Mia looks embarrassed. “Oops.”
Oh no. We’re going to have to offer to let them stay over. We have no excuse not to. We have three unoccupied rooms in the house and a fold-out couch in the basement. The thought of having to make Emma organic-vegan-fair-trade breakfast tomorrow while attempting to make small talk with the husbands through my hangover at six a.m. doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest.
Scott saves the situation. “I’ll call you guys taxis,” he says. “Hey, Saya!”
Everyone goes quiet with a sort of reverence as the electronic voice springs awake. “Yes, Scott?”
“Can you call two taxis for my friends, please?”
“Of course, Scott.” She proceeds to list the plate numbers and inform us all that the information has been sent to Kyle’s and Mia’s phones.
Mia shakes her head in disbelief, checking the screen. “Wow, Cece. I’m so freaking jealous, you have no idea.”
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react or what she expects from me. So I decide to laugh it off. “Well, if you don’t care about your privacy at all, I guess you could say I’m lucky.”
Instead of laughing, she gives me a blank look. The tension grows, visible only to me.
Her husband saves the day. “Well, I’ll bet the crime rate in this part of town is really low, though, huh?”
Everyone dutifully laughs at that.
“Won’t people just come up with new ways to get away with it?” Emma asks. “Don’t they always?”
The laughter dies down, giving way to an awkward silence. “I suppose,” I say.
“Oh, you girls have no idea,” Kyle exclaims. “The lengths people will go to, it’s nuts. Just last week I was dealing with a client’s wife who tried to squirrel away assets before the divorce. Her scheme would put Bernie Madoff to shame, I tell you.”
But we never find out what the scheme was because, in that moment, the phones ping, and Saya’s voice informs us the taxis are here.
The door barely had time to close behind our guests, leaving Scott and me alone at last, in the silence that felt heavy somehow, filled with the barely perceptible buzzing of the electronics in the background. The headache that had been scratching behind my eyes takes over, filling my entire skull. Too much wine.
“Thank God,” I mutter, pressing the heels of my hands over my eyes.
“Thank God?” Scott echoes. “You’ve been looking forward to it all week. You always say we never see anyone anymore.”
“I’m just tired,” I snap back.
“You couldn’t get them out of the house quickly enough,” my husband points out.
“All the noise made it impossible to put Taryn to sleep,” I say. I don’t know why I feel the need to justify myself. What I really want to add is, And it’s not like you ever have to deal with Taryn’s temper tantrums.
“Nonsense. The rooms are all soundproofed. It’s what you wanted,” he says pointedly. This is becoming a regular refrain in our household: This is what you wanted, Cecelia. It’s all for you. As if it’s my fault that I couldn’t sleep anymore in the old place, that I never ever felt truly safe.
But I can’t just blurt this all out, throwing it in his face. I want to sleep, not start another argument. My bones ache with fatigue. Maybe I won’t even need the sleeping pills tonight.
I still take them, just in case. It’s happened in the past: I assumed I was exhausted enough to pass out naturally only to end up staring into the dark ceiling at three in the morning, my bones humming with fatigue but my mind restless, racing around and around in circles, unable to relax against all logic.
Downstairs, Scott finishes piling the dishes into the dishwasher. Through the open door, I hear the soft beep of commands and then the gentle whir of the machine springing to life. I listen to his steps as he climbs the stairs, the rush of the faucet in the adjacent bathroom as he brushes his teeth. And finally, I can feel his presence next to me as he climbs into bed. The mattress barely moves, not even a vibration to disturb my sleep. But I haven’t drifted off yet. The sleeping pills are only starting to act.
“Scott,” I find myself murmuring. As if I need to reassure myself that it’s really him and not some stranger who took his place.
“Yeah?”
“What do you know about the neighbors?”
“The neighbors?”
“The house behind ours. Do you know who lives there?”
“How would I know that?” he says and gives a soft snort, as if it were a truly ridiculous thing to ask.
People used to know their neighbors, didn’t they? They used to have neighborhood associations and block parties and things like that. Welcome baskets full of homemade muffins and what have you. In this sleek bedroom with its windows that black out at a set time like screens switching off, with its lights that gradually fade to sepia before dimming out to help with relaxation, with the hidden speakers gently humming with white noise, such things seem not even retro but antiquated. What would anyone need homemade muffins for, anyway, when you can order them from a bakery and have them at your door in minutes?
“I was just wondering,” I murmur. The urge to sleep is stronger than me, pulling me under fast. “Maybe I should go introduce myself, or something.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know, Scott.” The amusement in his tone that he doesn’t try to hide annoys me, momentarily tugging me back out of dreamland. “Because it’s civil?”
“There’s no point,” he says, again with that little derisive snort.
“Why not?”
“They’re either early adopters or testers, like us, which means they’ve been selected by IntelTech. And that place does background checks like it’s hiring for the FBI.”
He is right, of course. Everyone on the block has been preselected and carefully vetted, says Clarisse’s voice in my head, clearly like she’s standing right there over my bed. I took it to mean everyone was thoroughly background-checked but of course, that’s not what it really means. Kind of classist, some of my old friends would say. Did it really not cross my mind until now? Of course it did. I just didn’t care and decided not to think about it too much. Because in my mind, it would mean that it’s safe.
I am safe.
I close my eyes, and in that moment, the image in my head becomes softer, less real. Did I see a lens? Or did I mistake something for a lens, some techy gizmo? There’s no reason for it after all. Why would someone be spying on my daughter? On me. On us.
“Anyway,” Scott says. He puts his arm around me, which takes me by surprise. It takes me a heartbeat or two to relax into it. “Why don’t you look them up? There’s probably some kind of app for that too.”
I pick up my phone blindly from the nightstand—how long has it been since it was farther than arm’s reach at any moment?—and check the screen. As if by serendipity, that’s when it gives a short buzz.
“Will you put that away?” Scott groans into his pillow. “You can check tomorrow. Anything interesting?”
“Just an email.”
I swipe left and delete the message without reading.