Stalked by Kate Brennan

Author:Kate Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141918914
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

It’s hot the day I leave Paul’s house, but the tile floors and shaded windows keep the house uncomfortably cool. I wear socks and a sweater as I wander from room to room. For all my efforts to make this a home, it remained just a house—his house, with dark corners and not enough doors.

In the front hall, I line up boxes and duffels full of clothes, books, and files—the things I’ll take with me. The rest—mostly furniture—is in the spare room waiting for the movers. Paul’s offered to help, all along, but I don’t want a thing from him, except to leave me alone and stay out of the house my last day here. He acts hurt: just one more way he annoys me these days. As if he were the injured party.

I tell him I’ll be gone by eight. I really plan on leaving by seven, to avoid the good‐bye part of the day. I make plans to meet friends for a seven‐thirty movie. Just before I leave, I go back to the upstairs bedroom for one more check. For the last time, I sit on the blue duvet cover I bought after I’d moved in. Paul has told me to take it, but I don’t want a reminder of anything we shared.

Next to his side of the bed is a newly framed photograph—of me. Of all the photos he’s taken, this is the first he’s ever framed. Until this moment, it was my favorite. Right after I’d moved into his house, we drove north and stayed in the woods for a weekend. Through a mass of maple leaves behind me, the late‐afternoon sun casts a shadow on the woven scarf covering my head. But mostly what the camera captures is the soft look of love.

This is just like him: yearning for something unattainable instead of appreciating what was staring him in the face when he could have done something to preserve it.

I open the built‐in cupboard by my side of the bed. I’d cleared it out the night I moved into the guest room, but I want to make sure I’ve gotten everything. I find a sheaf of typewritten sheets I thought I’d already packed. Under the pile are handwritten pages, in Paul’s hand. I know I shouldn’t read them. I do anyway. They’re notes about the woman he was with before me, the woman who left him after he told her he was with a prostitute in Thailand.

She and I form a select group: women who’ve left him. With great precision, the pages detail his early dates with her. He’d hold himself back sexually, and then, as soon as he left her, he’d visit a prostitute. Oddly enough, this is one of the most reassuring things I could possibly find on my way out of this house. As much as it disgusts me, it makes me realize my final instincts about him are right. I also find notes about dates he’s had in the last month.

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