The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

and Will’s lack of work was slowly eating away at his own sense of worth.

He stayed in the coffeeshop from open to close. He milked the same cup of coffee for hours and didn’t buy himself lunch. He ate whatever was in the fridge for dinner. He lost weight. He gained puffy little paunches under both eyes. He let his hair grow too long. His beard became wild, unkempt. Gray.

By September, Will had given up on looking for a new gig. He went to the coffee shop, set up in his back corner table, and wasted the day away online.

By October, Carrie was put—officially and with capital letters—On Notice. She was given 30 days to “turn things around.” Her long days bled into the night. After the coffee shop closed its doors for the evening, Will was left to himself. In the house. Alone.

The whole thing had begun like a haunting because, of course, that’s what it was. New house, young couple. It had all the elements. It fit the narrative.

On Halloween—yes, of course it was on Halloween—Will sat down in the lawn chair where Carrie had handed out treats the year before. Now he did the same, though he did so merely out of a desire to avoid a fight when Carrie finally did get home. And he did so with a little help from the bottle hidden underneath the lawn chair.

He’d been at it for about an hour—candy, smile, Happy Halloween!, wave, drink, repeat—when he saw the child: long and tall and dressed in black, flowing black, wearing the mask, the white mask with the rubber nose. Walking down the street and towards the house. Graceful in those long strides. Terrifying in his, or her, certainty.

Slowly, Will got up from his lawn chair. He placed the plastic orange bowl on the not-so-green grass. He walked, slowly, down the driveway. To the sidewalk. To the street.

The figure—black, tall, rubber—moved toward him. Once he was closer to it, Will could see that it was a she. The child. But too tall. And the mask. So real. And her movement, like water. Like dancing. Just like…and then she was standing in front of him, right there in the middle of their windswept Halloween street. The sound of leaves, scraping the pavement like bare branches on midnight window panes. Clouds in the sky. Storm smell in the air. Fear knots tightening in his stomach.

Will’s breath puffed out in front of him as he exhaled, waiting, staring forever at that mask, chalk white and rubber. Real but not real. He looked hard at it, lost himself in it. There were no little slits for the eyes, for the ears, for the mouth, or for the nose. Just as that dawned on him, Will became surrounded by noise. Children, running past, yelling and laughing. Little Spider-Men and Batmen and Deadpools and Draculas. A patchwork cartoon coming to life on his perfect suburban street.

With the noise and the movement of the children, the figure vanished. There, in front of him one moment, and then gone altogether in the next, as if the noise had taken her. As if the sounds of the street, of the early evening, of Halloween and real life, had taken her back to wherever she was. Before. Before that night. Before the knocks on the basement doors. Before Connecticut and Brooklyn and Carrie.

Carrie.

Will saw her face, in his slightly inebriated mind, and he snapped back into focus. Standing there, alone now in the middle of his street, Will wanted to cry. It was, actually, the only thought that entered his mind, other than the image of his wife.

“You okay, man?”

Will turned, wiped the wet from his face. It was Harold, his neighbor. Decent guy. Red Sox fan, but what can you do.

“I—” Will started, stopped, then smiled. He steeled himself to speak through the boozy haze. “I am, yeah. I just…weirdest thing. I could have sworn one of those kids was Carrie’s nephew. Oh, well.”

Will walked past Harold, hoped that his fake smile would suffice.

But then, mid-stride: “Hey, Will.”

Still walking, still fake smiling. “Yeah, man?”

Head down, hands in pocket. “Everything okay? With you. I mean, you know, with you and Carrie?”

Sigh. Turn. Fake smile. “All good, Harold. Been a rough month, but we’re getting there.”

“Okay, good. Just, you know. Just checking. Just making sure.”

“I appreciate it.” Fake smile, turn, walk. Then, over his shoulder, with a fake little wave, “Happy Halloween!”

Will packed up his lawn chair and the plastic container and he threw back the rest of his hidden bottle. Near midnight, Carrie still wasn’t home and Will was quickly fading. He thudded up the stairs and passed out lying on top of the covers.

At some point in the early hours, Will woke up, felt his wife breathing in the bed next to him, got up. His head and his gut did that lurching, post-drinking thing and he staggered in the dark to the bathroom. The vomiting took him by surprise.

Had he really drank that much? Will cleaned the toilet, as thoroughly as he could, using rolled-up toilet paper, then rinsed out his mouth, brushed his teeth, and rinsed again. He opened the small bathroom window, let the night in to clear the air.

He stood outside the bathroom for a moment, one hand bracing against the doorframe, and made sure his feet were underneath him and his head was back on right. Sweaty and damp from the alcohol, he laid on top of the sheets and slept.

Morning came. Saturday. Will woke, instinctively turned over. Carrie wasn’t there. He went downstairs. Carrie wasn’t there. After he’d put the coffee on, Will peeked outside through the blinds, at the driveway, to where the car—finally working again—should have been.

Carrie wasn’t anywhere.

Anger rose from somewhere deep and buried, and Will leaned against the counter. Morning coffee began to overtake the kitchen. He jogged upstairs and retrieved his phone from its charging place.

There were four messages, all from Carrie.

Working late...again.

Still working. You