The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (10 best books of all time TXT) 📗

play house for a couple of days, I might as well sleep in the master bedroom.

I turn to the door behind me. And it’s closed.

I stop short. My bag’s already halfway off my shoulder, but I push it back slowly. I opened this door, I think. I should have opened all of them.

Did I, though? This room is at the very end of the hallway, so it should have been the last one I checked, but I have no memory of seeing it.

With unsteady fingers, I gently push it open. The lights are still off. When I flick the switch, I look closely this time. I check the walk-in closet, the bathroom suite. But it’s just me.

Me, and anything that followed me in.

“You don’t know that,” I whisper to myself. But I do, don’t I? I can dismiss Sutton Avenue as a product of my imagination. I can dismiss what Cassie said, if I try hard enough. But Alex Harper looked behind me, and he saw something, too.

And besides. Hypervigilance has given me what must be the worst superpower ever: somehow these days, I can feel when someone’s moving behind me, even when they don’t make a sound. Like the air itself is shifting.

I thought it was just the unease. But these past few hours, I’ve become steadily aware of something stirring, just over my shoulder. I feel it even now. With my back to a wall.

I make a quick mental list. One front door, heavy, triple-locked. One back door, sliding glass, an open fishbowl view for anyone who wants to look—but as locked as I can get it. No attic. No basement. And not many places to hide.

I backtrack to the living room and crawl onto the couch, watching the hallway behind me in the reflection of the TV. And for the first time since I left my car last night, everything is still.

The couch cushions are stiff, and I can feel every beat of my pulse pounding against them. Through my ribs, through my back, through my head. Before last May, I don’t remember being that aware of the motions of my heartbeat. Now everything I do, from the way I stand to the position I sleep in, feels like an effort to contain it.

And besides. Times like these, when I’m just sitting here, can be the worst of any of it. I waste half of my day wishing things would be this quiet, and when it finally comes, it doesn’t feel that peaceful. It feels like waiting.

I uncurl my clenched fingers and pull my shoulders down and back. I try to clear my mind and breathe, like Maurice taught me.

I make it about two minutes.

“Shit.” I dig through my pocket until I unearth my sad, cracked phone, and I scroll through my voicemails. I was hoping never to listen to this again. But okay, universe. Fine.

Very gently, I tap Gaby’s name. And I let it happen.

There are little details that the radio broadcast missed. I knew that, of course. For the first two weeks, I must have listened to her voicemail every day.

I half expect it to end differently here, in this empty neighborhood, in this symmetrical house. It’s almost a disappointment when nothing’s changed at all.

Rose? Are you there? And then a boy’s voice behind her, asking her a question, and a little rustle, as if Gaby turns toward him. And this is when she hangs up.

As always, the boy’s words are hard to make out. But I know what he’s asking. I’ve known for months.

Need a ride?

Gaby and I had a scary amount in common. Our dead fathers. Our iron-willed mothers. Our grandmothers growing up just minutes apart without ever meeting, and our stepfathers sliding into our lives before we knew much else. And for all our personalities could be different—Gaby was outgoing, outspoken, thrived on debate—in that moment, it didn’t matter. When you’re alone, and tired, and stranded, and a boy offers you a ride, you say yes, because you don’t know how he’s going to react to no.

To be fair, I don’t think Gaby was afraid of what would happen when she got into his car. I think she just didn’t like him.

My phone buzzes in my hands, a pinpoint hit to my startle reflex. It takes a second to hold the text steady enough to read.

Let me know if you need anything—Cassie

An ellipsis pops up. Then another text.

Or if you’re just bored, I guess.

I laugh shakily, tap out a will do. And before I put my phone down, I add Cassie Cyrene to my contacts.

I should sleep. That seems like the most sensible idea. But as many nights as I’ve spent lying awake, wishing my upstairs neighbors would shut the entire hell up, I think I’ve actually found somewhere that’s too quiet.

I try the remote, not expecting anything. But it flips on to a woman’s smiling face.

The background shivers behind her, like movement trying to break through. The words are garbled, the feed jerky and unnatural, like a stream that’s still buffering.

I change the channel. This one’s playing smoothly, but it’s hard to tell until I turn up the volume to hear the soft, trancelike soundtrack. The image of the dusk-lit playground looks still, at first, but when I look closer, I can see the swing rocking gently, on its own.

White words swim into view: What do you yearn for?

Unnerved, I flip forward again.

You might say, “But, Joe, they don’t understand our ‘human laws,’” booms the man on camera, finger-quoting the last two words. I say, they can learn! If you’ve got a neighbor-related property dispute—

Pulling a face, I flip forward one more time. But it looks like all I’ve got for channels is this public access hellscape—I’m back to the smiling woman from the start, her blonde waves just so, her teeth glinting as brightly as her pearls. This time, the signal comes through:

Some will tell you I’m questioning our values. She walks toward the camera down the length of a