Now

A tiny cry wakes me. It's the gray light of early morning and the clock reads 6:00. Wednesday. I briefly register the outline in bed next to me.

"Josh, you're home," I murmur, relief rolling through me as I reach for him. A head shoots up. Too much hair. I yelp, loud and sharp, before realizing who I just touched—Captain, our big floof of a Bernese mountain dog. He woofs, low and deep, as if apologizing for not being Josh.

"It's okay, buddy," I say as I weave my fingers deep into his fur, trying to find the anchor I lost Sunday night, when Josh was supposed to be back from his hiking trip.

I'd honestly forgotten he'd made those plans. While he was packing Saturday evening, I worked my way through a bottle of white. I was mad and sloppy. I remember saying, "Well, when are you coming back?" in that nagging tone he hates.

Sunday. He said Sunday. Right? A one-night trip.

I reach for my phone on the nightstand, nearly knocking over a wineglass with the merest puddle still in the bottom. A few new messages light up the home screen. One from Andy. Any updates on Josh? Call me. I'm worried. Another from Ally Buoncore about the Making Julia documentary Netflix has been harassing me about ever since filming for The Proposal ended, fourteen months ago. My nonresponsiveness alone has upped their offer to a million dollars. There are a few other messages I don't bother reading.

But none from Josh.

I tap our text thread, and stare and stare at the green bubbles of my unanswered messages to him.

Sunday night. Trying to remember...were you coming back tonight or tomorrow? ETA?

Sunday night, later. Hey babe, it's almost 10pm. You close?

Monday morning. Josh, I'm worried!! Please text me asap!

Tuesday morning. Babe, I'm filing a missing person report. Call if you see this.

As I focus on the green bubbles, I try to go back to Saturday night. Josh was packing up his gear, his tent, his clothes, while I followed him around the house, wine in hand.

You didn't tell me about this trip!

It's just one day.

We need better communication, Josh.

It's one day.

Just tell me. Do you still love me?

I'm not answering that.

Why?

Because you're drunk, Julia. God. This conversation is over, okay? We'll talk when I get home.

Then he drove off, peeling into the darkness, the taillights like devil eyes. His house keys abandoned on the counter. As soon as he disappeared, I texted Andy again, because he always knows how to make things better. And I hoped that Josh forgetting the house keys was an accident and not a sign.

I reach back with my free hand to scratch an itchy spot at the base of my neck as a second burst of crying from the hallway releases a feeling in my chest. Milk.

But there's a competing sound that takes my attention away from my baby, my phone, and my itchy neck. A scratching at the side of the house. The kind of thing Josh would be in charge of investigating...if he was here.

Jumping out of bed before fear gets the best of me, I cross to the window that overlooks the side of the house and throw the sash up, bringing in a blast of cold spring air, along with the strong chemical smell that means one thing: spray paint.

"Hey!" I shout at two figures in hoodies. "I'm calling the cops!"

Captain barks behind me. I hear some oh shits and scuttling as I grab the baseball bat leaned up in the corner of the bedroom and dash downstairs with Captain on my heels.

I'm out the kitchen door, heartbeat quick with anger, my bare feet hitting wet weeds and loose stones. By the time I whip around the side of the house with Captain skidding in front of me, all panting and paws, the vandals are far away. They whoop and laugh as they run down County Road HH, the rural road that dead-ends at my front door, the woods cupping behind me, like I'm being held up in offering to anyone who approaches.

"Don't come back!" I shout after them, raising the bat even though they probably know I couldn't hurt them even if I wanted to. "This is private property!"

Property I can't wait to escape. But I'm here now, and I need to sell them this vision of bold Julia, fearless Julia.

Captain barks one more time, then whines up at me.

"You did good," I tell him. He wags his tail.

We survey the damage to the siding together: a half-drawn robot-woman with springs coming out the sides of her head. A speech bubble ballooning from full, open lips: MADE FOR FUCKING. A knife stabbed into the side of her head, red paint trickling from the wound.

For a second, I just stare, jaw tight. This might have brought me to tears a year ago. Not anymore, which is its own level of sad. At least it's not fire. That happened. It was a few months ago, and scorch marks still streak our siding from the pyre where we found a melting redheaded Barbie doll.

Back inside, Annaleigh has progressed from whimpering to full-on rage. Poor thing. She might have been awake for a while this morning while I slept on. I somehow misplaced the parent side of her baby monitor, and she's hard to hear, even down the short hall with both our doors open.

Just as I'm setting foot on the first stair to head up to Annaleigh, her crying cuts off. There's a murmur upstairs—deep, male—Josh? Did he arrive home while I was dealing with the vandals? I bound up, my feet silent on the carpeted treads. At the top, I can make out words.

"Shhh, I've got you, little lady. I'm right here, I'm watching over you..."

The voice is definitely male...but lower than Josh's...

"Josh?" I cross the short hall. "Josh? Hello?"

No answer.

My short-lived joy turns to panic. Someone's in there with my baby.

I blast through the semi-open nursery door, baseball bat raised, taking in the scene—crib, rocker, changing table—

No one. No one here but Annaleigh, on her stomach in the crib, gripping the bars, brown eyes wide.

"Who's there?" I shout, spinning. The closet. I fling it open, bring the bat down on a pile of linens. Annaleigh whimpers as I topple the stacked boxes of too-small diapers.

I step back, sucking in my breath. Little lady? Josh never calls her that. He calls her sweetie-pie. Jelly-belly. I test the window. Closed and locked. I turn. Turn again. I'm shaking. There's nowhere else for someone to hide. Dear God, I'm losing my mind. I want Josh to come back so badly, my mind is putting him in the scene. It felt so real...but it wasn't. Clearly.

I set the baseball bat down softly as I finally bend over the crib.

"I'm sorry to make you wait, sweetie. Mommy's sorry."

The minute I lift Annaleigh, a flood of emotion opens in my chest and spreads to my toes, which I crinkle against the carpet as I lift the precious weight of her into my arms. The graffiti boys don't matter. The phantom voice doesn't matter. Just her. Just us. Annaleigh kicks her legs and paws at my chest, eager, ready for her breakfast. I tug my oversize sleep shirt down and she's soon happily guzzling, her body relaxing with each gulp. One of her fists rests against my collarbone, where I cover it with my hand. There's a warm brush against my legs—Captain, my shadow. My protector.

But the sweetness of the moment doesn't hold me long, because one piece is missing from our blissful domestic scene: Josh. Who may have left not only me, but our baby. The thought is so sickening that I feel my stomach, synthetic as it may be, turn violently in my gut.

He wouldn't just leave, right? Not when we're this close to a fresh start. This close to building our new house, tucked away on a twenty-acre property just an hour from here. Like our marriage, rural Indiana has its problems, but this house will be a dream, embraced in woodlands and privacy. I've imagined it all—a man cave for Josh, a sun-drenched playroom for Annaleigh, a chef's kitchen for me. Chickens, a tree swing, a state-of-the-art grill. And a state-of-the-art security system.

"Sounds lonely," my best friend, Cam, said when I told her. "You should move back to LA. Or Austin, with me! People love weird shit here, so naturally they'll love you."

"You're funny," I said dryly. "I'll think about it."

But California is expensive and crowded, and Texas feels like another world, and at least for now, our family needs space, and lots of it. Escape from outside pressures, so that we can focus on us again.

Away from the people creeping around in our bushes. The hate mail. The vandalism. The menacing presence of the house I'm caged in, like the hatred of its previous owner has infected the very beams that hold it up. And the eyesore of a billboard erected down the road and reminding me every morning that BOTS CAN'T GO TO HEAVEN, BUT YOU CAN! REPENT AND BELIEVE! I actually laughed in the innocence of disbelief when I first saw it poking above the tree line. That feels like a lifetime ago.

Annaleigh is done eating, so I change her into a fresh onesie, then lean her on my shoulder for a burping. She nestles into the crook of my neck with a soulful baby sigh as I tease aside the curtain to look out the nursery window.

The sun is just rising. The tall trees that line both sides of the road seem to be stretching up in anticipation of the new day. The billboard is a blight, but my eyes skit past it, to the scattering of houses that share the road with us: weary farmhouse-style structures with dirt driveways, sagging porches, and wild lawns. Not where Josh and I ever planned on ending up, that's for sure.

Bob Campini's house next door is the ugliest of the bunch. He moved in about a month after us. The property was unoccupied before him, for years. The fact that anyone would choose to live here still astounds me, especially considering the land's violent history: ninety years ago, the plots we all live on were a single farm owned by a serial killer—Royce Sullivan, the town of Eauverte's single claim to fame. I've read the Wikipedia page. The black-and-white picture of Royce shows a handsome man with a winning smile, posing with his axe, his foot resting on a stump. The stump where he hacked his lovers up before burying their bodies in pieces, all over the property. There's a rhyme all the locals know, that Josh repeated to me laughing. Roses are red, violets are blue, he killed not one, but twenty-two. At the time it struck me as morbid, but removed enough from us to be amusing. Now I can't help imagining the limbs that might live under us. They never did recover all twenty-two of those girls.

Bob's front yard is littered with various heaps of metal that maybe used to be engines. A big hand-painted sign at the mouth of his driveway reads BOB'S MEAT PROCESSING. Next to the lettering, a smiling pasty-pink cartoon man in overalls is clicking his heels in midjump, wielding a big cleaver, which, considering the history of the property, is especially chilling. The meat processing takes place in the barn out back. You'd think that with our generous three-acre lots, our house and Bob's would have been built farther apart, but we're separated only by a ditch and some straggly growth.

"Welcome to what I like to call the rural sprawl," Josh said with grim humor when we first arrived, after I blurted out a bewildered "Where are we?"

"It's an old farm lot that got chopped up into house lots," he explained. "The houses are built close to the road, but each property is multiple acres extending into the woods."

The worst of both worlds, I thought. Isolated from the world but bunched together. Too far and too damn close. I suppose the builders had to decide what people would be more frightened of—the yawning loneliness of the woods? Or each other?

Annaleigh wiggles restlessly, so I turn her forward-facing, toward the window. I squint at Bob's house, where it seems like the curtains may have twitched?

"Ba," she proclaims, smacking a palm forward and hitting the glass.

"Did you just say Bob?" I say with some surprise, even though she's probably just vocalizing.

She turns her head, eyes bright at my approval. "Ba! Ba!"

I have to laugh. "At least he's made an effort, huh? Finally."

Two efforts, actually. Both equally surprising. Bob Campini's yard used to have an entire garden of political signs for anti-Bot candidates. But three days ago, when I did my morning neighborhood lookout, the signs were gone.

What really made my jaw drop, though, was when Bob showed up at our door. After so many months of watching him silently spy on us, I'd given up hope of any kind of normal neighborliness. But he even brought a gift. The visit was awkward. I was probably too enthusiastic. He was stiff and gruff. But it was also kind of sweet, and I promised to have him over for dinner when Josh got back from his trip.

"People can change, baby girl," I whisper to Annaleigh as her moist palm whacks the glass over and over, her legs kicking in tandem. A hopeful wish, not just for Bob, but for Josh. For me.

I used to imagine myself as Josh's perfect puzzle piece. And maybe on day one of my existence, that was true. Maybe we've become less perfect every day since. But Bob Campini's one-eighty tells me it doesn't have to be too late. Maybe my marriage can still become what everyone thinks it is. A marriage worth admiring. Filming. Living.

The doorbell rings.

Josh! It has to be, keyless, contrite like he always is after we fight. Firmly holding Annaleigh, I race downstairs, across the chilly tile foyer with its slanting sunlight.

I'm going to say I love you, and I'm going to tell him how hopeful I am for us. I'm going to say, things have been hard, but better days are ahead, and if we just keep trying, we can become what we want to be—what we're meant to be. As I set my hand on the doorknob, I believe this. That I'm welcoming in not only Josh, but a season of change.

I fling open the door to the mid-May morning sun, a big smile on my face, the I love you on my lips.

Whoosh, goes my breath. Pfffft, out through my teeth.

Two men.

One, Sheriff Hank Mitchell. Right-wing, gun-toting, Bot-hating, over six feet tall with shoulders as wide as a snowplow. The other is a younger fellow I filed the missing person report with: blond, blue-eyed, round-shouldered, his cheeks stained with rosacea.

The sheriff is no stranger to me. He was in our house last fall. He said, "I've instructed my department to stop responding to calls from this residence." He was addressing Josh and Josh alone even though I was sitting right there. "You and your—wife—are putting an untenable burden on my little department." He cushioned wife in a little cough.

Josh and I exchanged looks of shock.

"But this is your job," Josh finally said. "Listen, Sheriff—I think this is more serious than you realize. Julia's been saving all our mail. There are death threats."

"People are scared. Can't blame 'em," the sheriff drawled, leaning back in the chair we'd offered him, his eyes sweeping up and down my body as if trying to see where the cogs and screws might be hiding.

Josh reached over to hold my hand, his grip as cold and tight as his voice. "This is private property. People are describing how they want to kill my wife in writing. Isn't it your job to serve and protect?"

My free hand, I put over my belly. I was in the last trimester of my pregnancy, and some strong maternal instinct was burning through me: I must protect my baby from this man.

"If you don't like how we do things in Indiana," said Sheriff Mitchell, "it's a free country. Move." He stood slowly, thrusting his hips forward and stretching his back. "Oh—congratulations on the baby. Fifty-fifty Bot-human?"

"Get out," hissed Josh.

The whole scene has played in a single second in my head. Staring at the sheriff now, my heart is racing, my grip tightening around my baby. "Can I help you?"

This morning, Sheriff Mitchell's eyes don't sweep. He tips his hat without breaking eye contact, and I step back without choosing to.

"Julia Walden?" As if he has to confirm.

"Yes," I say. This has to be about Josh. Frantic questions are already screaming through my head.

Mitchell adjusts his holster, drawing my attention to his gun, handcuffs, billy club. Even though every ounce of me wants to wring the words out of him, I force myself to be still. There's a nearly audible tick-tick-tick in my head, like my very being is counting out the painful wait.

"I'm afraid we have some questions for you, Miz Walden."

"What questions? Is my husband okay?"

His grin is slow, like he's relishing this.

"Could we come in? You might want to sit down."