Free Past Tense by William G. Tapply

designed and arranged for maximum privacy, and they’d left plenty of big oak and pine trees standing to enhance the illusion. A tributary to the Assabet meandered through the property. They’d dammed it here and there to form little ponds, which attracted mallards and Canada geese. The management company fed them. I once explained to Evie that the cost of duck and goose food unquestionably came out of her monthly condo fee. She insisted it was money well spent. Both of us liked birds. I liked the wild kind. She said her tame ducks and geese were more fun than the seagulls that liked to perch on the railing of my balcony.
    The birds, recognizing a good thing when they saw it, hung
around all year. They didn’t migrate, and they didn’t burst into wild flight at the sight of a human. Duck and goose turds littered the grass and the flower gardens and the parking areas, and the management company spent still more of the tenants’ money cleaning up after the birds. They’d become tame and stupid, and big bunches of them followed people around, quacking and honking for handouts.
    So when I parked in the visitors’ lot and walked to Evie’s townhouse, I quickly attracted a gabbling crowd. I turned around and stomped my foot at the birds. They stopped and cocked their heads at me, and when I continued along my way, they continued to follow me.
    Goofy birds.
    I rang Evie’s doorbell, waited, rang it again.
    After a minute, I banged on the door with my fist and called, “Evie. It’s me. Come on, honey. Open up.”
    There came no response from inside.
    The blinds were drawn across all of her downstairs windows, so I couldn’t peek inside.
    Evie and I had exchanged house keys back in the winter when our relationship had evolved to that logical point. I hesitated to use the key. I doubted that she was inside, but if she was, the last thing she’d appreciate would be me barging in on her.
    Terrible scenarios had begun to ricochet through my brain. Evie could be stubbornly and unpredictably uncommunicative for a day or two. I’d learned to understand and respect those silences. But now it had been nearly a week.
    I took a deep breath, unlocked her door, and poked my head inside.
    With the blinds shut and the drapes pulled, the place was dim and shadowy. The motor of her refrigerator hummed softly from the kitchen. Somewhere a clock ticked.
    â€œEvie?” I said quietly. “It’s me. Are you here?”

    No answer.
    I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I blinked and waited for my eyes to adjust to the gray half-light. For some reason, I was reluctant to turn on the lights.
    It smelled musty and unlived-in, but I figured that was my imagination.
    I stepped into her living room … then stopped. In the middle of the floor sat her blue duffel bag, the same one she’d taken on our trip to the Cape. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been carrying it inside.
    It was as if this was as far as she’d gotten back on Saturday afternoon, as if something had happened to cause her to drop her bag, as if she’d been frightened or startled, as if she’d panicked.
    I didn’t like it.
    I went directly upstairs to her two bedrooms.
    Now I was hoping I wouldn’t find her.
    The big king-sized bed in her master bedroom, the bed Evie had shared with me on many Saturday nights, was neatly made. The other bedroom, her guest room, looked the way it always did—spartan and comfortable. Clean, neatly folded towels hung on the racks in her bathroom. Nothing out of place there, either.
    I peeked into the closets. By now I’d admitted to myself that I might be looking for a dead body. But all I saw in the closets were Evie’s clothes, carefully arranged on their hangers.
    Back downstairs, I turned on some lights, then opened the door to her little office off the living room. The answering machine on her desk was blinking rapidly. Between me