Page 2 of Roulette

Meredith, the other waitress, caught my eye from across the diner and raised an eyebrow. “He smiled today,” she said, like she was announcing a celestial event.

“Half of one,” I corrected her.

“Progress.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the coffeepots, but my chest loosened, just a little.

The morning shifted into afternoon, tables emptying and filling with the lunch crowd, and I kept moving -- pouring coffee, taking orders, and clearing plates.

My feet were killing me by the time I turned onto my street. Eight hours on the diner floor did that, especially when Dave decided we were short-staffed and I picked up the extra tables. I’d stuffed my apron into my bag, the fabric still smelling of coffee and grease, and the walk home had taken longer than usual because every step sent a dull ache through my arches. The evening light was going golden, softening even the cracked sidewalks and faded storefronts around the edges. I dug my keys out of my pocket and fitted them into the lock, turning the deadbolt, then twisted the knob.

The door swung open. I stepped inside.

And stopped.

The armchair in the living room was a foot to the left of where it should have been. Not much -- just enough the impression it had left in the carpet was visible, a darker patch where the legs had sat for months without moving. I stared at it, keys still dangling from my fingers, and felt something cold slide into my stomach.

The cabinet doors above the kitchen sink were hanging open. Both of them, swung wide like someone had been looking for something in a hurry and hadn’t bothered to close them after. I never left them open. Open cabinets meant someone had been touching things they had no right to touch.

I turned slowly, taking in the room. Nothing else seemed out of place at first glance. The TV was still on its stand. The coffee maker hadn’t moved, the mug with the chipped rim still upside-down in the drying rack.

Then I saw the photo.

My grandmother’s framed picture on the shelf was face-down. The glass against the wood, her smile pressed into darkness. I hadn’t touched it that morning. I’d looked at it, same as always, and then I’d turned away. I hadn’t picked it up. I never picked it up.

The cold in my stomach sharpened. I set my bag down on the floor and moved through the house room by room, switching on every light as I went. The bedroom door was closed. I pushed it open with my fingertips, heart hammering against my ribs, and scanned the room from the threshold. Bed still made. Closet door shut. Nothing on the floor shouldn’t have been there. I checked the closet anyway, pulling the door wide and reaching in to push aside the hanging clothes, half-expecting to find someone crouched among the shoes. Empty.

Back through the living room to the kitchen. The back door was locked, deadbolt engaged, the little metal hook latched over the eye screw the way I’d left it. I tested it anyway, pulling the door against the frame. Solid. The windows were all latched -- living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. I checked each one, running my hands along the sills, looking for scratches or marks not there before. Nothing.

I returned to the living room and stood in the middle of the carpet, facing the turned-over photo. My reflection stared back at me from the dark glass of the TV screen -- pale, wide-eyed, keys still clutched in one hand like a weapon I didn’t know how to use. I crossed to the shelf and righted the frame, setting it back in its place. My grandmother’s face looked out at me again, calm as ever. I brushed a speck of dust from the corner of the glass with my thumb.

The wind couldn’t have turned pictures over, not with the windows closed, and the air in the house still and warm. But maybe I’d bumped the chair this morning and not noticed. I’d been tired, running on coffee and not much else, moving through the routine on muscle memory while my brain was somewhere else. Maybe I’d knocked the photo when I grabbed my keys. Maybe the cabinet doors had been open all along and I’d been too distracted to register it.

The explanations lined up in my head, each one thinner than the last. I went back to the front door and checked the lock again. Then the back door. Then the front again, turning the deadbolt back and forth as if the mechanism itself might confess to having been picked.

I didn’t call anyone. The police would take a report, ask if anything was stolen, and when I said no, they’d shrug and tell me to be more careful with my locks. The thought of explaining it to a stranger made my stomach twist. The reality pressed in with a sharper edge than usual -- the specific, crystalline awareness of being in a house someone else had walked through while I wasn’t there.

I sat down on the sofa and pulled the blanket across my lap. The yarn was soft under my fingers, worn smooth from years of use. I tucked my feet underneath me and faced the front door and didn’t move.

The light outside the windows faded from gold to gray to dark. Streetlights came on, dragging long shadows across the living room wall. I told myself to move. Get up. Eat something. Wash the coffee mug. Do anything normal enough to prove the house was still mine. Instead, I sat beneath my grandmother’s blanket with my eyes on the front door, every muscle pulled tight, waiting for the sound I knew wasn’t coming until it did.

Something tapped against the glass.

Not the door. Not the porch. The living room window.

My breath stopped. The blanket slipped from my lap and pooled around my knees, but I didn’t reach for it. I stared at the closed curtains while the house went impossibly still around me, the refrigerator suddenly too loud, the clock too sharp, my own heartbeat a frantic, traitorous thing in my ears.

Another sound came. Slower this time. A tap, or a scrape, or the branch outside dragging one brittle branch along the siding. I couldn’t tell. The harder I listened, the less certain I became.

Then something pale shifted at the edge of the curtain. A shape. A smear of moonlight. The suggestion of fingers pressed flat to the glass before my own fear gave it form. Five narrow shadows spread across the fabric, so close to a hand that my mind supplied skin and pressure and the terrible certainty of someone standing just beyond the window, wanting me to know they could touch the place where I lived.

I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything except watch that almost-hand stay there one second too long before the curtains settled and the shadows lost their shape.

I kept my gaze on the door, and I didn’t blink.

Chapter Two

Roulette