It can’t be. Nobody knows about that. Nobody other than—-
“What’s the date?” she asks Mick abruptly. “On the newspaper?”
“Whoa—-it’s November thirtieth, same as today! Think that’s a coincidence?”
No. It’s not a coincidence.
Nor is the fact that there are thirteen blackened disks in the box.
A voice—-his voice—-floats back over the years; fourteen years: A baker’s dozen . . .
It happened fourteen years ago today. A Friday, not a Monday. In Westchester. It was snowing.
“Hey, I think these are cookies,” Mick says. “Looks like your Secret Santa burned your treat.”
Cookies . . .
Rowan’s fingers let go and the charred object drops back into the box.
Either he tracked her down and sent this package as some kind of reminder, or a sick, twisted joke, or . . .
Someone else did.
Someone who knows her secret.
Driving along the New York State Thruway, northbound from New York City toward Mundy’s Landing, Casey has had the same tune looping on the car’s speakers for almost two hours now.
The songs are important. You can’t just play any random tune when you’re driving. That’s one of the rules. You have to play a specific song, over and over, until you get to where you’re going.
Sometimes it’s country: Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” or Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”
Sometimes it’s rock and roll: Journey’s “Lights” or The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm.”
Today’s song has great significance, a strong reminder of why this has to happen.
Every time it begins anew, Casey’s fingers thrum the military drumbeat on the steering wheel with until it’s time to howl the chorus again: Sunday, bloody Sunday . . .
By now, Rowan must have gotten the package that had been mailed on Friday from the city.
If her weekday unfolded the way it usually does, she was the one who reached into the mailbox this afternoon and found it.
Throughout the fall, Casey watched her, documenting her daily routine. Sometimes, that could even be accomplished from inside the school where she teaches. Security at Mundy’s Landing Elementary is a joke. There are plenty of news articles online that would seem to indicate otherwise, dating back to the most recent school shooting and meant to reassure jittery parents that their precious children were well--protected under the new security measures.
It’s true that all visitors have to be buzzed past the locked front door, but there are plenty of other ways into the building. It’s surrounded by woods on three sides, so you can easily hide there watching for some deliveryman to leave a door propped open, or try tugging doors and windows until you find one that’s unlocked.
Once, feeling especially bold, Casey even showed up at the front door wearing a uniform and got buzzed in by the secretary. She didn’t even bother to request credentials or double check the made--up story about a faulty meter in the basement.
That was in the early morning, before the students arrived. Casey wandered the halls searching the teachers’ names, written in black Sharpie on cardboard cutouts shaped like bright yellow pencils and taped beside every classroom. Rowan’s was evident even before Casey spotted the pencil marked Ms. Mundy: she was in there talking to another teacher, and her voice echoed down the halls.
Some might find her chattiness endearing.
I used to.
Now it grates.