Rear Window

The tenth chapter of the "She Died with Two Subscribers" series

photo credit: Erik Mclean on Unsplash

When a relationship gets a cold, it can be fatal. Nadine Nadeau knew this better than anyone.

Her parents’ relationship was rocky, though still functioning on the surface, when her mother’s cancer appeared. Nadine sometimes wondered whether her mom would still be alive if her parents had been on more loving terms. During the winter after she fell ill, her mother caught a cold that never vacated her body. To Nadine’s astonishment, she was dead within a month.

Nadine’s several relationships with men had also died, albeit due to different type of cold—one that she wasn’t yet ready to discuss with Will. Right now, after having been pinned against a Walmart Supercenter shelf by The Great Dane, all she knew was that the freeze that she’d imposed in the aftermath of Will’s disclosure of the Eastergaard incident was manifestly unjust. The question was how she planned to atone for it.

It had been eight days, eleven hours, sixteen minutes, and an indeterminate number of seconds since Will had dropped her back outside the Grizzly Country Life Insurance Company and she’d bid him goodbye with a sickly little wave. Nadine had promised herself not to keep track of time as she worked through her feelings about Will’s report of his encounter with Dane Eastergaard.

After her own dramatic confrontation with the six-foot-three muscular blonde, she’d made a series of phone calls. Normally, she’d refrain from making phone inquiries because the more calls you make, the more people know. She could have sent a chat message but that would have been too impersonal given the circumstances. Figuring that everyone in the area likely already knew about her and Will’s relationship, she placed the call to Stevie Perrault anyway.

So probably the only person who was surprised when a baby blue RAV4 pulled up the dirt driveway at a home construction site in Presque Isle on Monday afternoon was Will Northcutt.

He was nailing down a strip on the rear side of the roof when he heard a commotion emanating from the other side of the house. He rose up from his crouch and stepped onto the crown of the roof to see what the men were reacting to.

Nadine Nadeau stood outside her car, talking to the construction foreman, her hair blowing in the wind.

The foreman turned and bellowed, “She’s here to talk to you, Northcutt. Keep it to fifteen!”

Nadine’s eyes met Will’s despite the distance. He disappeared on the far side of the roof. She expected Will would soon be coming down to talk to her.

However, to her surprise, Will did not appear. Nadine felt the eyes of the foremen and the workers upon her, and she shifted her weight. How embarrassing!

After several minutes, Nadine figured she needed to do more than summon Will from the roof. She walked around the rear of the small house, and saw Will’s back and his hammer swinging behind his head as he pounded some nails.

She didn’t hesitate and started to climb the ladder toward him. When her head cleared the gutter, she spoke to him.

“Hey, Will!” Nadine said, cheerily.

Will turned toward her, not looking surprised.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“I came up to see you.”

“I can see that,” he said flatly, but with no anger.

“I just wanted to say I didn’t react too well to your story about Dane Eastergaard.”

“It wasn’t a story Nadine. It’s the truth, not fiction.”

“I realize that now.”

“Why now?”

“Because I ran into her at the Presque Isle Walmart,” Nadine replied. “Or rather, she rammed into me.”

“So only because of that, you now believe me?”

“I’ve got a history. I don’t have as much trust as I should. But I’m trying. I was not angry on Saturday, just caught by surprise, and I don’t know. I just didn’t know what to think.”

A voice boomed from down below. “Will Northcutt. We can’t have your girlfriend standing on ladders on our worksite. We’ll get sued if she falls.”

Nadine turned around and yelled at the foreman. “I’ll be through when I am done talking to him!”

The foreman muttered under his breath, shook his head and disappeared.

“I still want to date you,” said Nadine softly.

Will ran his hand through his hair. “It didn’t seem like it on Saturday. You didn’t even say goodbye to me.”

“I should have. Sorry. It was wrong of me.”

“If we are to date, I need the benefit of the doubt. I’m perfectly capable of screwing things up myself, and will take the blame for it when I do. I have a long history of that. I say wrong stuff. According to my ex, I have wrong attitudes and prejudices I don’t even know about. But I’d like to be able to be honest and have you believe me. ‘Cause I’m many things, but not a liar.”

“Ex?”

“Yes, I was married once before.”

“Oh.”

“Is that a dealbreaker?”

“No, not at all. I just didn’t know, Will.”

“We barely know each other. But I don’t want to go further unless you believe me about things unless the facts prove otherwise.”

“I understand.”

There was a pregnant silence as a black vulture flew overhead. Nadine craned her neck to watch it, coasting on the air currents and gracefully banking in a large circle above the clearing. She knew that turkey vultures had an incredibly keen sense of smell for things that were dead and dying. She wondered if it had sensed that her and Will’s relationship was quite ill and was hoping to be the first predator to descend when it gasped its final death.

“I looked it up and Rear Window is playing at the Braden this coming Saturday, and wonder if you’d be my date?” Nadine let out a deep breath after making what she considered to be an attractive offer.

Will smiled. Maybe it wasn’t as spectacular a smile as Nadine’s, but if you were to ask Nadine, it was pretty terrific nonetheless.

“Sure,” he replied.

“Come by my place at 1 p.m., and I’ll drive you over for the matinee,” she said.

As Nadine climbed down the ladder, she glanced up at the heavens and the turkey vulture was nowhere to be seen.

The drive over from the Grizzly Mountain Life Insurance Company to the Braden Theatre had been more enjoyable than Nadine had reckoned. There had been none of the tension that had characterized their dialogue up on the roof earlier that week.

Will had wanted to set his minimum expectations for mutual trust. He thought about their tangled conversation on the roof when he got back home from work. Before he went inside to shower, he took a walk down to the clearing beneath his cabin where the beavers were collaborating on reinforcing one edge of their carefully constructed dam.

Nadine had acknowledged that and apologized, so he let his angst go—and it floated like an invisible balloon up past the towering pine trees and up into the heavens. In so many ways, he remained the tortured person that he’d always been since earlier life traumas had scarred him. But in this one thing—letting things go—even his harshest critic would admit he’d made some progress since coming out to live in the woods. He reckoned that watching the beavers gave him more wisdom and peace than years of therapy ever could.

Will had even enjoyed some hearty laughter with Nadine on the drive over because the first thing he did when he transferred his body from his Skyhawk to her RAV4 is that he asked her what exactly happened at the Walmart Supercenter in Presque Isle. When she told the story of being pinned against the wall of tick spray bottles and blinded by The Great Dane’s prodigious chest, Will guffawed and the two of them laughed until tears came out. They now shared the common indignity of being immobilized by The Great Dane in her trademark way.

Soon enough, they were in their seats at the Braden Theater, sharing their tub of popcorn and drinks. Normally, it bothered Will that no matter how hard he scrubbed and regardless of what product he used, there were still flecks of blackness underneath his fingernails that he couldn’t get out.

He saw that Nadine noticed when he held the tub for her and his fingers were wrapped around the rim. Previous girlfriends had made snarky comments and made him feel as though he could never wash off the “stain” of his blue collar job. It was nice that Nadine chose to say nothing.

Instead, she did something. Early in their popcorn consumption, she angled her left pinky over and wrapped it around his right pinky.

The theater was fuller than last time. This time there were nine attendees, including Will and Nadine. And one of the other couples was under fifty.

“There’s a Hitchcock renaissance amongst the youth,” Nadine commented.

“Well Rear Window is more of a recognizable film than Shadow of a Doubt, so naturally it draws a larger crowd.” Will answered.

“Don’t say that,” Nadine replied. “You might upset Uncle Charlie.”

The movie started. Grace Kelly’s face loomed over a prone James Stewart and leaned for their iconic kiss. Nadine’s pinky tightened around Will’s.

Later on, Will and Nadine sat in a booth at Mai Tai’s. It was a bold move to go there given that it was the place where their heretofore perfect courtship had disintegrated the last time around. However, it is typically people, and not places, that are the root cause of conflict.

“I enjoyed it more than Psycho or The Birds,” Nadine announced.

“I’m happy. I happen to agree. But why?”

“The depth of the characters. I love how there is basically only one set, L.B. Jefferies’s apartment for the entirety of the movie. And much of the action is the reactions on Jimmy Stewart’s and Grace Kelly’s faces to what they are witnessing.”

“Yes. It’s actually similar to Shadow of a Doubt in that there’s an ugly truth lying beneath what appears to be an ordinary facade.”

“That’s well said.” Nadine smiled in that meltingly beautiful way of hers. “You should have a vintage movie review part of your Substack.”

“Hmm,” Will rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I could call it ‘Roofer Reviews.’”

“Why not?” Nadine sat up straighter in excitement. “That’s actually a lovely title for it! I’d subscribe.”

Will looked down. He appreciated Nadine’s enthusiasm but didn’t see it happening. He decided to change the subject.

“My favorite line is about how people are a race of Peeping Toms and how folks should go outside their own residence and look inside to see how odd the inner workings of their lives may appear to others.”

Nadine nodded. “Yes, a lot of us would view ourselves quite differently if we saw how what we do looks to others.” After a pause, she added, “Thank goodness my rear window is on the second floor with no structure across the way!”

“And what would I see if I were to look in?” Will replied.

Nadine blushed. It was the first time Will had said anything remotely suggestive to her, and she wasn’t one-hundred percent sure what he meant.

“How about you come by next Saturday night and I’ll cook you dinner and you can see for yourself?”

“I believe my calendar is free.”

Nadine and Will sat in her RAV4 in the parking lot outside the Grizzly Mountain Life Insurance Company for the longest time gazing into each other’s eyes. Despite roosting in a motor vehicle that sat on top of a zillion cracks in the pavement, they were making a connection. They were holding pinkies in a fashion that had become emblematic of their courtship. Nadine slowly reached for Will’s left index finger with her right, and Will stuck his out to stop it in his path.

“Not so fast, missus!” Will said with a smile as he gently rebuffed her. “We’ve only just gotten out of the rut, and we don’t want to move too fast.”

“You’re right,” she said. “We should take it slow.”

“Anything I should bring?” he asked.

“If you’ve got any DVDs of Hitchcock movies I haven’t seen, we could watch one after dinner.”

She squeezed his pinky, and he climbed out into the gathering dusk. He felt the moonbeams wash over him like a sense of relief. Their relationship was sailing the high seas once again.

He could see Nadine’s rear window up above the parking lot, but unlike James Stewart’s L.B. Jefferies character, he had no suspicion that anybody, or anything, had met a sinister end inside.

To read the previous chapter of the Starting After Zero series, please click here. To start at the first episode: click here.