the carpet, my left arm forward, right arm back, back foot coming forward, leg stretching out in a racer’s stride, setting down. I was wearing heels, but my strides were sure and strong, powered by adrenaline.
The shower curtain had been closed all the way.
He was in the bathroom.
I heard the metal rings hiss as he whipped open the shower curtain.
The second stride. I was sprinting and silent. The air seemed to have turned to thick red plasma.
Hurry.
His footsteps were muffled on the hall carpeting. I was in the living room, three strides from the door, and I reached out for the doorknob, hurling myself at it when he tackled me, shoved my face against the floor and sat on my back.
“Hello,” he said, and fear unlike anything I’d ever felt flooded me in ice.
I screamed. He punched me on my upturned left cheek, and my scream was cut off, shock and pain and a sense of the surreal blurring my thoughts. I’d never been hit before, and my face throbbed with white pain. I flailed and kicked, accomplishing nothing. Then his weight was gone, and he had me by the ankles, dragging me as I twisted and heaved. There was my shoe. Could I reach my shoe and hit him with it? I reached, but it was too far away.
“No!” I screamed. “Let me go!”
He dragged me down the hall. I grabbed onto the bathroom door frame, but my fingers weren’t strong enough to hang on. Down farther—the rug burning my chin—into my bedroom, my pretty bedroom with the soft gray walls, the navy comforter with the pink flowers on it, the red vase, the throw pillows.
I heard myself screaming, again and again and again, with every breath. This was a new building, and the walls were thick so residents wouldn’t be bothered with the noise from their neighbors. I tried to fling my body weight away from him, and he lost his grip on one ankle. My leg kicked out, but being facedown, I couldn’t see my target, and my foot just flailed in the air. He grabbed it again and twisted my legs so I was abruptly on my back.