The Woman in the Window. A. J. Finn

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       9

      AFTER ETHAN LEAVES, I watch Laura again. It shouldn’t work: Clifton Webb gorging on the scenery, Vincent Price test-driving a southern accent, the oil-and-vinegar leads. But work it does, and oh, that music. “They sent me the script, not the score,” Hedy Lamarr once griped.

      I leave the candle lit, the tiny blob of flame pulsing.

      And then, humming the Laura theme, I swipe my phone on and take to the Internet in search of my patients. My former patients. Ten months ago I lost them all: I lost Mary, nine years old, struggling with her parents’ divorce; I lost Justin, eight, whose twin brother had died of melanoma; I lost Anne Marie, at age twelve still afraid of the dark. I lost Rasheed (eleven, transgender) and Emily (nine, bullying); I lost a preternaturally depressed little ten-year-old named, of all things, Joy. I lost their tears and their troubles and their rage and their relief. I lost nineteen children all told. Twenty, if you count my daughter.

      I know where Olivia is now, of course. The others I’ve been tracking. Not too often—a psychologist isn’t supposed to investigate her patients, past patients included—but every month or so, swollen with longing, I’ll take to the web. I’ve got a few Internet research tools at my disposal: a phantom Facebook account; a stale LinkedIn profile. With young people, though, only Google will do, really.

      After reading of Ava’s spelling-bee championship and Theo’s election to the middle school student council, after scanning the Instagram albums of Grace’s mother and scrolling through Ben’s Twitter feed (he really ought to activate some privacy settings), after wiping the tears from my cheeks and sinking three glasses of red, I find myself back in my bedroom, browsing photos on my phone. And then, once more, I talk to Ed.

      “Guess who,” I say, the way I always do.

      “You’re pretty tipsy, slugger,” he points out.

      “It’s been a long day.” I glance at my empty glass, feel a prickle of guilt. “What’s Livvy up to?”

      “Getting ready for tomorrow.”

      “Oh. What’s her costume?”

      “A ghost,” Ed says.

      “You got lucky.”

      “What do you mean?”

      I laugh. “Last year she was a fire truck.”

      “Man, that took days.”

      “It took me days.”

      I can hear him grin.

      Across the park, three stories up, through the window and in the depths of a dark room, there’s the glow of a computer screen. Light dawns, an instant sunrise; I see a desk, a table lamp, and then Ethan, shucking his sweater. Affirmative: Our bedrooms do indeed face each other.

      He turns around, eyes cast down, and peels off his shirt. I look away.