This isn't weird.

Call of the Void

The atmosphere at the kitchen table that night was icy all throughout dinner, but as Rebecca cleared away their empty plates, she became suddenly congenial again, offering tea and asking Millie about her afternoon as if she could possibly have anything worth talking about being sequestered in the house all day. Once again, Millie forgot about her resentment, giddy to be treated as if she were in any way interesting to this stunning woman, and once again, information poured out of her as the questions became increasingly personal.

Tonight, Rebecca wanted to know more about Ben.

Her questions came from disturbingly specific starting points, rooted in breadcrumbs of information gathered and pieced together from months, or perhaps years, of online 'research.' It seemed that she had an extensive mental catalog of every photo of the two of them that Ben had ever posted, and she wanted background information on every single one of them.

At first, Millie thought the line of questioning was a sort of passive-aggressive warning regarding her ill-advised trespassing, but she soon noticed that the recollections Rebecca worked to extract from this conversation were all pleasant ones. She dug only for the happiest or most sentimental details, ones that Millie couldn't say without smiling, ones that made her face warm, and her heart flutter. The conversation never actually touched the overtly romantic stages of their relationship; it was the effortless devotion of their friendship that most captured Rebecca's fascination. Millie found herself describing at length an endless list of innocuous little intimacies: an inside joke, a shared slice of pie, the rote memorization of a mundane little preference. Before this moment, she realized, she'd never fully grasped the full extent of the casually considerate gestures she had taken for granted, and the wealth of affection, physical and emotional, he had brought to her life. There had been so much security in knowing he would always answer the phone, always text her back, always be at her door the second she needed him.

It didn't take long for her to figure out that this guided tour down memory lane was intended to reinforce her emotional investment in a man that was not Noah Wexler, and although Millie considered it completely unnecessary, she had to admit that it wasn't a bad strategy. Occasionally, however, she would catch a waver in Rebecca's impassive facade, a tiny, split-second glint of something hungry and hopeless in her eyes. It wasn't until later, when she was lying alone in bed, that Millie would put together what those looks meant.

On some level—an unconscious one, most likely—Rebecca was simply straining for a vicarious glimpse at what it looked like to be loved.

The next day was much the same—a brisk knock at the door, clothes laid out for her (a knee-length ashes-of-roses trumpet skirt with a cream-colored blouse; she was beginning to wonder if Rebecca was planning to move her into the dollhouse), and coffee on the beside the pool. The morning air was crisp with impending autumn, but Millie was too shy to ask for a sweater. She was racked with terror that her sporadic shivering would make her spill coffee on her dangerously pale shirt.

Two cigarettes and one cup of coffee later, Rebecca again abruptly excused herself, to Millie's confusingly simultaneous relief and disappointment. The hours that followed were lonely and listless, wandering for the sake of wandering and unfocused reading in the library, never quite sure whether she was alone in the house. She itched for the privacy of her room, where at least no one could sneak up on her, but she could never bring herself to stay there long. Not with Pandora's lockbox staring her down, daring her to face it. She did try hiding it away in the empty dresser, but she could still feel its presence, chiding her for her avoidance.

All of this nothingness led to the inevitable awkward supper, which led to the inevitable teatime cross-examination. This time, Rebecca's area of interest was Millie's sexual history, plying her with the same sort of questions Noah used to ask her when he'd had too much to drink. But Noah was bitter and insecure, and Millie refused him every time, whereas Rebecca was clinical and expectant, and Millie could withhold nothing.