The Wrong Man

She stared up, then down the street. She saw a man backing his car out of his driveway. Some laughing children overloaded with bulging backpacks heading toward a school bus stop. A woman with a long, bright green overcoat tossed over her nightgown, reaching down for the morning paper.

No O’Co

She leaned her head back, gasping in drafts of cold air. Her eyes strayed across the morning normalcy and she gasped back a sob. In that moment, she realized that he no longer actually had to be present in order to be present.

From a spot a short ways down the street, Michael O’Co

He had considered, then dismissed, trying to stop her as she ran. The surprise might cause her to panic, and it would have been too easy for her to flee. She was far more familiar with the side streets and backyards of the neighborhood, and as quick as he was, he was unsure whether he could have caught her. But, more important, she might have screamed, gotten the attention of neighbors, and somebody might have called the police. If she had made a scene, he would have had to back down before he had a chance to speak with her. More than anything, what he did not want was to have to make some sort of explanation to some skeptical police officer as to what he was doing.

He had to find the right moment. Not this one, on the street where she’d grown up. It resonated her past. He was her future.

Easier, by far, he thought, to drink in her vision. He particularly liked watching her legs move. They were long and supple, and he wished that in their sole night together, he’d paid even more attention to them. Still, he was able to picture them, naked, glistening, and he shifted about in his seat as he felt the first heat of being aroused. He wished that Ashley would remove her knit cap, so that he could see her hair, and when he looked up and she did this, he smiled and wondered if he could send her all sorts of subliminal messages, directly from his thoughts to hers. It just reinforced in his mind how linked they were.

Michael O’Co

He could simply look at Ashley from afar and feel her warmth throughout his body. It was as if she energized him. He reached out, as if driven by passion, unable to sit still, and opened his door.

A short ways away, Ashley turned at that same moment and, without seeing the movement, filled with despair, stepped back into the house.

Michael O’Co

Steal her, he said to himself.

It seemed so simple to him.

He smiled. It was just a matter of getting her alone.

Not exactly alone, he thought. But alone in his world. Not hers.

I am invisible, he thought, as he slid back into the car and pulled away from the curb.

He was wrong about this. From the window in her upstairs bedroom, Sally stood, watching. She gripped the window frame with white-knuckled fingers, close to breaking the wood, her nails digging into the paint. It was the first time she had seen Michael O’Co

She watched the car disappear down the street.

Love is death, she thought.

Breathing hard, she turned away from the window. She decided against instantly telling everyone that she’d spotted O’Co

In the late afternoon, Sally went shopping for items she believed were integral to their task. It was not until early in the evening that she got back, checked once on Ashley, who appeared oddly bored, curled up on her bed reading, wondered where Hope was, as she listened to Catherine fiddle about in the kitchen, and then got around to calling Scott on the phone.

“Yes?”

“Scott? It’s Sally.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes. We got through the day more or less without incident,” she said without mentioning that she had seen O’Co

“I understand that.”

“Good. I hope so. Because I think you should come over here now.”

“All right…” He hesitated.

“It’s time to act.” Sally laughed, but without humor, as if pricked by some deep cynicism. “It seems to me that we’ve agreed more in the past few weeks than we ever did when we were actually married.”

Scott, too, smiled ruefully. “That is a strange way of looking at things. Maybe. But when we were together, well, there were times it wasn’t that bad.”

“You weren’t living a lie like I was.”

“Lie is a strong word.”

“Look, Scott, I don’t want to fight over past fights again, if that makes sense.”

For a moment they remained silent, then Sally added, “We’re getting sidetracked. This isn’t about where we were, it’s about where we can go or even who we are. And most important, it’s about Ashley.”

“Okay,” Scott said, feeling that some huge swamp of emotions was between them that was never spoken of and never would be.

“I have a plan,” Sally blurted.

“Good,” he said after taking a deep breath. He wasn’t sure that he meant that.

“I don’t know if it is a good one. I don’t know if it will work. I don’t know if we can pull it off.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“We shouldn’t be talking on the phone. At least not on these lines.”

“Right. Of course not. That makes sense.” He wasn’t at all sure why this made sense, but he said it anyway. “I’ll be over straightaway.” He hung up the phone and thought that there was something awful in the routines of life. Teaching, living alone with all the ghosts of statesmen, soldiers, and politicians that made up his courses, his existence was completely predictable. He guessed that that was going to change.

Hope returned to the house before Scott arrived. She had been out walking, trying without much luck to sort through all that was happening. She found Sally in the living room, poring over some loose sheets of paper, pencil stuck in her mouth. She looked up when Hope entered.

“I have a plan. I’m not sure it will work. But Scott’s coming over and we can go over it together.”

“Where are my mother and Ashley?”

“Upstairs. Not at all pleased with being ba

“My mother doesn’t appreciate being excluded from things, which is a curious position for someone who has spent much of her adult life living in the woods in Vermont, but there you have it. That’s the way she is.” Hope hesitated, and Sally looked up as if she heard a catch in Hope’s voice.

“What is it?”

Hope shook her head. “I don’t know exactly, but try to follow me on this. She’s doing what we ask her to, right? Well, that’s just not her style. Not in the slightest. She’s always been a lone-wolf type, the I don’t give a damn what other people think sort of person. And her seeming compliance…well, I’m not sure that we should rely on her ever doing exactly what we ask her to. She’s just a bit of a loose ca