The bell kept ringing over various metallic creaks, groans, and snapping sounds. The bridge was beginning to rise. I turned to watch and ensure that whoever had spoken to me from beneath the bridge was not following me. I saw only the driver of the pickup truck as he lit a cigarette and prepared to wait ten, perhaps fifteen minutes for the approaching ship, which looked like a village floating on the lake, to enter the extended mouth of the canal and move into the bay. Two more cars slowed as they approached the bridge barriers, and their presence, along with the steady ringing of the bell and complaints from the aged bridge as it rose high into the night air, were comforting.

My hands felt unnaturally empty. The tin that had contained Gabe’s ashes was now out of reach on the rising bridge or out of sight in the shadows beneath it. Either way, I had no intention of retrieving it, and I turned my back just as the bridge reached its height and the freighter, about to enter the canal, sounded its horn, deep-voiced and friendly like a grandfather’s greeting, and distant.

MY EARS WERE STILL RINGING and my hands were shaking when I arrived home and stood at the door, fumbling for my keys. I was no longer thinking of the voice I heard, or believed I heard, from the shadows under the bridge, or even the realization that Gabe’s ashes were at that moment being stirred among the waters of the canal by some rusting hulk from Slovenia or Panama. I wanted only to be within my own house, our house, Gabe’s and mine, with the door locked behind me.

And I was. I snapped the deadlock into place, switched on the living-room light, walked through to the kitchen, turned on the lights there as well, and slumped in a chair. I considered pouring myself a brandy. That’s what people in movies do when they need strength or something to calm their nerves. But the idea of pouring neat brandy into my stomach, which continued to move as though it were a trampoline under a herd of gerbils, repelled me. Coffee might be good, but coffee meant walking to the cupboard and performing the rest of that ritual, which had once been comforting but now seemed risky. So I remained where I was, sitting with my arms folded and my chin up, for about as long as it took me to remember the song about whistling a happy tune whenever I feel afraid. Then I placed my elbows on the table, my head in my hands, and settled my mind in that uncertain space between fear and anger while the tears flowed.

Some creep under the bridge knew my name. What was he doing there so late at night? Looking up my skirt, if I had been wearing a skirt? And what did he want me to do, walk under the bridge and join him there? It was probably the pervert from the garden shed. If he knew enough about me to jerk off in the tool shed whenever I appeared at a window, he might know my name. If it was him. The pervert in the tool shed. Which made me curious.

I rose from the table and walked to the rear door leading to the garden. Gabe had installed lights shining from the house into the garden and toward the beach after we found kids drinking beer among the flowers and shrubs one night. On summer evenings we would turn the lights on before going to bed, persuading the kids to find some other garden for their drinking and puking.

I turned the lights on now and looked across at the garden shed, whose door stood open. The door had been closed that afternoon, locked with the simple metal closure Gabe had installed, long before Tina departed for the airport with Alex. Long before Gabe’s ashes arrived. Someone had opened the shed door and no doubt entered, and left without closing it again.

The rear door was locked, but I had left the kitchen window open to catch the breeze. The screen was attached and intact, which meant little. Anyone could have entered from the garden and replaced the screen. I closed and locked the window, then remembered that the window in the dining room was open as well, and closed and locked it.

I sat on one of the dining-room chairs. Sat there in the dark. Sat thinking that I was alone in a house with every door and window locked. Sat and realized that if anyone had entered the house in my absence, he and I—it was always a man, wasn’t it?—were now sealed inside a locked house together. And upstairs it was very dark.

I had never feared being alone in our house before, but I had always had Gabe to protect me, even from a distance.

I tried being logical. If someone was in the house with me, and it had anything to do with the open garden shed—because isn’t that what triggered this whole panic thing?—it must be The Pervert. But wasn’t he the guy who spoke to me, if anyone had spoken to me, from beneath the bridge? It had to be him. Maybe he had been in the garden shed. Maybe he followed me to the canal and hid under the bridge. Who was this little shit anyway, this creep who got his jollies peeping at me, and who had the nerve to call me Mrs. Marshall?

I went into the kitchen and took the flashlight from the shelf in the broom closet. Then, leaving all the lights on in the lower floor of the house, and taking care to lock the front door behind me, I walked across Beach Boulevard and toward the lift bridge. I had no intention of confronting some lecher who had called to me from the shadows under the bridge. I wanted the tin box back, the one that had held Gabe’s ashes. If it had fallen onto the walkway of the lift bridge when the horn startled me, I would bring it home. If it had fallen onto the walkway of the canal, I would at least be able to see it with the flashlight. And if I spotted the pervert—if that’s who had called up to me—I would satisfy my curiosity. Or maybe I just wanted to get the hell out of a darkened house where I no longer felt safe.

There was even less traffic on Beach Boulevard than before. I crossed the road and stroked the broken concrete pole as I passed it. I felt safer in the open air. Ahead of me, I saw the light shining from the bridge operator’s high window. A car approached, crossing the lift bridge, its windows darkened and thumping with the bass beat of hip-hop music.

The bridge had settled back into place after the freighter passed through the canal and entered the bay, and I could see the ship’s hulk across the bay, approaching the steel plants. At the foot of the incline leading to the bridge, I glanced up at the window, where the bridge operator was looking down at me with some curiosity. I wondered if his work was as boring as it appeared. He enjoyed job security, at least, because the federal government owned and operated the bridge. Another kind of security, I suspected, was being locked in a well-lit room, maybe with a radio or TV to keep you company. It all went together. Boredom and security. Salt and pepper. Love and marriage. Me and Gabe.

The sight of the bridge operator watching me made me feel better, and when I stepped onto the bridge I made a point of remaining where he could see me, instead of concealing myself behind the steel pillar as I had earlier. I turned the flashlight on and shone it into the shadows beneath the bridge, searching for the metal box.

Gabe had purchased the flashlight in the spring and, Gabe being Gabe, he couldn’t buy an ordinary light. He chose one with a battery the size of a small loaf of bread, with something that looked like a headlight from our car mounted on top. Gabe wanted a powerful light that he could shine from our garden across the beach to the water’s edge. He was always worried that somebody, some summer’s night, would arrive pounding on our back door, screaming that someone was in trouble out in the water. “You need a serious light at times like that,” Gabe said. “This is a serious light.” It was also the weight of a large bag of potatoes, and my arm was aching when I lifted the light to the top of the walkway rail and aimed it at the edge of the canal, directly beneath my feet, expecting it to reveal the empty metal box or the shining eyes of our neighbourhood pervert. But it showed nothing beyond a crumpled paper coffee cup, a newspaper, and assorted cigarette butts.