The Mirror Image

It was like looking in the mirror, but seeing a face that wasn’t quite hers.

The gaunt face and ragged brown hair of the woman who had tried to physically become Rosie was starring back at her.  Even though the two women were seemingly identical twins, the differences were stark. Jane was wearing another outfit she’d stolen from Rosie’s closet, but her body didn’t fill in the clothes as much as Rosie’s had. The jeans were a little too baggy, the shirt’s collar hung askew.

“How long have you known about me?” Rosie asked. The two women were sitting at the kitchen table in Rosie’s damaged house.

“Since you’re dad got shot. I saw you on TV and wondered why you looked like me. I didn’t know I was adopted until then. So thanks,” Jane said, looking straight at Rosie. Though she had willingly shown up to meet Rosie, Jane wasn’t planning surrender.

The sisters sat in a tough silence in the space where the collision of their lives had happened. Rosie got up and paced the kitchen floor.

“Why did you do this,” Rosie said. Though she was asking a question, she demanded an answer.  Her anger was flaring. “Why did you come into my life and turn it into this. I was fine not knowing you. And then you came and screwed it all up.”

“You think life was easy for me? My parents couldn’t tell me why I had a twin sister or why my birth mother had chosen to give me up. They didn’t have answers. They just kept telling me your mom must have known I’d be the troubled daughter and wanted someone else to raise me.” Jane was standing now too, but maintained the space between her sister. “You were right in your little newscast. I don’t know how you knew it, but my life was harder than yours.”

“Twin’s intuition,” Rosie said.

“Lies. You don’t know my life,” Jane retorted.

“I know what you did—,” Rosie started.

“I don’t believe you,” Jane whipped back.

“—then why are you here?” Jane questioned. She slammed her fist on the table. “You’re afraid of that small chance that I might actually know what happened. And you’re even more afraid I’ll tell someone who will do something about it. My father died in a tragic accident. Tell me, Jane, how did your parents die?”

“I did what I had to do.”

“You saw me on TV after my father’s death, in a press conference, I’m assuming. And then you thought, ‘Huh, I have a way out of this life. I’ll just become my twin sister.’ I realize we weren’t fortunate enough as children to play ‘let’s switch lives for the day to see if anyone notices,’ but I thought people grew out of that as they became adults,” Rosie said, tauntingly. She had had enough of mind games from Jane and it was time to ensure Jane understood.

“At least you thought you were crazy,” Jane said. Her confidence was regaining strength. “I almost won. You would have been committed just like your mom and I would pretend to be you. Not in this town, of course, but I could have gotten away with it somewhere else.”

“You killed your parents, didn’t you,” Rosie said. “Did you kill those two cops whose uniforms your men borrowed?”

“I returned those police officers this morning. But they won’t say a word about me,” Jane said. “And as for the couple that adopted me, you would have done the same.”

“Just because evil runs in your veins, doesn’t mean it pulses through mine.”

“I made it look like an accident,” Jane said. “No one suspected I set that fire.”

“Then why did you run?” Rosie was curious.

“I wanted freedom.”

The next few moments were a blur for Rosie, but they were all in the plan. Once Jane had revealed her motive and her secret, she was arrested by police who were standing just outside in Rosie’s backyard. Jane was taken by surprise and fought the officer who read her the Miranda rights and enclosed her delicate wrists in handcuffs.

The screams of Rosie’s twin sister echoed as she was escorted to an awaiting police car. Her words were inaudible. But when the car pulled away, there was a sense of relief.

Rosie was free.

The end.

The One Who Stood Alone

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for this important announcement.

“I’m sure by now that most of you know who I am. My name is Rosie Lawrence. I’m the woman with the rumors. Though I didn’t contribute to those rumors personally, I would like to reach out to the woman who did.”

Camera crews and news vans crowded the parking lot at the station. Microphones from every news channel in a 50 mile radius lined the top of a podium where rumor was the key suspect in a bizarre break-in would be announced.

“Her name is Jane. She has a thing for sunflowers and brown hair dye. In her spare time she enjoys planning ways to steal my identity, a process which begins with breaking in to my house and stealing my clothes. If you wanted to borrow my wardrobe Jane, all you had to do was ask. I thought any sibling of mine would at least have manners.”

The press was starting to stir and the lights were getting hot.

“You see, Jane is my twin sister and up until a few days ago, I didn’t know she existed. But the cunning woman she is, she knew a long time ago. And from what’s been going on the past few weeks, I’m bold enough to gather that I had the better childhood. After all, I’m the lucky one who spent her childhood growing up with her biological parents.

“She’s the reason my car sits abandoned in front of a skeleton of my house. She’s the reason two police officers are still missing. She’s the reason people think I’m crazy. And I have to give her some credit because for a half second, I actually thought I might be. My favorite memory of this whole ordeal was when she snuck into Carter’s house and kept moving the dishes I’d put in the sink back to the stove. That was hilarious.”

Rosie’s sarcastic tone and awkward chuckling kept the parking lot audience silent.

“She’s played a great game, Jane has. People were starting rumors and despite my honest track record in this town, the rumors ruined me. Congratulations, sis. You wanted my identity and now you can have it. But with this victory of yours comes a little reward for me.

“I don’t want to get to know you, Jane. I don’t want anything to do with you. But you had wanted something to do with me. And I know why. I know what you did Jane. I know why you wanted to be me. So here’s where we play my game. We make a deal. You know what you did and if you don’t want people to know what it was, you meet me tomorrow. If you don’t meet me then your world starts to burn.

“Don’t think about leaving town Jane. You can’t. We’re all out looking for you.”

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The Eye of the Cat

The police were unsure whether or not to accept the confession from Rosie’s mother Claire that Rosie was one half of a whole. Rosie was never told that she had a sister, let alone a twin, and the idea that a mother gave one child away while keeping the other sounded improbable.

But a call to the hospital set the record straight. Rosie’s twin sister, Jane, was given up for adoption at birth.  Since it was a closed adoption, Rosie would never know who raised her sister or where they had lived. The police were able to get in touch with the doctor who had delivered Rosie and her sister and ask for an account of what happened that night so many years ago.

Her parents were expecting one child, a daughter. Claire had arranged for an adoption, despite her husband’s wishes. He had wanted children, but Claire didn’t think she could handle being a mother at that point in her life. He didn’t know she planned giving the child up for adoption and informed the new parents of this dilemma.

Claire’s husband waited outside the delivery room (he was never good with needles) and when she gave birth to twins, she made a quick decision. The new parents were expecting a child, but only one child. Her husband was expecting a child as well. She had the doctor bring in one of the newborns and she presented it to the awaiting couple, knowing full well she was deceiving both parties and denying her husband the chance to know both of his children.

The doctor who related the information to the police was the same doctor Claire had confided in to keep her secret. And now the truth was out.

“So what’s the game plan now?” Rosie asked. She was down at the station with Carter sitting next to her on the green leather couch. “Do we go after my evil twin or what?”

“We still don’t know where she’s hiding or if she’s really the one behind all of this,” said Officer Brown. “She’s a suspect, but we don’t have any evidence saying it was definitely her.”

“Well, we know it definitely wasn’t me,” Rosie insisted. “I’m not trying to make myself look crazy, but because of her, people think I am.”

“We can approach this one of two ways,” Brown said. “We can purposely put you in situations that make you look vulnerable and she might strike or you could reach out to her publicly and catch her tripping up in her own game. Do you have a preference?”

“Rosie’s already been doing option number one, though, hasn’t she?” Carter said, speaking up for the first time. “She’s been a pawn in this woman’s game and we haven’t been able to gain any leads on where she’s staying or why she’s doing this. Yes, we didn’t have this information before, but I think we need to use it now that it’s ours.”

“What’s your decision, Rosie?” Brown asked.

“Get me a news crew, I have something to say to my sister.”

The Kitchen Dishes

She wasn’t crazy. But people were talking about Rosie like she had lost her mind. Her honest reputation had turned against her as the towns folk swallowed up rumor after rumor.

‘Did you hear about that girl Rosie? She’s broke into her own house to collect insurance money.’

‘I heard she’s taking advantage of that Good Samaritan, Carter. He lets her sleep in his house! Poor man’s being robbed blind.’

‘Her mind is messed up… she’s got multiple voices up there talking and she can’t figure out which one to listen to.’

It had been two weeks since the store clerk and market cashier had identified her as the one leaving sunflowers on parked cars and buying brown hair dye. Rosie didn’t dye her hair, she never had. But the clothes the woman had been described as wearing belonged to her, except she hadn’t seen them since her house had been burglarized.

She’d even had instances where she thought she might be crazy, though she was pretty convinced she wasn’t. A crazy person wouldn’t wonder if they were actually crazy, would they? she often thought.

Last week she was in the kitchen at Carter’s place, he was out, and she’d made some eggs. She’d put the pan in the sink to let it cool and went to eat her breakfast in the den. When she came back into the kitchen, the pan was back on the stove. I probably didn’t put it in the sink, Rosie thought.

She thinks someone is in the house undoing all the things she does… what a nutcase. I’ll tell you who’s putting the dishes back on the stove- voice number two in her head.

A few days ago, in the guest room closet where she kept her remaining wardrobe, Rosie saw her navy blue blazer hanging alone. It was that blazer that the clerk and cashier witnessed the look-a-like wearing. And now it was hanging in the closet like it was never stolen.

That girl Rosie tried to tell the cops her jacket was stolen from her house… it’s been in her closet the whole time! She’s got a screw loose, just like her mom. Doesn’t the saying go, ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?’

That rumor was partially true. Rosie’s mother, Claire, had cracked a few years ago and was living in a nursing home outside of town. Rosie had since fallen out of grace with her mom and hardly ever went to visit.

This morning though, she had a missed call from the nursing home and a message to call them back.

“Ms. Lawrence, we called this morning because your mother kept insisting she needed to tell her daughters something. Do you have any siblings?” the woman from the home asked. “She seems very insistent that she has two daughters.”

“I’m an only child. She’s probably just remembering something her mother said. Mom had a sister that died in a car accident when they were teenagers,” Rosie said. She could tell the nurse was calling from her mom’s room because of her voice in the background.

“Let me talk to Rosie! I have to tell her something. It’s important!” Claire often grew impatient with the staff and frequently requested to speak to Rosie directly.

“Hi Mom, how are you feeling today?” Rosie asked when the nurse put Claire on the phone. “Are you doing okay? The nurse said you had something to tell me.”

“I’m fine. I should have told you this sooner and I’m so sorry, Rosie,” Claire said. “I see you on TV and you look so worried.” Today her mom sounded coherent and lucid. Other days she sounded lost and confused.

“Mom, I’m okay. The police are just looking into who broke into my house. Remember when the nurses told you about that?”

“Yes, yes I remember. I have a brain, you know. It still works.” The irritability in Claire’s voice was growing and Rosie could tell her mom was about to slip into her twisted reality. “Rosie?”

“Mom.”

“Tell your sister I’m sorry. I should have kept her too.”

“I don’t have a sister,” Rosie said. I knew she was talking about her memories, Rosie thought. “You had one, Mom. Her name was Beth.”

“You have a sister, Rosie. She’s your twin. I named her Jane.”

The Rumor Mill

When Carter found a sunflower on the hood of his truck, which sat parked at the hardware store, he suggested to Rosie that they see if Irene would let them stay the night at her place. Usually only bartenders were welcome at Irene’s, but tonight was different. Watchful eyes had sent the rumor mill slowly turning down Brewery Boulevard creating a common knowledge that wherever Rosie went, Carter went too.

The two walked to Irene’s front door, while police searched Carter’s truck for possible evidence. Rosie didn’t know about the sunflower trail just yet though he’d have to tell her later.

“You know where the spare room is, Rosie,” Irene said. “Carter, you’re welcome to sleep on the couch. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t do mixed gender sleeping arrangements under my roof.”

Rosie laughed. She hadn’t laughed in weeks. She was stressed and nervous and vulnerable. Though she was grateful for Carter letting her stay at his house, they hadn’t found much to talk about. But tonight she would have Irene to break the awkward silence.

She had walked into the spare room and she could hear Irene and Carter talking in the kitchen. And from what she could make out, Carter was telling Irene about the investigation. The door was cracked open, so Rosie leaned against it for a better listen.

Carter had said something about sunflowers and police searching his truck.

“But they don’t have a suspect, do they?” Irene said. “Sometimes I see the story on the news, but it never says if police have anyone they’re investigating.”

“No, there isn’t one,” Carter said. “I just don’t get it. It’s like the Rosie’s attacker wants us to find out who they are by leaving this trail, but it’s not enough to lead the police down a path worth pursuing. It’s a giant tease.”

“How has Rosie been holding up? Bartenders talk and we’re concerned about her. I’ve heard she hasn’t spoken a word to anyone in public in weeks. It’s like she’s lost her voice.”

“She’s quiet. We don’t really talk much. Unless she’s working, she’s at the house,” Carter said.

“I saw her last week at the market, but when I called her name she looked at me, turned and ran. She dropped her basket all over the floor. It was a side of her I’ve never seen before.”

Rosie chose this moment to come out of the bedroom. She wasn’t going to pretend like she hadn’t just been eavesdropping. They had been talking about her, after all.

“I didn’t go to the market last week.”

“Oh Rosie, I didn’t think you could hear that,” Irene said, sounding startled. “I guess my idea of whispering is conversationally loud.”

“And what did you say about sunflowers? This is the second time tonight someone has mentioned them; those flowers and me being somewhere that I wasn’t.”

She recounted the events at the store where the cashier recalled her buying hair dye and sunflowers hours earlier. Carter shared the photographs of sunflowers at the break-in, the phone booth and his truck. The trio went down to the station.

“We found a tracking device near the tail pipe,” Officer Garcia said. “We think it’s been there for a while because it showed signs of weathering. The suspect might have used it to locate your vehicle at the hardware store to place the sunflower and at your home address to find your phone number.”

“The cashier said a woman had bought sunflowers a few hours ago, did you talk to her?” Rosie said.

“We did. And surveillance videos from the hardware store show a female placing the sunflower on your truck,” Officer Brown said to Carter. “The store clerk said he did see someone outside, but thought it was most likely the owner of the vehicle. He also said he recognized the woman.”

“So we know who it is, then,” Carter said. “We know who’s after Rosie.”

“We’re close, but I don’t think we’re there just yet, Mr. Jenkins,” Brown said. “The cashier’s and the clerk’s description of the female suspect seem to draw up the same person, which could be a good thing. But the clerk said he recognized the woman as a bartender from the boulevard. He said the woman was Rosie.”

The rumor mill started spinning.

The Sunflower Trail

The phone went dead before Carter could say hello.

He reached for his cell phone and dialed the police station. Rosie was still in the other room.

“This is Carter Jenkins. I need to speak with Officer Brown immediately,” he whispered so Rosie wouldn’t hear him. The receptionist put him through.

“This is Officer Brown speaking. What can I do for you Mr. Jenkins?”

“I need to know who just called my house. It was a woman’s voice. I think she knows about Rosie.”

Carter told Rosie he was headed into town. Despite his best efforts to keep her at home, she insisted on tagging along to get groceries. He said he was going to hardware store, but he was headed to the station.

The call had been traced to a payphone on Brewery Boulevard, around the corner from McNulty’s, where Rosie worked. But when the forensic team arrived, the phone had been completely wiped clean. The phonebook lay closed on the small ledge, with a sunflower marking a page.

“The phonebook was marked in the J’s,” Carter was told. “It was on the page of your home number listing.”

“Someone is after her,” Carter said to Brown. He had shared this idea with the officer before, but Brown didn’t like his work being done for him. There wasn’t hard evidence that proved Rosie was being targeted or whether she was in any real danger. Burglaries, though rare in town, did happen, but were usually done at random.

“I can’t prove your theory, Carter. It doesn’t connect,” Brown said, sitting down at his desk. “Her house was broken in to, but we have no suspects. You have this mysterious group from the bar and yet questioning of the bartenders hasn’t brought out any suspects there either. I’ve got men working on finding my lost officers, but those imposters Rosie met haven’t proved any kind of connection to the grand scheme of things.”

Carter was growing frustrated with the dead ends Brown laid out. They were missing a link.

“Boss, take a look at this.” A photographer, camera hanging heavy around her neck, interrupted the silence that had taken over Brown’s office. “This is about the Lawrence case. There was a sunflower in the phonebook this evening, right,” she said, showing Brown the image on her digital camera. “I swear there were sunflowers at the break-in.” She put a cardboard box on the desk and pulled out photo enlargements of the scene at Rosie’s house. “Yeah, right on the doormat like someone dropped it on the way out, you see? And here’s another one— in the closet in the master bedroom. I remember thinking this one was a weird place to keep a flower. Who keeps flowers in a closet?”

“Thank you, Becky. Please leave those photos here and print the ones on your camera. I’ll need to add those to the file,” Brown said. He turned to Carter after Becky left the room. “Looks like we might have a case.”

At the same time, Rosie was getting groceries down the street. When she had reached the check-out line, the cashier stared at Rosie for just a second too long.

“Did you forget something?” the cashier said.

“No, I’ve got everything, thanks,” Rosie said, loading her items on the conveyor belt.

“Oh, I just meant because you were here an hour ago. But you were wearing a different outfit.”

“I haven’t been here in a few weeks. You must be mistaking me with someone else,” Rosie insisted politely.

“So you didn’t buy brown hair dye and a bouquet of sunflowers?” The cashier didn’t seem convinced that Rosie wasn’t the woman from earlier.

“I’m sorry, but that wasn’t me. I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I would really like to pay and leave, if you don’t mind.” Rosie was growing irritated.

“Well, then you must have a twin.” And with that the cashier bagged up Rosie’s items without another word.

The Spider's Web

Rosie had been staying at Carter’s house for the past week. She worked her shifts at McNulty’s, but only because Carter insisted she act like nothing was different. They had agreed to leave her car parked down the street from her house and had not gone back for it. If she had been under any surveillance associated with her vehicle, she now looked like an estranged homebody.

Carter still made his rounds down Brewery Boulevard, though now he only drank water. Rosie insisted he could still enjoy his evening drinks, but Carter was afraid he’d need the sobriety.

The information Carter had shared hung over her head when she worked.

Are there people in my bar who are targeting me? Who would break in to my house? she wondered. Her thoughts had her so consumed that she was making uncharacteristic mistakes.

“Rosie, you seem to be off your game recently,” her boss mentioned one night. “I know about your situation, but is it still bothering you?”

Rosie didn’t want to share too much information with her boss though she knew he was concerned.

“I’ve just been trying to get my life back on track,” Rosie said vaguely. “There’s a lot of damage I’m trying to fix. It keeps me up at night.”

The reality of it was there was an investigation going on surrounding the night Rosie’s house was burglarized. She’d been called into the station on multiple occasions and Carter had stayed with her every time. He didn’t know police were some of Rosie’s least favorite people and she wasn’t planning on telling him why.

Between the information shared by the police and by Carter, Rosie was beginning to feel helpless. She was stuck in a web of fact and suspicion, waiting for a hungry spider to discover her hiding place.

Apparently the officers Rosie had encountered when she went looking for Carter at his childhood home had been imposters. However, police hadn’t been able to find the police impersonators since the incident.

Carter shared his theory of the group from the bar with the police, against Rosie’s wishes.

“Can you give us just a moment?” Rosie had asked the officer sitting in the interrogation room. She didn’t like the idea of putting all the cards on the table.

“They’re only trying to help us figure this out,” Carter insisted. “The more they know, the more we’re closer to solving this. I really think it’s a good idea to tell them about the group. You only remember a few details of the impersonators, but I might remember their faces.”

“I think we’d be a lot better off if we just kept the bar group out of this,” Rosie said. “They have their situation and we have ours. Let’s not get involved.” She tried to get Carter to notice her stern ‘we’re not going to tell them now’ tone, but he wouldn’t go along with her idea.

Carter had waved the officer back in the room and said, “I know something that might help.”

Since that discussion, Rosie was told that there might be a connection between the men and the burglary, but there wasn’t solid evidence just yet. Two officers had been missing since that night, which added another strand to the web.

Staying at Carter’s hadn’t been so bad. She had offered to stay at Irene’s instead, but Carter wouldn’t hear of it. He would keep her safe, he said, though the two of them together made an awkward pairing. Each tried to pry into the secret life of the other, but without any success.

Carter avoided answering questions about why he loved Brewery Boulevard. Rosie pretended not to hear questions about her family. Carter never mentioned a job and Rosie was mute about her distrust of police.

During breakfast they always discussed the investigation, lunch was eaten in front of a television and dinner was eaten alone. Neither really knew what to say to the other. They were basically strangers thrown together by random events and forced to live under the same roof.

What they had in common was the note Carter left and the night that followed. Most nights, like tonight, when Rosie wasn’t working, they spent in silence.

But then the phone rang. Carter answered.

“I know you have her,” said the female voice on the other end.

The Sunset

She slammed the door in his face. It didn’t really matter though because there was no glass in the window. She couldn’t think. Though there had to be a logical explanation, she couldn’t come up with one. She’d have to listen to Carter; his words might hold the truth. And right now, her world was spinning out of control without it.

“How did you know,” Rosie said to him quietly. She found the words slipping out of her mouth. “How did you know this was going to happen? You tried to warn me.”

“We need to leave soon. But I’ll tell you what I know. Just please let me inside.”

Rosie’s gut said Carter wouldn’t hurt her. Why would he have left the note if he didn’t intend for her to be safe? She let him in and they went upstairs to her bedroom, walking in silence.

“What’s going on?” Rosie demanded. “You took off and left a note and now my house is broken because you said I needed to stay away last night. I really don’t understand.”

Carter was looking at the frames on Rosie’s desk that once held pictures, but were now empty.

“I hear a lot of things, when I sit at the bar. Town gossip, banter between customers, how much people hate their lives and are drinking to forget,” Carter explained. “But a few weeks ago I overheard a plan. I don’t tend to eavesdrop but the group wasn’t trying too hard to whisper. I guess they thought I was too drunk to notice.”

“Did this plan involve me?” Rosie didn’t really want to know the answer, but the events of the past24 hours told her it might.

“I thought you might be the target of the group’s plan,” Carter said, putting down the empty photo frame and walking over to the half-empty closet. “The group didn’t always show up together, but usually one or two of them would pair up at the same time on the same day. So I stuck around and listened.”

He had found a suitcase in the closet and insisted Rosie pack up the remainder of her clothes.

“Can you skip to the part where you leave me a note? Because that’s the part where I come in,” Rosie said as she began gathering what wardrobe she had left. She was becoming irritated with the idea she was a target and had to leave her own house. What had she done to deserve this?

“I slipped you the note because I knew a break-in was going to happen,” Carter said. “I had a strange feeling that it was going to be at your house. Even if I had been wrong, I didn’t want to see you hurt at the expense of knowledge I overheard. Leaving the note in the money was the closest thing I could get to an anonymous tip-off.”

Rosie was in the bathroom collecting the remnants of her make-up, leaving the spilt bottles on the floor. If she had to leave, what was the point in cleaning it up?

“Anonymous? I knew you left it. I spent half the night wondering if the note was for you or me,” Rosie said. She was growing frustrated with a lack of logical explanations she had hoped listening to Carter would have. “I went to your house, screaming your name until a pair of cops showed up saying you were missing.”

“You came to my house? I was there all night and I never heard you yelling and I didn’t see any cops,” Carter looked confused.

 “I went to Shooks Pond Lane,” Rosie said. “That’s the address you told me the first time I called you a cab home. But the cops said you didn’t live there— that the house had been foreclosed on last week.”

This is really starting to not make any sense, Rosie thought.

“Wait. You went to the house I lived in as a kid. When I’m drunk though, that’s usually the first address that pops to mind.”

Rosie didn’t like admitting the cops were right, but Carter said he was home all night.

“Your truck. The cops said they found it abandoned on the other side of the hill. They said they were looking for you.”

Carter stopped short.

“These cops, what did they look like?” He asked, suspiciously.

“Why does everyone seem concerned about what the officers looked like?” Rosie asked. “One was tall, one was a lot shorter. It was dark and I couldn’t see their faces.”

Carter seemed bothered by her lack of description. He zipped up the suitcase and headed down the stairs. Rosie called after him, but he was already out the back door. She followed him to where his truck was parked in the back alley.

“You can’t come back here,” Carter said, taking her hand in his as they sat in the truck. “But you can trust me on this: I will keep you safe.”

The engine roared and they were off. Rosie didn’t know where the man from the bar was taking her, but she had a feeling she’d be okay. He was the only one who knew what was happening.

The sun was setting in the rearview mirror and even though tomorrow brought a new day, she knew the end of the journey wasn’t going to come with daybreak. She had only just started.

The Shadow

Her house was marked in police tape, but the media had left. Rosie suspected they would be around later to get her account of the situation, but she didn’t want to give one. She had parked down the street and wasn’t planning on going inside, but her feet were on autopilot and she was heading for the front door.

“Ma’am, you can’t go in there. It’s a crime scene.”

Rosie had passed under the police tape and was headed up the brick walkway when an officer called out to her. He was standing with a small group of fellow police; one had a cell phone out and appeared to be making a call. Rosie wondered if he was leaving another message for her voicemail.

“This is my house,” she said. She didn’t want to talk to more police. She didn’t see the two men that had shown up last night in front of Carter’s house. But maybe they weren’t needed here, she thought.

The officer had followed her inside and began informing her of the details. She was only partially listening.

“And what about Carter?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, who?” the officer asked. It was now blatantly apparent that Rosie had not been listening to the officer at all. He seemed to be saying something about Rosie staying somewhere else when she interrupted him with her concerns for her note writer.

“Carter. Carter Jenkins. Last night two of your officers told me they found his truck abandoned on the side of the road. Did you find him?” She wasn’t so much requesting the information as she was demanding an answer.

“I wasn’t aware there was an abandoned vehicle last night,” the officer said. “You said there were two officers who spoke with you? What did they look like?” He seemed intrigued Rosie had spoken with his peers.

“I was up on Shooks Pond Lane. One was kind of tall and the other was a lot shorter. I couldn’t see their faces.”

The officer excused himself, which Rosie thought weird, but she didn’t mind being relieved of his presence and continued to look around her house.

The damage was obvious. Picture frames were shattered, lamps lay on their sides, and books were taken off shelves with pages ripped out. The debris of her life was scattered across the living room floor, leaving a trail that went upstairs. But nothing here seemed to be missing. She was devastated that her home had been the playground of an intruder. Her belongings were touched by hands she didn’t know, stomped on by feet that didn’t leave their shoes at the door.

There were muddy tracks that led up to her bedroom. She was careful not to smudge them with her own steps. The only room upstairs that showed a disturbance was hers. The bathroom and guest room were untouched.  Her bedroom window was open, or broken, and the curtain swayed with the wind. Her bed was unmade, but she never made it anyway. Rosie’s closet doors were open wide, half of her wardrobe missing. The picture frames on her desk were intact, but the photos were gone. Her make-up collection was strewn across the bathroom tile floor, open and spilt.

“Ms. Lawrence?”

A different officer had joined her upstairs and introduced himself as Chief Brown.

“Ms. Lawrence, the officers you told Officer Garcia you spoke to last night, did their uniforms fit?” Brown asked.

Well this investigation took an unexpected twist, Rosie thought.

“It was raining, I don’t know. What does this have to do with…?”

“We can’t share the details at the moment, but we might need you to answer some questions about it later,” Brown said.

Rosie was confused, but before she could ask again about Carter, Officer Garcia called up the stairs and said the press was back and wanted a word with her. She declined. When the news van had finally pulled away, Rosie waved Garcia and Brown out of her house, turning down their offers to stay for surveillance. She needed time to herself and a pair of watching cops was not going to help.

She sat down on the floor in the middle of her living room. After investigators had taken pictures of the break-in, they had it cleaned up. Her house still showed signs of a burglary, but the fragments were swept away.

But then Rosie thought she heard footsteps on her back patio. The media had left and the last squad car had sounded its siren in goodbye, so no one should be in the backyard, Rosie thought.

“Unless the thief didn’t get what he came for the first time,” she whispered to herself.

The footsteps were heavy and hadn’t stopped, as if the body they belonged to was pacing, indecisive on whether to attempt a second break-in. Rosie’s car was still parked down the block, so it might look like she wasn’t home because she hadn’t parked in the driveway.

Rosie crawled on her hands and knees from the living room to the back door in the kitchen. The glass in the door’s window was gone; the shattered remnants had been cleaned up by the police. The curtain billowed in the slight breeze, threatening to expose her loudly beating heart to whoever stood on the other side of the threshold. Her hands had begun to shake. Surely the thief couldn’t see her from such a low angle. But the footsteps outside had stopped.

Now would be a good time to have that gun, Rosie thought.

She reached the door and pulled the curtain enough to see what her intruder looked like. This time she’d at least be able to provide the police with a physical description so they could line up suspects.

Rosie saw the shadow first. Cast long across the cement patio, the dark silhouette concealed any weapons the intruder might be carrying. She visually connected the shadow to its shoes, dark pants, a black leather jacket and face. One quick look was all Rosie needed to identify the man in a crowd of criminals.

She gasped when she recognized his profile. It was Carter.

Rosie dropped the curtain, but was frozen to the spot. Carter had heard her gasp and he moved closer to the door.

“Rosie?” he whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Rosie found herself standing and turning the knob at the sound of Carter’s concerned insistence that she was out of harm’s way. But even still, she opened the door just a crack.

“I meant what I said in the note,” he said. “You’re not safe here anymore.”

The Lamppost

There was a single lamppost lit in the back alley that led to Rosie’s destination. It flickered in the dark, casting strobe-light shadows in the rain puddles that danced with ripples as drops fell from the sky.

“What do you want?” said a voice from inside. “I have a shotgun, a bat and a hungry Rottweiler!”

Rosie had expected this kind of greeting and knew there was no threat of gun, bat or dog behind the door.

“Irene, it’s Rosie. I need a place to stay.”

The door opened immediately. The woman stood in her nightgown, with a cigarette in her mouth, her gray hair falling past her strong shoulders. Irene had been a bartender in her younger years, but now she owned one of the breweries on the boulevard and lived in the apartment above it by herself.

“Where’s the dog?” Rosie asked jokingly as she walked into the foyer. “I take it you make to intimidate late night knockers in hopes of getting to bed early?”

“You know I can’t sleep before 3 a.m. All those years of closing the bar, my circadian rhythm has never recovered,” Irene said with a smile. “Maybe next time I’ll bark before I mention the Rottweiler to make it seem more menacing.”

“That would be a nice touch,” Rosie agreed.

“You know I’m not one to ask questions,” Irene said. “The extra bedroom is down the hall to your left. Clean sheets and towels in the bathroom. Make yourself at home.”

It was well known that Irene had an extra bedroom for guests, but only bartenders were welcome to stay. If for any reason a bartender couldn’t get home late at night or needed a nap between shifts, Irene’s was the place to go.

Rosie collected her sheets and towels and stripped off her layers of soaking wet clothing. Her curly brown hair was frizzy and disheveled. She crawled under the covers, setting the alarm clock early enough to get to work before the boss in order to clean the mess she’d left behind hours ago.

“I think you need to see this.”

Rosie’s alarm hadn’t gone off, but Irene was shaking her to wake up. It was dark in the hallway as she followed Irene to the front room where the television was showing the 5 a.m. news. Despite her grogginess from little sleep, Rosie slowly understood what the newscaster was saying.

He was at the scene of apparent burglary; the glass storm door of the house behind him was shattered. Only shards of glass rimmed the edges, like an open mouth with jagged teeth.

“Police were called to the scene after neighbors noticed the damage this morning on their way to work,” said the reporter. “It appears no one is home and police found no one inside when they arrived. Police have been unsuccessful in reaching the victim. The name will not be released until the victim has been notified.”

But Rosie didn’t need the reporter to tell her the victim’s name. She already knew. He was standing in front of her house.

“I need to go,” Rosie said as she headed back to the room to gather her things. She looked at her cell phone for any missed calls, but the battery was dead. This is why they couldn’t reach me, she thought. But then she remembered Carter’s note. It had been for her.

Did he know her house was going to be burglarized last night? How had he known that and what had happened to him last night? Rosie had planned on going back to work this morning, but after seeing her home on the news, she knew her boss would understand.

“Do you need me to go with you?” Irene called from the front room.

“Unless you really do have a shot gun, a bat and a dog to chase down whoever broke into my house last night, I think I’ll have to do this alone,” Rosie said as she opened the front door. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

“Rosie.”

Irene saying her name forced her to stop in her tracks.

“Did you know this was going to happen? Did you know you were in danger?” Irene asked carefully. Irene never questioned her guest’s motives for needing a place to stay. But the severity of the scene of a broken house on TV brought her to question the safety of her friend.

“I had no idea.” And Rosie closed the door behind her.

The Creek

“Has Carter ever lived in this house?” Rosie asked the taller police officer. As far as Rosie knew, Carter didn't have any kids, or a wife for that matter. He simply existed by himself and kept to himself most of the time. He never spoke about having relatives in the area, let alone any kind of friendship with someone other than the Brewery Boulevard bartenders. And even with the bartenders he barely spoke.

“Not that we know of,” the officer responded. He took a step towards Rosie, who was still standing in the driveway. Rosie stepped back.

Why would the police have stopped to ask her where Carter was in the middle of the pouring rain? Rosie asked herself. And how would they know she was yelling out for the same Carter they were looking for?

“Why don’t you just go home and leave it to us to find Carter?” the shorter officer suggested.

Rosie didn’t trust these police officers, or police in general, and was glad for an excuse to leave the scene.

“We’ll call you with any information we have,” the short one said. “Can we have your number in case we need to reach you?”

Couldn’t he just look it up in the system? Rosie thought. But she didn’t say it out loud.

“I’m sure Carter will turn up, he usually does. My number is in the phone book,” Rosie lied. Her number was unlisted. “I don’t give out personal details to strangers.”

Rosie made a beeline for her car, not meeting the officers’ eyes, gunned the engine and took off down the road that no longer belonged to Carter. The flat tire was just going to have to wait until morning. She had forgotten all about calling a tow truck.

She had stopped trusting the police after her father died, or rather, after he was murdered.

Rosie had lived in the same town all her life. One night a cop came to the house, Rosie was sixteen. Her mother slammed the door in the officer’s face and Rosie knew. The women sobbed as her mother recalled the incident. Her father was gunned down in a back alley and left for dead. The investigation said it was an accident. Her father was caught in the line of fire by a rookie officer who was too scared to report he’d shot the wrong man. Months later the rookie confessed. He was discharged immediately.

As Rosie crossed over the swelling creek, she realized where she was and she wasn’t supposed to be there.

The note from Carter clearly said ‘Don’t go home tonight’. And without thinking, Rosie had put herself on auto-pilot and was now minutes away from turning on to her own street. It was approaching one o’clock in the morning and there was plenty of night left. If the message had been for her, she should heed its warning and turn around. Wherever Carter was now, he had intended to keep her safe.

The image of his abandoned truck and her unease with the cops earlier had her questioning the credibility of the whole story. The officers said the truck was on the other side of the hill. But she didn’t want to cross paths with them again tonight, planning to return back in the morning.

Rosie thought about the places she could go instead, but at this late hour, most of her friends would not appreciate a doorbell ring.

There was one place where she was always welcome though, regardless of the time. And she wouldn’t have to answer any probing questions.

Rain, Rain Go Away

It was still raining when Rosie pulled out of McNulty’s parking lot and headed towards Jackson Street. Her thoughts were teetering between rationality and fear. There was a chance that note meant nothing, there was no threat and there was no danger. But Rosie had learned not to throw caution to the wind.

Though she was only a few minutes behind Carter, Rosie still hadn’t seen any sign of his blue pick-up truck. The rain was coming down harder and the headlights of passing cars were blurry through the windshield of Rosie’s black sedan.

Maybe he went a different way home, she thought. Surely there had to be a faster route, she hit every red light she came to. She seemed to be the only car headed out of town, except for a sole pair of glowing white orbs in her rearview mirror.

“145 Shooks Pond Lane,” Rosie said to herself. The silence of her panicking thoughts was broken.

She was almost there, but still no sign of Carter’s pick-up.

POP!

Rosie suddenly felt her driving become more uneven; there was now a flapping sound coming from the backseat.

This is great, she thought. There was no shoulder on the back country road she was climbing and the rain was now making it impossible to see further than a few feet in front of her. She needed to make sure Carter was okay and if that meant her rim would have to be replaced, then so be it.

She rounded the final bend that would take her to Shooks Pond Lane, where she hoped to find some kind of answer to the note left in Carter’s tip.

Carter lived on a hill with a handful of neighbors. His mailbox stood as a marker for visitors and an invitation to travel down a gravel driveway to Carter’s humble abode. Rosie parker her car next to the mailbox and climbed out to make the rest of the way on foot.

She checked her tires and her right rear tire was blown. As soon as she figured out Carter’s fate, she’d call a tow truck.

Halfway down the driveway, Rosie could see there were no lights on in the house. It was a small, gray two-story with a porch, a carport at the end of the gravel and a shed around back. As she got closer, she realized there were children’s toys scattered in the yard.

But Carter never mentioned having children. And the way he hung around Brewery Boulevard certainly didn’t help his case for ‘World’s Best Dad,’ Rosie thought.

“Hello?” she yelled at the front door. “Carter! Is anyone home?” Her voice didn’t echo in the stillness, the damp trees surrounding Carter’s house muffled the sound.

She walked around the house, peering in windows and banging on doors, hoping to arouse some kind of life from the house. After twenty minutes, she gave up and headed back up the driveway.

I’ll ask the neighbors if anyone has seen Carter’s truck come home tonight, Rosie thought. Though the other homes seemed to be tucked away from the road, perhaps someone had seen his headlights in the rain.

There was light at the end of the driveway, she noticed through the trees. The driveway wasn’t a straight shot to the house, it turned twice, but Rosie could just see the outline of another vehicle parked behind her.

Relief swept over her. Carter was in the pick-up truck and he was waiting for her to get back to her car to help her with the flat tire.

“Carter!” she cried, running the rest of the way up the hill. “Carter, it’s—“

But she knew then that it wasn’t Carter.

Two men stepped around the back of the truck, which Rosie now recognized was a police car. Rosie wasn’t running anymore. She stopped in her tracks. Police cars didn’t go over well with her.

“Do you know where Carter is?” asked the shorter of the two officers. “We’re looking for him.”

“No. I don’t,” Rosie replied. “Why are you looking for him?”

“We found his pick-up truck abandoned on the other side of the hill. The driver side door was open. We ran his tags and found out whose it was. Thought he might have gotten a ride.”

“The lights aren’t on in that house,” said Rosie. “No one’s home.”

“You’re right. The house was foreclosed on last week,” said the taller officer. “Carter doesn’t live in that house. No one does.”

Brewery Boulevard

It was raining outside as Carter walked into the bar. His coat dripped a steady stream of water as he made is way to his usual seat. The stool rocked while Carter sat down forcing him to grip the bar for balance.

“I’ll have a glass of—,” he said before he was interrupted.

“Water,” Rosie, the bartender, finished.

“That’s not what I had in mind,” objected Carter, shaking his head vigorously.

“No, but that’s what you need right now,” said Rosie, placing the tall glass in front, but just out of reach, of Carter. She watched him attempt to move the glass closer, but he misjudged the distance, knocked the glass, and sent water sloshing over the rim.

“I’m fine,” insisted Carter. But he didn’t look at Rosie. He starred down at the glass, shaking his head.

“Where have you been already tonight, Carter?” she asked carefully. “I know this isn’t your first stop.”

Carter seemed to be contemplating his answer, but remained silent. He was one of Rosie’s regulars, but he also frequented the other bars that lined the street, often on the same night.

“Can I have a straw?” he asked.

“I could call every bar from here to Jackson Street, but I’m not going to waste my time, Carter. I’m not serving you alcohol. You can thank me in the morning when you’re not hung over,” said Rosie. She handed him a straw and walked to help another customer.

Despite his wanderings up and down Brewery Boulevard, Carter’s favorite place was McNulty’s, Rosie knew that. He always came in at the same time every night she worked, regardless of where he had been drinking right before. Sometimes he stumbled in, having already drank somewhere else. Sometimes he walked in, and stayed all night. But she always poured him a glass of water when he sat down and he knew better than to ask for alcohol until she offered.

Carter was a relatively infamous topic of conversation for the bartenders of the boulevard. He wasn’t old enough to be drinking away the days until he died, like most of the bar-hopping locals. But he wasn’t so young that he drank for the sheer reason of becoming intoxicated. Carter had to be in his late twenties, the bartenders assumed because no one had ever checked his driver’s license.

He drank alone at the bars, never speaking to fellow patrons or bartenders.He did talk to Rosie, but never about anything personal, regardless of how many drinks he’d put down.

“I think I’ve had enough water for tonight,” said Carter.

Rosie had been refilling his glass like a Chinese restaurant waiter, never letting the glass get half empty, for over an hour.

“Do you need me to call you a cab?” offered Rosie.

“It’s been raining on my liver for the last hour. I’ll drive myself. There’s no sense in making someone else drive out in this rain to pick up a perfectly able man.”

Rosie knew Carter lived on the outside edges of town since she had called a cab for him many times before and though she had never been to his house, she knew the address by heart.

Though he didn’t drink anything worth paying for, Carter left money on the bar and collected his mostly-dry jacket. As he made his way to the door, he waved a good night to Rosie and disappeared out the door, the bell clanging his official departure.

As Rosie collected the tip Carter had left behind and smiled to herself, knowing he’d be back in two days when she worked again.

But there was something tucked into the folded twenty dollar bill when she picked it up.

Don’t go home tonight, the note said. It was written on a torn napkin.

Rosie wasn’t sure who the message was intended to reach, but she felt a strange prickle of fear trace down her spine. Looking around the bar, Rosie smiled at the last couple left for the night. She was alone and her thoughts started spinning.

If it was meant for Carter, she thought, he probably already saw it. But wasn’t he driving himself home? So perhaps he wasn’t actually going home, which meant he was safe. But what if he had intended the note to be for her and disguised it so the hand off of the message would be discrete?

Her mind couldn’t focus.

Carter had just left. She could still catch up with him to make sure he wasn’t on his way to his house. But what if she wasn’t supposed to go home? Well, she wouldn’t be going home if she was following Carter, so that would temporarily fix that issue, she figured.

Rosie scrambled around the bar looking for her car keys, decided she’d come back in the morning to clean before her boss arrived, turned off the lights and locked the doors behind her.