The manacle is old. I’m sure of that. That means the mechanism is simple. There’s no adjustable ratchet that clenches the cuff to the wrist so that it fits snugly regardless of who is wearing it. Once, a year or so after Marcus and I had started dating, we were at a party and won a pair of handcuffs as a gag gift. They were real enough and came with a pair of little keys on a ring. One night a week or so later, we decided to take them out for a test run. I can’t say either of us really enjoyed the experience. It was thrilling for a while, but Marcus wasn’t comfortable as either the captor or the captee—if that’s a word—and we both got embarrassed and started giggling.

Anyway. I know how handcuffs work, and the one I am chained to now is nothing as sophisticated as those with which we had played. It is locked in a single position and, I think, designed for wrists slightly thicker than mine. I can work the forefinger of my free hand under the cuff all the way to the second knuckle. The whole thing slides over my wrist as far as the heel of my hand, but when I try to move it all the way off, it lodges hard against the spur of bone at the base of my thumb just below the joint. I pull at it experimentally, and my swollen wrist groans again, as if the pain is something alive that has been sleeping but now wakes and stretches.

I stop, and almost immediately I hear movement beyond the door. Footsteps. Then the door creaks open, and for a second I see a vague gray halo around the silhouette in the doorway. My eyes are too bad to make out details, but there’s no doubt that the figure looks strangely misshapen, its head too big for its frame.

I gather my knees up and shrink as far away as the chain will let me, and then the door is closing again and the darkness thickens. For a whole minute or more he does nothing and makes no sound so that I can almost believe he didn’t come in, but then I hear his strange, magnified breathing.

He does not speak.

“Listen,” I say, “there’s been some mistake. I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to have done five years ago, but I really can’t think of anything. Just tell me what I can do. What you need to let me go . . .”

He sits as before, slumped forward and still, so that almost immediately he could be a trick of the darkness—a piece of furniture, a pile of old clothes. I can hear my heart thudding fast and hard. He makes no sound at all except for the sibilant hiss of his deep, regular breathing, and then the little light comes on again: first red, then green.

“Jan,” he says again.

The voice is as before, heavily distorted and slowed down so that the sound seems dragged up from a pit deep below the floor. It’s an electronic sound, but it feels liquid and thick as tar.

“Yes,” I say. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Five years ago—” he begins, but I cut him off.

“I told you, I don’t know!” I say. “I don’t remember. I didn’t do anything!”

“Five years ago,” he says again, as if I hadn’t spoken, “you came here. You saw something. Something you shouldn’t have.”

The last two words were almost sung, the first high, the second low, like the tail end of a nursery rhyme. My skin tightens and creeps. My eyes widen. My hair stands on end.

He is playing with you.

“I . . .”

My voice is unsteady and the words won’t come.

“I . . . I didn’t . . .”

“Come on, Janice,” sings the voice, as before. “You can tell me. You have to. After all, you have been very naughty, and we can’t have that, can we?”

Still the lilting clownish tone. It drives the breath from my lungs and threatens to stop my heart. I can’t speak or move.

“All kinds of trouble you have caused me,” says the voice, unwinding out of the darkness like a snake. “Not acceptable. Not permitted. This is your last chance to say sorry. Tell me everything: what you saw, what you know, and whom you told. That last one is very important. Who did you tell, Jan? Tell me and, if you are a very good little girl, I might still let you walk out of here.”

My breathing is back now, but it’s rapid and shallow, a thin panting that sends tremors through my whole body.

“I’ll tell you everything,” I stutter. “But I need to know what it is you think I know. I’m sorry, I really am, but I don’t know what you are referring to and . . .”

I sense his sudden movement a fraction of a second before I feel the gloved hand that thrusts me against the wall. My head bangs against the stone, and fireworks go off under my eyelids. I lash out with my free hand and connect with something hard and unyielding where his head should be, but then the blade I felt on my thigh is against my neck and I go very still.

His dragging, hissing breath is all around me, but I smell only oil, gasoline, and something under it that I can’t immediately place.

“This,” he whispers, “is very disappointing.”

And suddenly he has let go, and I’m free and breathing again. When the voice comes next, it’s from the door, which is opening.

“Think about it, Jan,” he says. “This is your last chance. When I come back, you tell me what I want to know, or—and I promise you this is true—my voice is the last thing you will ever hear.”

Chapter Eighteen

Simon was right about the generator. It ran smoothly and quietly, and the lights in the living room didn’t so much as flicker as the storm outside gathered and eventually blew itself out. Even so, it was a short evening. Whether it was the lingering effects of jet lag, the swimming and walking around, or the heavy food and constant drink, we all faded fast, particularly after Simon and Melissa decided to call it a night.

“I’ve got some reports to read,” said Simon, following Melissa to the stairs on their side of the house. “I’m beat, but my body’s not quite ready to sleep. I’ll give it an hour and then come shut the genny down before I crash.”

“I can do it,” I said. “Save you coming back down.”

“Nah,” he said. “I promised the owner I’d take care of it. He pretended he was worried we might burn the place down, but I think he’s more concerned I’ll mess up his shiny new generator. If you’re all in bed by the time I come down, I’ll see you in the morning.”

We said our good nights and then dealt with the sudden realization that the five of us would now have to deal with each other without the couple who was the social glue holding us all together.

“So, Gretchen,” said Brad. “Who are you exactly?”

We laughed a little crazily because we had all thought it, but Gretchen just smiled and shrugged in a way I had already started to see as familiar. When she looked abashed, as now, she lost all her superficial resemblance to Melissa, who could show every emotion but embarrassment, and she shed at least seven years, maybe more. She was still pretty, but she looked lost and vulnerable in ways I found disquieting, and I found myself wondering again how someone so conventionally good-looking could, beneath the occasional party-girl persona, seem so insecure.

There’s trauma there, I thought. Somewhere in the past.

“I told you, silly,” she said teasingly, like she was reprimanding a toddler, “I’m a friend of Simon and Mel’s.”

“Well, yeah,” said Brad. “And I’m a Beatles fan, but I’ve never met Ringo.”

“Ringo?” said Gretchen, befuddled. “That’s a person?”

“How did you meet Simon and Melissa?” said Kristen before Brad could say anything else.

“I went to high school with Mel,” said Gretchen.

“Really?” said Marcus.

Gretchen gave him another look of innocent puzzlement—she had a sack full of them—as the rest of us processed this. For all the physical resemblance, Gretchen and Mel were different in the way that animal species were different: Mel a jaguar, all grace and presence and power. Gretchen was . . . I don’t know. A stick insect. A fruit fly. Something from another continent entirely. A different planet.

“She was older than me,” said Gretchen. “Two years.”

“Still is, I assume,” said Brad.

“What?” said Gretchen. “Oh. Right. You’re funny. You should be on stage.”

“I am,” said Brad, reaching for the wine bottle. “And my club has an eight-drink minimum.”

“So, high school, huh?” said Kristen.

“We weren’t really close,” said Gretchen. “Not like now. You know how it is at that age. A couple of years is like . . . a really, really . . . a lot. But we got back in touch after college.”

“You’re a legal secretary,” said Marcus.

“Office administrator,” said Gretchen, correcting him with a hint of pride.

“Right,” said Marcus.

“And I’m taking night classes for my paralegal certificate,” she added with feigned casualness. “So . . . you know.”

“What?” I said.

“Sorry?”

“You said, ‘You know,’” I said. “We know what?”

Marcus shot me an uncertain look.

“Oh, just a figure of speech,” said Gretchen. “Should be a big step up when I get there.”

“Next stop, Supreme Court,” said Brad.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Gretchen.

“I think he was kidding,” I said. Another look from Marcus, with a touch of warning this time.

He was right, of course, and I colored slightly. Why was I being such a bitch? The girl was not that bright, but she was pretty, pleasant enough, and seemed to be doing OK for herself.