I return to the bathroom, run water over the toothpaste, and start brushing. Clan the Brody Bear needs insurance to survive the winter, and Catherine the Migrant Mother won’t sell it to him. Browline Schramel and Mildred the Mouse live inside a telephone, one that Browline Schramel is always tinkering with.

“I know you have to write, baby. Come to bed?”

“What did Stanley do before . . . before he retired?” I ask around a mouthful of toothpaste.

“Attorney.”

Sad Stanley earns a million dollars in the case of a lifetime, and he and Saint Dorothy donate the money to crippled children.

I brush all my teeth for another full minute, rinse, spit, wash my toothbrush, drop it into the holder, and pad into our bedroom. “I wish we could fast-forward to being done, being settled in, everyone knowing about the baby,” I say, pulling my thoughts back. “I want to be on the other side of all this, where everyone’s happy.”

He’s suddenly studying the wallpaper as if it’s a love note.

I don’t know why he’s acting uncomfortable, but he is. I change the subject. “Why do you think the house looks empty next door?”

His head jerks, as if I’ve woken him. “The green house? I told you. That’s the Brodys’. Clan and Catherine.”

“No, the other one.” I drift to the window, which someone has closed. I tap the glass, indicating the white-shuttered craftsman on the other side of our driveway. I can see by the shadowy streetlight that the window mirroring ours has also been closed. Guess nobody in this town likes fresh air.

Deck appears behind me, our images a warped version of American Gothic reflected back at us. “That’s Dorothy and Stan’s. I suppose they don’t need the second floor now that Stan’s in that wheelchair.”

I nod, let him wrap his arms around me. He’s nuzzling my hair, whispering how much he loves me, when a face appears in the opposite window. I scream and yank the curtains shut.

“What is it?” Deck asks, releasing me.

“Dorothy,” I say, my heartbeat clobbering my veins. “She was staring at us from that empty room.”

Deck’s brow creases. “You sure? That doesn’t seem right.” He flicks off our bedroom light and returns to the window, pulling the curtain to peek at the edge and then sliding it all the way open. “See? No one there. Probably only your reflection.”

“Maybe,” I say, peering out. Except I still feel the jolt, electric, like I’ve licked a battery. I close the curtains again, with finality.

Then I remember. “Why did Clan Brody call me Ronald and Barbara’s daughter-in-law?”

I’m hoping Deck will explain it away as a poor joke, an overfamiliarity meant to put me at ease. The pained look on his face tells me otherwise.

“You told them we’re married!”

“Eloped,” Deck says, wrapping me in a hug that mimics his father’s from earlier, only smaller. (Not just his father’s hug. All the men embraced me.)

“It’ll make it easier once our baby starts showing,” he’s saying. “Trust me, my parents and their friends are good people, the best, but they’re still in the dark ages on some things. They’d flip if they thought you were pregnant and unmarried.”

He pulls back and grins his charming grin. “Besides, it wasn’t really a lie because we’ll be married soon enough. In the meanwhile, I did what was best. Those bohunks wouldn’t accept a bastard.”

The word is too sharp. “Deck!”

“You know what I mean. It’s only for a bit. As soon as we’re settled, we’ll be married, and think of all the money we’ll save by actually eloping.” He smiles again, wider, hoping I’ll fall for it.

I just might. I want to ask him why we’re not married already, know I should, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

Yet.

Instead, I close my eyes, trying on his words. The two of us, forever joined. I inhale deeply. I can’t envision us with an actual child, have hardly felt pregnant other than that invasive doctor’s visit.

“Doesn’t it feel great to be here, baby?” he asks, kissing my forehead. “Safe, with family? Away from the draft, and the mugging?”

And just like that, he’s awoken the memory I meant to forget.

CHAPTER 5

I’d stopped by the Red Owl grocery near our apartment, full of self-pity because I hadn’t been promoted (hadn’t even been considered, if I’m being honest), with instructions to pick up Tang for Deck.

I grabbed some milk and bread, too, paid for my groceries, and took a shortcut through the alley. The sun was sinking behind clouds, the alley shadowed, but there was no safer city than Minneapolis—I swear to God that’s what I was thinking. The temperature dropped the moment I stepped between the buildings, driving a shudder up my spine.

Someone’s walking on your grave, my mom used to say about such a shiver.

“Excuse me.”

I turned toward the voice, the hairs at the back of my neck vibrating in alarm. The man had appeared from a cross alley. He was disheveled, breathing like he was winded. A rankness, pungent like sour milk, radiated off him.

“Yes?” My pulse grew thick at my wrists, but I wasn’t scared, not yet. It was a few minutes after 5:00 p.m. and still light out. Our apartment was around the corner and a block to the right. There would be other people on the main street. I was jittery only because I’d been thinking of my grave when he popped out.

The man shambled closer.

I covered my nose, discreetly so as not to offend him.

The echo of two people talking, laughing, careened around the corner on the far end of the alley and bounced toward us.

“Do you have a light?” he asked, holding out a pack of cigarettes.

I breathed a sigh. I’d been more scared than I’d admitted. He only wanted help with his smoke. And now that he’d stepped out of the shadows, I could see that he was actually reasonably dressed, average size, his tan suit and porkpie hat several seasons out of style but presentable. He was still panting like he’d run to get here, his hooked nose dripping with exertion or the cooling temperatures. The rotten smell I’d initially associated with him—powdery sour—was surely coming from the nearby garbage bins.

I smiled and set down my grocery bag before tugging my purse off my shoulder. “You’re in luck. I don’t smoke anymore, but my best friend, Ursula, talked me into a quick puff the other day and gave me her lighter—” were the last words out of my mouth before he shoved me against the brick, slamming my head against the wall with such force that shooting lights exploded behind my eyes.

There wasn’t time to scream.

The bone side of his arm pinned my neck, the tip of a wicked-looking hunting knife resting between my eyes. I blinked to make sense of it, to erase the double and triple view until it settled into a single blade. I’d never been attacked before, not so much as slapped.

I tried to swallow, but his arm didn’t allow for it.

None of this made sense.

The echo of laughter on the street seemed to grow closer and then fade.

He leaned in. “I’m going to hurt you.”

No shit, I thought before a crazy idea lit up my brain, a ridiculous image of me telling the editor who’d passed me over for a promotion that I’d finally landed a scoop: my own mugging. But was that what this was? A mugging? I blinked some more, the pain at the back of my skull exploding in red mushroom clouds. My eyelids were the only part of my body that seemed to be working.