Free Night Tides by Alex Prentiss

but we’ve been having this discussion for ten years. I just got out of the bath and I’m dripping all over the floor, so if you’re just calling to debate lifestyles—”
    “Terrell and I broke up,” her sister blurted.
    “Oh, baby, I’m sorry,” Rachel said sympathetically. She was used to sudden gear shifts when talking to her sister.
    “Yeah, well, I just wanted you to know.” Becky’s phone snapped off.
    Rachel looked down at her own phone, then across the room at the picture of the two Matre girls on her coffee table. They were twelve and fourteen then, both with frizzy hair and enormous smiles. It was taken about a month before Rachel first drowned and was the last time they’d both been completely happy at the same time.
    She recalled Terrell, the latest boyfriend, no doubt chased away by Becky’s mercurial temperament. He was a teaching assistant at the college, neat and well behaved, and had no doubt fallen under the spell of Becky’s passionate beliefs. She certainly talked a good game, as her string of sensible, levelheaded boyfriends illustrated. But once they saw past the words to the chaos, they always ran. If they were smart. Terrell, evidently, was smart.
    Rachel went to the small window over the kitchen sink and looked out at Williams Street. The sun flickered through the trees shading the parking lot. Becky was on her way to a life of total bitterness as she moved from one lost cause to another, both political and romantic, and no one, especially Rachel, could steer her away. That certainty always made Rachel sad.
    Something drew her eye to a truck parked at the curb across the street. She could see only the bed and tailgate through the branches, but it sent a shiver up her spine nonetheless, and she reflexively covered herself and shrank from the window.
    When she looked again it was still there, exhaust coming from the tailpipe. It was a burgundy Ford, rusted around the wheel wells, but she could not see if anyone sat inside. Yet she felt that someone was there and that this person was somehow dangerous to her. Her first thought was Caleb, but he drove an ancient Toyota hatchback; at least, he used to. She was about to call the police (And report what? her common sense demanded. A mad parker on the loose?) , but the truck abruptly drove away. She felt a rush of relief far out of proportion to what she’d seen.
    She scurried back to the bathroom, took her red terry-cloth robe from its hook, and cinched it around herself. There was only one thing to do now, one way to overcome this sudden panic and feel like she had some control of the world. She locked and bolted her front door, made sure all the blinds were drawn, then went to her bedroom closet for her laptop.
    T HE PHONE RANG . Ethan snatched it from the coffee table and snapped it open. “Hello?”
    “So how much did Dad hit you up for this time?” Marty asked with no preliminaries.
    Ethan, in a T-shirt and boxers, shook his head to clear it before answering. His normal after-dinner beer had become an uncharacteristic five, and he always slurred his words when he drank. “Five thousand,” he said with perfect enunciation. “Same as last month.”
    “Damn, do you really have that kind of money to just give away?”
    “Hell, no. And I sure won’t if you guys don’t stop tying up my work site.”
    “It’s a crime scene, Ethan.”
    “Yeah. Maybe someday I’ll come tear down the police station so I can interfere with your job.”
    “Oh, that’s mature.”
    “I know you are, but what am I?”
    “I’m rubber, you’re glue.”
    Both men burst out laughing. When the moment passed, Marty said, “I also hear you were quite the manly-man this morning.”
    “Huh?”
    “At Rachel’s diner on Williams Street? You bravely stood up to some old guy with a cigarette.”
    “How the hell do you know about that?”
    “It’s all over Lady of the Lakes: Local builder shows ass.”
    He looked at his closed laptop and suddenly felt very