Page 24 of The Neighbor

Relieved, I run over to the window and watch her through the curtains as she walks back down the street. Why did she comehere? What did she want? We aren’t close enough for her to just drop in whenever she feels like it.

My heartbeat slowly returns to normal when I see her walk back onto her porch. But then she turns around, and I know she’s looking up here at me, at my house. Why? What did Kimmy say to Caroline to make her come up here?

Instantly, my mind travels to what it always does at times like this when I don’t know what’s happening. Someone found out what I’ve done. They know.

They all know I’m a killer.

10

For nearly a day,I can’t think of anything but the reality that everyone around me knows the truth. Will I have to sell this house? Where will I go? Questions fill my mind, and every one I answer seems to bring up others.

I see an email from my job come in and open it to find the hiring supervisor at one of the companies I work for asking why I haven’t sent any information I’ve found out about their newest management candidate yet. In all my focus on Caroline and what she wanted when she came up here, I let my responsibilities at my job falter.

That’s never happened before.

She’s a distraction I can’t have. Even worse, she and Kimmy might be telling all my neighbors who I really am. Fucking Aaron! He probably blabbed to everyone last night. Asshole with his God bullshit.

Trust me, Aaron. God knows nothing. If he did, I wouldn’t be here right now enjoying life in the suburbs. They would have stuck a needle in my arm for what I’ve done.

I hurry to reply to the email with a lie that I’ve been sick and I’ll get her the information she needs today. I’ve never had togive any company an excuse like that. I’ve done this job for over ten years, and this is the first time I’ve been so distracted that I didn’t handle my business.

A mix of embarrassment and anger courses through me. This is Caroline’s fault. If I wasn’t so fixated on finding out the truth about her, I would have completed my search on the candidate like I always have.

My hands curl into tight fists as they hover over my laptop after clicking SEND on that pathetic email. Now I’m no better than those slacker assholes who can’t seem to do their job because they’re too busy hanging out on social media posting pictures of their fucking food or their goddamned pets.

Anger morphs into rage like I’ve never felt before. Rage at the one person who’s driven me to distraction. Rage at my next victim.

Her time is coming. I won’t forget what happened today.

Even as I want to march down the street and straight into her house to strangle her right now, I know I need to get myself under control. I can’t rush into anything. What I do takes time. It takes planning.

Most of all, it takes patience, and not the kind those clowns Tim and Harold think they’ve mastered. No, killing takes real patience, the type that makes you understand that not everything can happen today.

But it will happen. Caroline Townsend will die.

In the meantime, I need to get work done.

I’ve givenup searching for information about her online. It simply doesn’t exist. That tells me she isn’t who she claims to be. That I can’t find out what I need to know the way I prefer means I’ll have to go at it another way.

A way I hate. Personally.

Talking to people never fails to exhaust me. They all have such baggage that never fails to get in the way of the truth. Not that the truth doesn’t come out eventually, but all that extraneous bullshit is tiring. I always want to shake people as they talk about the weather or their job or whatever else they want to hide behind and say, “Just get to the point, for God’s sake!”

That I can’t is only because social norms dictate we don’t do that. Shaking people and demanding they cut to the chase isn’t polite. I’ve built my entire persona I show to the world as exactly that—polite—so I know I can’t go around doing what I want to do when I’m forced to converse with someone.

Still, it’s a chore to talk to people about themselves. They use all sorts of tricks to keep the world from knowing who they really are. Not that I’m ever truly fooled. I’m not. Yet it does mean I have to waste time wading through the mountain of lies others tell to get to the truth.

So far in our only conversation, I’ve learned Caroline has a soft spot for Kimmy, she cares about this neighborhood, and she likes baking lemon bars. Oh, she also is likely a woman scorned by her reaction to Jared’s cheating on Suzanne. She was probably cheated on by some boyfriend and still can’t forgive him.

Then I remember the one detail that reminds me of Amanda. Caroline is from Maryland.

She wasn’t happy to find out Tim and Kimmy had let that detail about her past become public knowledge. I wonder why.

I also can’t figure out why there’s no hint of her being from there in any of the searches I’ve done. She must be going by a different name than she had in Maryland.

But why?

I think it’s time I find out.