He knew Donna had set out shelters, which were collectively frowned upon in Preston Hallow, and she had continued to do so even after she had been told multiple times not to. Someone had pulled some strings and the city had contacted her and told her not to interfere with the cat colony. Once he had come home late at night and as he turned on the high beams, dozens of eyes had reflected back at him. Someone claimed that entire hordes of cats, hundreds even, lived in the neighborhood. He thought that to be exaggerated but he couldn’t be sure.
Donna continued to ignore him. It was mainly about him not taking her call this morning but she had been snubbing him for a while now, ever since she had booked a cruise to Italy for the summer without consulting him and he had told her to cancel.
“Just take three weeks off, there are other doctors at your practice. They all go on vacation. Don’t be difficult about it.”
Everything is so goddamn easy for her. Edward held those words back, didn’t want to be rude, but Donna knew nothing about responsibilities. Taking weeks off would take just as long for him to prepare for and make the necessary adjustments to his schedule.
“You should have asked me before you booked,” he’d said.
Before he could add anything else, she read from the brochure. “Charming villages, pristine beaches, and legendary cities, picturesque pastel towns from the Amalfi Coast to Sicily and Elba, and off to smaller ports and beautiful harbors, then off to Rome and Venice.”
Truth be told, Edward didn’t want to spend an entire month without his schedule of getting up at six, going to spin class, performing surgery in the morning, consulting in the afternoon, charting in the evenings. He took solace in the predictability of it all, needed to return every night to a pristine home where Donna handed him his favorite drink—two ounces of Old Tom gin, one ounce of dry vermouth, and a dash of Peychaud’s Bitters—but Donna was relentless. She was working her way up to her final demand; soon there’d be talk of retirement and he imagined constant trips and charity functions and parties and he bristled at the thought of it all. He didn’t even have time for the very thoughts he was having right then, it was eleven and his alarm was set for six. He had a full surgery schedule tomorrow. Eyes heavy, he shut off the TV and flipped over.
The pages of Donna’s magazine rustled as he fell asleep.
* * *
• • •
Just on the border of sleep, he woke to a commotion. Disoriented, he reached for the lamp switch to check the time. A crash below—no more ifs and buts about it; a crash—made the walls shake. Not in a figurative sense, but the walls literally trembled as if the foundation of the house had been compromised. Those weren’t cats or deer.
Edward Pryor reached for his phone, unable to decide what to do. Nine-one-one was a hassle, being put on hold and having to explain what was going on was nothing Edward cared for. After all he was on a first-name basis with the police chief, they played golf together—he hated golf but was fairly good at it—and they had an occasional cigar, and Edward could easily reach out to him. He decided to not do anything at all, someone would be here within minutes, he was sure. Their ADT account was up to date and the neighborhood was patrolled by a security guard.
Donna tossed the magazine to the side, put on her slippers, and threw on her robe, a silky silver thing that complemented her blond hair. Edward could sense her mind at work, the dominion of her logic which was off but predictably so: she didn’t care to be robbed at gunpoint in her nightgown. She always thought of such things, even though it had dawned on him quite some time ago that her thoughts were the mental equivalent of a Tourette’s outburst with flailing limbs and mental tics.
And so it began. Fracking was the first thing Donna went on about. She switched to the possibility of the hot water tank exploding—it had happened to a neighbor of theirs not too long ago—telling Edward to listen for water rushing through the pipes. Or maybe a small airplane from the nearby Skylark Field Airport had crashed into the side of the house? If he didn’t know better, he’d wager that Donna was losing her mind, slowly but surely she was going off the deep end a bit more each and every day. None of this was normal. Her convictions manifested in random thoughts and she followed every rabbit hole offering itself, like the argument with Penelope that very morning. Donna was the adult, she ought to know better, and how often had he told her not to engage in those tiffs.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t altogether impossible about that airport. He had to admit that even though Donna had a vivid imagination, there were sometimes small Cessna planes airborne overhead flying to a football game or a hunting trip, no more than six people. There wasn’t a commercial flight route over his property but there was an airfield for small, private planes nearby.
Edward dressed in khakis and a shirt and slipped on his shoes.
“Maybe we’re being robbed,” he said but knew it was cruel to upset Donna even further.
“Shouldn’t we stay here and wait for the police?” Donna called out and pulled the robe tighter around her shoulders.
Edward made his way out of the bedroom. “You stay, someone will be here any minute,” he said in a hushed tone and closed the door with slow and focused movements to prevent it from slamming shut. He was pretty sure it had to do with that hobby airport, otherwise the alarm would have gone off. He realized he wasn’t completely sure it would, ADT might just be one of those remote warning systems. He didn’t know much about the system, Donna handled such things but she was worthless in her state. It was good to know this neighborhood was one of the safest in the area.
He looked down from the third-story landing into the foyer. There was no light, no sounds, nothing but darkness and silence. Short and lean, he religiously went to his biweekly spinning classes, was fit by all accounts, in shape and limber for a man his age, but there was something he was not: a hero.
Edward paid people to do his gardening, the cleaning, and the cooking. He felt he had no choice but to investigate the noise, though he hoped the police would show up soon.
On the first floor he stood in the foyer and listened. In the kitchen the icemaker churned and the fridge motor kicked in. The moment his hand touched the front door handle, he heard a popping sound from the garage. It reminded him of a bicycle tire after you pull out a nail. He hadn’t thought of that sound in decades, yet it returned to him as if to remind him of his childhood and happier times, or maybe, so he thought later, to brace him somehow as if fate whispered there are good memories in life, still. Hold on to them.
The motion sensor lights in the hallway lit up and he opened the door leading into the garage. He didn’t move much farther into the space, stood on top of the stairs leading down into the three-bay garage, and his heart didn’t have time to skip a beat, his intestines didn’t have time to drop down.
Penelope had crashed her car into the back wall of the garage. The grill and part of the hood stuck in the wall. Edward peered through the driver’s side window. Penelope looked disheveled. Her hair was unkempt, and she was staring straight ahead. Not so much as a scratch on her, as far as he could tell. He didn’t have time to react because he heard the woop woop of the police car pulling up outside.