Page 111 of The Quiet Tenant

For the briefest moment, I am alone again. In his basement, in the belly of his house. Hands shaking. Ears ringing.

Outside, the rumble of the engine. His voice rising over it.

Finally, my body remembers.

I run. I run after him.

CHAPTER 74

The woman in the truck

You don’t make a sound. Except for the soft whimpers coming out of Cecilia, except for the padding of your feet on the grass—yours bare, hers in sneakers. None of it is enough to give you away. There is a party. People are busy, blinded by string lights, brains hazy from what smells like mulled wine.

You can’t see him anywhere. Ideally, you would have wanted him in the corner of your eye, accounted for in the distance. But this will have to do.

You open the passenger door to his truck.

“Get in,” you tell his daughter.

You know how to do this.

She gives you this look as she slips onto the seat, the barrel of the gun inches from her. Wounded. The look of a girl who will never forgive you. She doesn’t know that the pistol isn’t loaded. That this is killing you maybe as much as it’s killing her.

You shut her door as quietly as possible. Somewhere, before he can even realize it, his ears perk up. A disturbance in the universe. Something happening that he didn’t plan for.

He doesn’t know it yet, but in a few instants he’ll be after you.

You go around to the driver’s side. These are the seconds of danger. This is a situation you wouldn’t be able to explain, your fingers around a gun that doesn’t belong to you, a trapped girl who doesn’t belong to you, either.

This is the moment that will kill you if it goes wrong.

You are in a vehicle. You are in the driver’s seat.

“Seat belt.”

Cecilia shoots you a look of incomprehension.

“Seat belt,” you say again, and wave the gun around.

She buckles up. You tuck the gun back in your waistband.

The truck shudders to life.

Focus.

The way you make it out of here is by existing only in this moment, in the compartment, with your hands on the wheel. Think only what you need to think, see only what you need to see. Maneuver the truck away from the driveway. You think you hear things—someone yelling in the distance, confusion, the beginning of a commotion.

Focus.

Press the gas pedal.

What happens at the house is no longer your problem.

CHAPTER 75

Emily

He panics. Runs outside, looks around the yard. Wild. Frantic. “She’s not here,” he says. He goes back inside, doesn’t bother shutting the front door, climbs the staircase two, three steps at a time. Doors open upstairs and slam against walls. He comes back out of breath.

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