It burned her throat like a lie. But it wasn’t a lie, not wholly. She made it sound like a matter of choice, her choice, and only that part was untrue. But she wouldn’t think about it now.
Valerie made a sound that might have been laughter. “All right. I don’t care. I . . . didn’t want to live here anymore. I’m living somewhere else now, somewhere much nicer. With someone who is very rich. He gives me lots of nice things.” She sounded anything but happy about it, and Sarah felt a twinge of pity for this stranger and her problems.
“Now tell me,” said Valerie. “If you won’t live here, then I have to find anyone else. I . . . I don’t want to waste any more time. You can see I’ve already moved out, and . . . the house shouldn’t be empty.”
It would be silly to say no to a perfect house just because the former tenant was a little crazy. And it would be cowardly to say no because she was afraid of the isolation and solitude—isolation and solitude were just what she wanted.
“I want the house,” Sarah said firmly.
Valerie smiled, and the feral, self-satisfied nature of the smile gave Sarah goosebumps, made her for one wild moment want to retract her agreement and run like hell.
“I’ve given Mrs. Owens your name,” Valerie said. “She’s the owner. There’s no lease, no deposit. She was grateful to me for finding someone to take my place. She’s very old, and she doesn’t like the bother of showing the house. She trusted me to find someone who wouldn’t be any trouble, someone who would pay the rent on time. You won’t be any trouble, will you?”
Now Sarah had a reason for her unease. How could Valerie have presumed to give Sarah’s name to the owner before Sarah agreed, before she had even seen the house? She could still back out—
Valerie dug into a pocket of her tight jeans and withdrew a scrap of paper. “This is Mrs. Owens’ address, where you’ll send the rent. Don’t go bothering her; she doesn’t like to be bothered. That’s one reason the rent’s so low. You’ll have to keep the lawn mowed and do any minor repairs yourself.” When Sarah did not move to take it, Valerie pushed the scrap of paper closer and flapped it impatiently in Sarah’s face. “Rent’s due the twenty-second of each month. Eighty-five dollars. Remember that.”
And when had Valerie had time to call Mrs. Owens?
Valerie cocked her head and smiled slowly, mockingly. “Of course . . . if you want to change your mind . . . if you think you’d be scared, living out here all by yourself . . .”
But Valerie was lying, of course. She was crazy. And what she said didn’t matter. This was Sarah’s house now, and she could just send Valerie away. Sarah plucked the piece of paper from Valerie’s hand, accepting the house, committing herself. “I’ll send Mrs. Owens the first month’s rent next week.”
“Good. Move in whenever you want, the sooner the better. He . . . Mrs. Owens doesn’t want the house standing empty for long.” Again Valerie dug into her jeans. “Here’s the key to the back door since you were worried about it.” She tossed a bit of light metal at Sarah, who managed to catch it in midair.
Halfway to the door, Valerie paused and looked back. The mad, sly smile was on her face again, and it still gave Sarah goosebumps. “Do you have a cat?”
Sarah frowned and shook her head. “No. Why?”
“You might want to get one. I think there’s a rat in the cellar.”
“Cellar?”
Valerie turned without answering and hurried away, almost running. She slammed the door so hard behind her that the house shook. Bemused, Sarah stood still in the empty house, listening for the sound of Valerie’s car. When she heard the Ferrari roar away, she moved again, walking into the kitchen and then making the same circle of the house that she had made first by following Valerie.
My house, she thought. My own. Home.
But the word home conjured another image. Against her will, she saw again the small, upstairs apartment she had shared with Brian for the past year and a half. One bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen barely large enough to turn around in, all made even smaller by the bulk of furniture, books and records, and a laissez-faire attitude towards housekeeping. It might have been comfortable for one, but it was not really large enough for two. Sarah and Brian had been forever bumping into each other. At first, they had found it romantic.
Although romantic wasn’t really the word for their relationship, Sarah thought. Necessary—that was more like it. Their constant companionship had been a necessity of life, like food or drink or sleep. They had been addicted to each other.
The realization of that had frightened Sarah. Sarah, who wasn’t afraid of flying, or of insects, or of going to the dentist, was afraid of what she felt for Brian. She’d had boyfriends before, but never had she felt this obsessive need which—it now appeared—was what everyone had meant all along by the word “love.”
And although this new life, this sense of being half of a greater whole, was nearly always pleasant and could be exhilarating, Sarah feared being trapped by it, becoming lost. When Brian proposed marriage, Sarah felt as if she’d been pushed out of an airplane: a giddy surge of pleasure, and then terror. She had seen herself taking the path she’d always sworn she would avoid, and turning into her mother, a hollow creature who hardly seemed to exist apart from her husband and children.
So she had put Brian off with excuses about being too young, and wanting to finish her degree, and how they should wait until they had both settled into careers. She had tried to tell him the truth—that she was frightened—but Brian, who seemed to know everything else important about her without the need for words, had not understood.
“But what’s wrong with being happy?” he had asked.
“Nothing. It’s not the being happy . . . it’s being dependent on you in order to be happy.”
“But, my love, I’m every bit as dependent on you.”
She had given up trying to explain. The difference between them, she thought, was not that he was less dependent or less vulnerable, but that he didn’t find those states of being threatening, and she did. From that moment, she began to work at keeping her separate identity. She made plans that didn’t include Brian, she met old friends for lunch, she spent long hours in the library instead of studying at home, she briefly took up a political cause, and she stopped rushing home to share every meal with Brian. She imagined she could win back her old independence without losing Brian. She should have known better.
Brian had seen Sarah’s campaign to save herself as a sign of loss of interest in him, as a lack of love, as a threat, and, finally, as a betrayal. And so, in the end, he had betrayed her: he had found someone else.
All along, Sarah admitted, she had been pulling away from him, seeking her own freedom, but she had imagined that they were engaged in a balancing act. When she pulled away, she expected him to pull back. The one thing she had not counted on was that he might stop pulling—that he would let her go.
It’s over, Sarah told herself. It doesn’t matter how it happened, or who was right or who wrong—it’s over, and time to stop brooding. But she could not get Brian out of her mind.
Sarah leaned back against the living room wall and closed her eyes. She might as well have a good old wallow while she was alone, she thought. Get it out of her system, for a time, at least, and maybe she wouldn’t break down in front of her friends again. She didn’t try to stop the tears as she remembered that terrible evening when Brian had told her he loved someone else.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen, Sarah,” he said. He sounded sincere; his broad, handsome face was more miserable than she had ever seen it. “But she needs me. Melanie needs me.”