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  He stood and steadied her as she stepped out of the hammock, then he pulled her close. “We could work off those calories when we get home tonight.” He gave her a comic wiggle of his eyebrows.

  Julie grasped two handfuls of his hair and pulled his face to hers. “We’ll see about that, Old Man. Now, let me go so I can shower off this sweat.”

  When she turned to go, he took a playful swat at her ass. Maybe he had it wrong. Maybe they would be all right, the two of them alone again.

  Maybe.

  Julie answered the doorbell and was surprised to find Patricia standing on her porch beside her new friend and soon-to-be business partner, Eddie.

  Patricia stormed into the foyer. “Did you tell him yet?”

  “Hello,” Julie said. “Do come in.”

  Patricia waved away her sarcasm. “Did you?”

  “No. I will. Hello, Eddie.”

  Julie closed the door behind them but kept hold of the handle, hoping this would be a quick conversation and the two of them would leave before Tom came downstairs ready for their movie date. No such luck. Patricia set sail for the formal living room with Eddie pulled along in her wake.

  At the archway that led into the room, Eddie turned and beckoned to Julie. Reluctantly, she moved toward him. He took her hand and led her to the sofa where Patricia was already seated.

  “Do you want me to tell him our plans?” Patricia asked her.

  “No, I don’t.” Though Julie knew who Patricia’s him referred to, her use of the pronoun instead of Tom’s name sounded particularly dismissive this evening. “Tom and I are on our way out to a movie in a few minutes and—”

  “Which movie?” Patricia asked.

  “Don’t Wake Me, so—”

  “Fantastic. Count us in.”

  “The reviews are wonderful,” Eddie said.

  When Tom’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, Julie was still trying to figure out how to get out of the invitation she’d seemingly offered.

  His face stinging from the insult of being shaved on a Saturday, Tom sprinted down the stairs. He headed toward the kitchen but, at the sound of Lindsay’s voice, stopped short in the entrance to the living room.

  “No thanks,” she said to her mom. “I just stopped in to change clothes. Have fun.” As she passed him on her way out, she gave him a look and whispered, “I pity you.”

  Tom surveyed the situation. Julie sat on the sofa flanked by her friend Patricia and a stranger with a shaved head. The man repulsed Tom on sight. Julie murmured an introduction. The stranger, Eddie something, looked too pink, overly scrubbed, naked—a pornographic little man. He sprang up, offering his hand.

  “It’s great to meet you, Tom.” Eddie sandwiched Tom’s hand between his and pumped it.

  Tom felt a shock of revulsion as if his hand had been sucked into some cold, wet, rotted thing. Though his hand was dry when Eddie set it free, he couldn’t resist the urge to wipe it on his jeans.

  Eddie leaned closer. “You have a gorgeous daughter, Tom. I’ll bet you have to beat the boys away from your door.”

  Tom’s skin crawled at the idea Eddie had looked at his daughter that way. He pinned the man with a glare. “Julie and I were just on our way out.”

  “I know,” Eddie said. “We’ve decided to join you. It’s a double-date.”

  Tom stared wide-eyed at Eddie. The man—swear to God—had giggled. Tom turned narrowed eyes on Julie who missed his scowl because she seemed inordinately fascinated with her feet. He shot daggers at Patricia instead.

  She responded with her canary-feathered cat smile and linked arms with Julie. “We’ll have a blast, won’t we, Tom?”

  With one hand, he rubbed his forehead where a throbbing had begun, and with the other, he jerked the car keys from his pocket. “We’re leaving.”

  “Let’s take my new Lexus,” Eddie said. “You’ll love it, Tom. Top of the line, fully loaded, and rides like a dream.”

  “No, thanks.”

  He might be headed toward hours of boredom, but he’d be damned if another man would do the driving. Tom stalked out the door. He had half a mind to take his Ford crew cab, just to see the look on Eddie’s face, but they always drove Julie’s Camry when they went out together. As Julie slid into the passenger’s seat, she flashed him an apologetic smile. He didn’t return it, but he did consider it a sign she hadn’t planned this fiasco. Still, why hadn’t she stood up to Patricia?

  “This night is on me,” Eddie said, settling into the back seat. “After we take in the film, we’ll have a spectacular dinner.”

  “Oh! I know the perfect restaurant,” Patricia said. She leaned over to whisper in Eddie’s ear. Eddie giggled again. Tom winced at the sound.

  “Boys and girls,” Eddie announced, “we are in for a treat tonight.”

  “Well, then …” Julie said.

  At the lack of enthusiasm in her tone, Tom forgave her a little more. Before he jerked the gearshift into reverse, he hit the power button on the CD changer, hoping Lindsay had used the car last. Dashing his hope to torture the backseat occupants with something loud and possibly obnoxious, the disc in play was a collection of Julie’s favorite love songs. Eddie’s and Patricia’s too, apparently. During the twelve-minute drive to the theater, they sang along with every word. In steamed silence, Tom awarded them the title of Most Annoying Couple Ever—worldwide.

  *

  In contrast to the smiles of his three companions, Tom’s lips were pressed bloodless against his teeth as he crossed the parking lot to the Rockville Cineplex doors. He strode a step ahead, maintaining lead position as they joined the ticket line. He was determined not to let Eddie pay out a dime for him or Julie.

  All he’d wanted was to spend an evening with his wife. He would have endured this movie, and even discussed it at The Shack afterward, but she’d discounted him by dragging along these other two. Compounding his torment tonight, Patricia had this obnoxious new “boyfriend” in tow. Had Julie actually called him that? Tom found it impossible to think of the pompous, middle-aged man as a boy anything.

  Tom puffed his cheeks and then forced an exhale through the corners of his mouth. All signs pointed to this being a long evening. He reached for his wallet.

  “Now, Tom,” Eddie said, “put that away. I told you—”

  “So, Eddie,” Julie said, “did you say you were born in Ohio?”

  Tom shot her a look, surprised she’d interrupted. But then, he supposed she’d sensed he was about to tell Eddie where to stuff his money.

  “Oh no, Julie, I’m Pennsylvania born, but I lived in Chicago before I came here.”

  “And you sold real estate there?”

  Patricia answered for him. “He owned the top realty company.”

  Eddie feigned modesty. “Too much stress. I’m lying low here for a while.”

  Tom squelched a sneer. Lost his shirt is more like it. He tuned out the rest of the conversation and resorted to his habit of people watching. Scanning the crowd for interesting faces, he fixed on the woman in the ticket booth at the head of their line.

  Her pale skin framed by long dark hair nearly glowed in the theater’s lighting. Never good at guessing ages, Tom could tell only that she was younger than he yet no longer a girl. Hoping to see the color of her eyes, he continued to watch, but as she dispensed tickets, she never looked up.

  Sensing himself a similar object of scrutiny, Tom glanced over his shoulder and locked eyes with Eddie. Unfazed by Tom’s glare, Eddie’s eyes remained cold as he smiled before turning his attention back to Julie and Patricia’s conversation.

  Tom dismissed Eddie with a shudder of disgust and glanced at, then ignored, the usual assortment of teens displaying their colorful personas. While he inched his way forward in line, he continued his appraisal of the woman in the ticket booth. There was something about her more striking than her coloring. She seemed serene. No, not that. She was … what? Lonely? Whatever it was, it made her seem isolated, as though she were not fully there.
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br />   The movement of her pale, delicate hands from money to cash drawer to tickets mesmerized him. For a second, Tom felt sure he knew this woman, but before he could place her, it was his turn to step up to the booth.

  “Two for Don’t Wake Me.” He slid the money toward her hand. Their fingertips met.

  This time, she did look up and …

  A blur of green, leafy branches whip by as they run deeper into the woods. The shouts behind them grow closer. They cannot outrun him. They have no time left to hide. Their attempt to escape is futile, but he prays he still has time to get her out of danger, out of sight, before that monster catches up with them. Without slowing his stride, he jerks her alongside him and then pushes her ahead.

  “Run. Run,” he cries, “don’t look back!”

  Seeking to hold her scent, he breathes deeply. He captures one last image of her auburn hair falling in soft waves down her back. He lifts a hand, aching to touch it, but he hardens his heart and turns back to face his enemy.

  For one brief moment, his rage overshadows his fear and then …

  a flash of light a roar a searing pain in his chest a scream

  Felled like a buck, he stares up at her. He can’t lift his hand to touch her. “I’m sorry,” he tries to say, but the blood bubbling in his throat chokes him.

  And then …

  Tom looked into the stunned eyes of the woman in the booth and saw clearly they were green. He realized two things at once—his expression surely mirrored hers, and she’d just seen exactly what he’d seen. Adrenaline pumped through him causing his heart to pound while his insides impersonated Jell-O in an earthquake.

  “Tom!” Julie jerked on his arm.

  Moving as if in a dream, Tom allowed her to pull him away, but he held the gaze of those green eyes. For a second, he saw a slight double-image, as though a transparency overlaying a solid briefly shifted. In that moment, he understood. Through the eyes of the dying man, he’d stared into a similar green gaze, and now—somehow—he’d seen the real and the imagined simultaneously.

  Seated in the theater, Tom watched the movie but saw little of it. His mind kept wandering back to those woods, back to the ticket booth, back to the strangest experience he’d ever had. The longer he sat there, the more urgent grew his need for another glimpse of the woman.

  Finally, he leaned over and whispered to Julie, “I’m going to the restroom.”

  He passed the men’s room and stopped just inside the far left theater entrance. From that location, he had a clear view of the ticket booth. One glance told him she was no longer there. Disappointed, he turned away and started back to his seat. He nearly tripped over his own feet when he saw her standing behind the popcorn counter. He ducked into the restroom alcove. When his heartbeat slowed, he stepped out and over to the water fountain. From there, he could see where she stood.

  While he pretended to drink, Tom watched her from the corner of his eye. With no customers in line, she stood motionless, looking down. Nothing visible indicated she was anything but a completely normal woman.

  “Looks like a fun time in the sack, doesn’t she, Tom?”

  Eddie’s voice in his ear caused Tom to jump back from the fountain. He shoved Eddie away. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  He didn’t stay to hear Eddie’s response.

  A sudden chill pulled Annie Garrett from her thoughts. At first she attributed it to the theater’s air-conditioning, but the chill intensified when she looked up and saw the short, bald man standing on the other side of the concessions counter. She gasped.

  “Yes, my dear, you know me,” he said. “In some part of your soul, you remember every minute you spent with me … especially those moments we shared alone at night. In the dark.”

  She swallowed against rising nausea. Her instinct told her to run, but she knew without trying that she couldn’t move. He wouldn’t let her.

  He laughed. “No, you’re not going anywhere. You’ll stand here like the mindless cunt you are until I leave, and when I do, you won’t remember a thing I’ve said to you.”

  A whimper rose in her throat.

  “We’re going to have so much fun, you and Tom and I. Tom is the man you were thinking about when I walked up. He’s thinking about you too. Eventually, you’ll remember him and he you. And you’ll both remember me—when I will it.”

  He wiggled his fingers and she felt her arms rise and dance in the air. He laughed again, and her arms fell limp to her sides.

  “Oh yes, I’ll control you and him like marionettes. And when I tire of that … well, I don’t want to give away the big surprise. Let’s just say revenge is sweet, shall we?”

  His lips stretched into a mockery of a smile. “Everything I do to you and Tom will be your fault, my dear. Your pathetic and stupid craving for love doomed you both to an eternal pas de trois with me. I’m thrilled, aren’t you?”

  She wimpered again.

  “Not thrilled? Oh, that’s right”—all semblance of his dark humor faded—“guilt hurts … so I’ve heard.” At a flick of his hand, pain ripped through her abdomen. The scream inside her head never made it to her lips. A snap of his fingers plunged her into blackness.

  “Hey, lady, are you open?”

  Annie blinked against the sudden glare, and the red-haired boy standing on the other side of the counter came into focus. She gave the lobby a quick scan, though she couldn’t have said why. A sudden wave of nausea flooded her mouth with saliva. She swallowed. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah.” The boy shoved his empty popcorn tub toward her. “I want a refill.”

  *

  After the movie, Tom drove them all to the trendy new restaurant the award-winning couple was “dying to try.” He was not surprised to see the place decorated in purple and gray—“mulberry and dove” according to Patricia—with chrome sculptures and indirect lighting, kept low for the desired ambiance.

  “This decor is absolutely stunning,” Patricia said.

  Tom bit down on his tongue to keep from sneering. He’d already formed the opinion that, if fully lit, this restaurant decor would resemble the food court in the upscale shopping mall his crew had helped build last year. As Patricia and Eddie oohed and ahhed over the menu, Tom suppressed the urge to mime a two-fingered gag, but when Patricia feigned a swoon over the wine list, he gave in to a snort of derision.

  “Mes amis,” Eddie said with a flourish of hands, “I predict, by the end of the evening, we will claim this restaurant as our very own corner of heaven.”

  An insult sizzled on the tip of Tom’s tongue, but just then Julie gave him an exaggerated ohmygod roll of her eyes, and her gesture redeemed his good humor. He gave her a smile and a wink.

  After twenty-four years, his relationship with her had grown into an easy thing, maybe not so exciting but comfortable. On the job, guys griped about their marriages, and even if he allowed for their bullshit exaggeration, Tom knew his marriage could be a lot worse than just monotonous. Julie involving Patricia in their life was a strike against her, though.

  Tom’s main grievance with Patricia was her habit of voicing, at every opportunity, the opinion Julie could have married someone far better. And maybe Julie could have—definitely she could have—but he couldn’t stand that a pretentious bitch like Patricia judged him unworthy. He and Julie argued less than most couples, but he blamed Patricia for nearly every quarrel they did have. Julie starting a sentence with, Patricia says … or Patricia thinks … was all it took to start him pitching fastballs.

  Julie drew his attention back to the table. “You’re very quiet, Tom. Did you enjoy the movie?”

  Fortunately, with one ear kept tuned to the discussion among the three of them, he’d heard enough to know the movie was a comedy they judged hilarious. “Yeah. It was funny.”

  Tom ignored Patricia’s sneer at his lame response. Julie asked him no more questions. The appetizers arrived, wine flowed freely and so did the conversation between Julie and the other two. For the most part
, Tom felt free to exclude himself. At times, he realized he hadn’t heard a word for several minutes. As he ate, his thoughts kept drifting to what had happened to him at the theater.

  Until that night, he’d lived a life so ordinary it was almost predictable. He’d never made All-American, never made a million bucks, never made it to anyone’s Man of the Year list. He’d never enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame for anything. But this …

  He’d finally experienced something extraordinary and he wanted to hold onto the memory of it. So while the rest of the foursome were eating, drinking and being oh-so-merry, he could think only of seeing The Woman again.

  *

  Annie stood just inside the doors of the now closed theater, waiting for her sister, late as usual, to pick her up. Although she’d been reluctant at the time, letting Kate borrow her car tonight had turned out for the best. Annie couldn’t have driven home safely. She felt all jangly, like everything had been shaken loose under her skin.

  For a while, she’d worked in the ticket booth, filling in during the rush for one of the teens who’d called in sick. The stream of date-night couples had lined up before her as faceless to her as she was to them. Then he had stepped up to the booth. She’d worked the rest of her shift in concessions distracted, remembering little of it now, and though she prided herself on always cashing out to the penny, her drawer had come up short three dollars and twenty-seven cents.

  Trying to put a name to what she’d experienced tonight, Annie searched her knowledge of the bizarre. It could have been a vision, though she’d never had one before, and the only people she’d heard of who did were deeply religious or psychos. No one would declare her a saint, but as far as she knew, her mind was sound. And yet …

  Her mind replayed the drama she’d seen—no, the drama she’d lived—because as weird as it sounded, she was that woman. In only those few seconds, she’d registered every detail—the taste of her lover’s kiss, the warm slick of him oozing down her thighs, the roars of fury, the vibrant green of leaves flashing by, the sting of scratches on her bare feet and ankles from the underbrush, and then the deafening sound and acrid smell of gunpowder. Her heart had broken at the sight of her lover cut down, his blood spilling on the ground. Her screams still echoed in her mind.