When she gets home, her phone is ringing and she rushes to pick it up. In her haste, she drops the bag from the pharmacy on the floor. She grabs the cordless and glances down the hall. She has to look again: Is she seeing what she's seeing?
Yes, of course. The bathroom door stands wide open.
"Hello?"
"Moira, it's me."
"Hi, sweetie," she says. She's trying to sound cheerful and is completely failing. She doesn't want Derek to know her bathroom door's open. Open bathroom doors can't be good. Even she can see that. She doesn't want Derek to worry about her.
"Moira, we need to talk. Do you have time? I'm coming over." Moira stares at the bathroom doorway, then the floor beside her. The bag on the floor. The pregnancy test in the bag.
"Yes, we need to talk," Moira says.
* * *
The bathroom seems normal. Nothing seems moved, nothing seems out of place. It even smells normal, Moira thinks.
She wonders what was in here, locked behind the door. She wonders what it did in here. She wonders where it is now.
Moira takes a shower, enjoying the hot spray on her back. She washes her hair. Afterwards, naked, dripping wet, she takes the plastic cup from the box. She straddles the toilet and, holding the cup beneath her, fills it with urine.
* * *
Moira is lying on her bed staring at the ceiling. She watches the ceiling lamp. She waits for it to sway, wants it to sway, but it resists her will. It stays impossibly still. She lies there, breathing softly, her hair wrapped in a towel, a terrycloth robe around her damp body.
Derek will be here soon, she thinks.
The urine in the cup waits for her on the bathroom sink. They'll take the test together, she thinks. They'll find out together.
As she lies there her closet door quietly slides open. A brawny man emerges from behind her hanging clothes. He is carrying something: something small and limp. The man has no face, Moira sees. He has skin and stubble but no eyes, no nose, no mouth. He walks over to Moira and places something beside her on the bed.
Moira bends her neck to look at it.
It is a ventriloquist's dummy. It lies bent and motionless at her side.
Moira watches the faceless man slip through the bedroom door and leave the room. She smiles weakly, content, she's only tired now. Tired, but not unpleasantly so. She wonders if she's happy but can't decide what that means.
There's a knock at the door.
Moira exhales sharply. She's still smiling when the dummy takes her hand.
