Lost Signals (51 page)

“Hello
 
?” she called, her eyes locked on the frame, and then winced. What a dumb fucking horror movie move.

But she heard a
creak
, weight on the floor, and adrenaline dumped into her system by the gallons, and the spit in her mouth turned acidic, and she stiffened, and the creak came again, and she realized—Jesus fucking Christ—it was herself making the floor creak. She couldn’t stand still.

Carrie took a breath, whistled it out, took another. But she didn’t move from the doorway. The sweat of her palms softened the cardboard box.

She should be home right now. Danny would be home. She should be home and Danny should be home and they should be talking. She shouldn’t be here, copy-editing every article the copy-editors had left behind because she couldn’t bear to
go
home, couldn’t bear to be in the quiet house, couldn’t bear to be surrounded by the ghost heartbeats of what wasn’t to come.

She shouldn’t be standing in the doorway, staring at the back of the picture-frame that shouldn’t be on her desk.

“Oh, fuck this,” she said and walked in. The air seemed thicker, less yielding, as if trying to push her out.

She walked around the desk, slamming the red pens down, and looked at the picture in the suddenly-new frame.

And froze again.

“Oh, fuck this,” she repeated, and her voice was a sigh.

It was a sonogram photo, showing the fetus in a sliver-moon pose.

During the thirty-second week, the fetus loses the lanugo and begins to develop real hair. It blinks, practices breathing. With the right assistance, the fetus would survive premature birth.

The
thump-thump
of a heartbeat came to her
 
; not hers, but the memory of that damned forty-five-second recording.

She reached for the photo, then pulled her hand back, fingers curling in, as if it might burn her. She tried again, and this time touched it. It did not disappear in smoke, or crumble, or become intangible. She felt glass. Plastic.

She picked it up, ran her fingertips over it. The way the picture was set, the border cut off the date at the top of the photo. This could be some anonymous photo, something printed from a Google Image Search put here to fuck with her,

(by who
 
? when
 
?)

but it wasn’t. This was hers.

This was what she carried. Evelyn.

The
thump-thump
increased in sound, until it twinned with her own pulse.

Carrie’s vision blurred and she blinked. “Oh, fuck,” she breathed and her voice was wet.

Her stomach clenched suddenly, viciously. She dropped the frame onto the desk and dashed back into the hall, hand covering her mouth as her throat filled, barely making it to the restroom in time before her lunch jumped up and out. Her throat worked, her stomach pushed, and her face burned.

(like morning sickness all over again)

That earned another clench and she vomited again. Finally, she flushed, then laid her head on the seat, eyes closed against the restroom fluorescents, breathing heavily through her mouth.

(who would do this
 
? when
 
?)

Her mind instantly said,
Danny,
but it wouldn’t hold. They hadn’t spoken more than one or two words since the fight, passing each other like wary tomcats. But did it really seem like Danny
 
? Danny, moping around
 
? Danny, lost in his own pain
 
? Danny, who had absolutely collapsed when she’d laid into him
 
?

(you wanna be alone then be alone)

“Shit,” she whispered.

(we
are
alone)

She tightened her closed eyes, but tears escaped, anyway. “Shit, shit, shit.”

She grabbed a wad of toilet paper, wiped her mouth, then flushed again. She staggered to her feet, using the sides of the stall for support, and walked out, pausing briefly to check the mirror. She used minimal makeup, but she looked like a raccoon, anyway.

After the brightness of the restroom, the hallway was pitch-black. She shuffled back to her office doorway.

And, upon returning, the picture frame was gone.

“The fuck
 
?” she said and rushed to the desk, looked under it, moved around papers. She looked at where the frame had been sitting and only now noticed that, when the picture had appeared, the other two photos, as well as her little paperclip cup, had been arranged to accommodate it. Picking up the frame had left a hole in the arrangement.

Now the set-up was as it had been before.

The third picture had never been there.

She sat down and looked at her hands. She
remembered
the feel of the glass, of the plastic backing.

It took a moment to notice that the
thump-thump
of the heartbeat was gone, as well.

“The fuck
 
? The fuck
is
this
 
?”

Hallucination
popped immediately into her head, as well as
nervous breakdown
. That got her moving, switching her to automatic before any thoughts could really unspool, turning off her computer without shutting it down—killing the Rolling Stones in the middle of “19th Nervous Breakdown”,
oh
how
apropos
—grabbing her bag, and getting the hell out of there.

Week 35, Third Trimester
—
Day 1

She came home to an empty house and Dutch Master daffodils on the kitchen table.

She stopped in the kitchen archway, the day’s mail still in her hand. The flowers had been set in the center, arranged in a clear vase, tied with a fat pink ribbon. A folded cardboard note hung from the ribbon.

She and Danny still weren’t speaking. Moreover, the things that they should be saying were piling up, filling the house more quickly than baby detritus had. Soon it would push one of them out, although Carrie hadn’t gotten that far in her thinking, mainly because she couldn’t bear to.

(you wanna be alone then
be
alone)

She touched one of the daffodils. It was cool against her fingertips, slightly moist.

When would Danny have done this
 
? He left before she did. He wouldn’t have allowed some random florist into their house.

She pulled a flower out, smelled it. Outside, winter was only grudgingly giving way to spring, but the wet-earth smell of the daffodil made it like spring had already arrived.

“Danny,” she said and it didn’t come out as a hiss.

She set the flower back in the vase, then opened the note.

Only a month away
 
!,

it read in Danny’s scratchy handwriting.

And everything in Carrie turned down. The memory of the recording—
thump-thump-shush-thump-thump
—filled her head, pushed other thoughts out. Her eyes traced the words again and

(only)

couldn’t quite

(a month)

believe what they amounted to.

(away
 
!)

“What in the holy
fuck
 
?” she said, loud in the empty kitchen, trying to overpower the sound of the ghost heartbeat, and dropped the note, jarring the vase with the back of her hand so that some water sloshed out the side. She backed away, the muscles of her face flexing between confusion and rage.

She didn’t need to put together what was a month away.

“What,” she said and couldn’t immediately find more air. “What the
fuck
. . .
 
?”

She fumbled for her smartphone, then went into the hall. She pulled Danny’s cell from her Recent Calls list—the back of her mind noting how far down the list it was—and hit SEND.

It rang into his voicemail
 
: “Hi, this is Dan Finney. Sorry I missed you
 
; leave a message and I’ll try to correct that.”

She stabbed the END button, then thumbed through contacts for his office line. The air in the house grew moist, as if the daffodils had brought the greenhouse with it. She slammed open the front door and onto the front porch.

Danny picked up on the third ring. “Professor Fin—”

“What the fuck is wrong with you
 
?”

“Carrie
 
?
Carrie
 
? What—”

“
What the fuck is wrong with you
 
? You think this is
funny
 
? That I would
laugh
 
? Are you out of your fucking
mind
 
?”

Danny didn’t answer for a long time. Carrie breathed through her clenched teeth.

“I . . . ” The resignation in his voice was the cold clear admission of guilt she needed. She opened her mouth, and then Danny said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Carrie.”

She straightened. “What
 
?”

“I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Carrie.”

She screwed the phone hard into her ear, tried to pick up the telltale clues in his voice. She’d known Danny for almost two decades, and he lied very rarely, but she was a good journalist.

“You
didn’t
leave flowers on our kitchen table.” It should’ve been a question, but her voice refused to leave a low rumble. “And you
didn’t
leave a note telling me we were only a month away.”

A sigh from his end. “Why the hell would I do that
 
?”

“
Because I just saw them on the goddamn kitchen table
 
! Fresh
 
! Still cool
 
!
Still fucking wet
 
!
You’re telling me
you
didn’t put them there
 
?”

Another sigh. She could’ve cheerfully reached through the screen and squeezed his neck until her fingers tore into his throat.

“Carrie,” he said, then stopped for a beat. “Carrie, I haven’t been home all day. You
know
this is my late day. Three classes and two advisor times
 
? Plus mentoring
 
? My schedule’s been the same for five years, hon.”

She blinked. The phone casing creaked a little more. “Then. What. Did. I. See.
Danny
.”

He said nothing. It was answer enough.

“
Goddammit
 
!” She yanked the screen door open and stomped back into the house. “Stop fucking around, Danny. It’s
your
handwriting on the goddam note and—”

She entered the kitchen and, for the first time consciously, the there-then-gone frame at work popped into her head.

The daffodils were gone. No water spillage on the table from when she’d jostled the vase. Just the mail she’d dropped.

“And
 
? And what, Carrie
 
? It is
physically
impossible for me to have done what you said. Shall I produce witnesses
 
? Security video
 
?” A pause. “Or is it
you
who’s fucking around
 
?” His voice dropped. “
Are
you
 
? Because, don’t. Let’s not do this like this, Carrie. Not like this. You and I—”

“Shut up, Danny.” Her voice was a whisper. Her eyes were locked on where the daffodils weren’t.

“What
 
? I couldn’t hear—”

“Come home,” she said, louder this time. “Come home right now.”

“I’m gone,” he said, and the line was dead.

She let her arm fall, then slumped against the archway, staring.

When
hallucination
and
nervous breakdown
entered her head this time, she didn’t shake them off.

And the sound of the heartbeat was gone again.

***

They sat at opposite sides of the kitchen table, the center open and bare and dry—of course—between them. Outside the window, night had fallen.

“You need to talk to someone,” Danny said.

Carrie rubbed her face with her hands. “That’s ironic.”

“I’m serious.” He ducked his head so he could meet her eyes. “I don’t like any of this.”

“And I’m having the time of my life
 
?” She closed her eyes, took a breath. “I’m sorry. I feel like I’m losing my mind.” She dropped a hand to the spot where the vase had been. “I
held
that note, Dan. I
held
that frame. I could
feel
them. There was water right
here
—”

“But there wasn’t,” Danny reached out and took her hand, held on when her knee-jerk reaction was to pull away. “I have
not
been helpful. Neither of us have been. The past months have been the worst in my life, and yours.” He squeezed her hand. “But, y’know, maybe this is good. The right scare to get us back on track.”

She pulled away, slumped in her chair. “I don’t know. Who would I even speak to about this
 
?”

Danny aped her movements, then crossed his arms. “I can speak to some people
 
; frame it as research for a paper, or something. Some won’t buy that, but enough will.”

“It’s just . . . ” She shook her head. “They were right
there
, y’know
 
? The flowers, the frame . . . ” She stopped, looked at Danny. “The DVD
 
?”

He blinked at her. “The DVD
 
?”

“‘Baby’s First DVD’. Remember
 
?”

Slowly, his eyes lightened. “Holy shit, I
do
. We got it after the sonogram appointment . . . ” He trailed off, forehead scrunching. “Was that what you were talking about . . . ” He gestured vaguely. “ . . . before
 
?”

“You didn’t pull it out of the trash
 
?”

“I didn’t even remember it until just now. Too much had happened.” His face darkened. “You threw it away
 
?”

“When I first found it in my purse, after the miscarriage. Then I found it under papers on the desk.” She let out a deep breath. “What the fuck, Danny.” She studied him. “And nothing’s off with you
 
?”