I thought about that. Four guests. Four personal details. A woman who came uninvited, was remembered clearly, and left no trace of origin. Who had gathered information on five separate people before a dinner party she had not been invited to.
“Is she dangerous?” I asked.
Serena considered. “Dangerous implies intent to harm. What I can tell you is that she is deliberate. What she wanted from that room — from those five people specifically — I don’t know.” She looked at her notes. “But she chose you all for a reason. And whatever that reason was, it was worth that level of preparation.”
The investigation is still open. I don’t have a resolution to give you, which I know is unsatisfying, but the honest version of this story does not end cleanly. I have not seen Claire again. Neither have the other four guests, as far as I know. Serena is still working the case, following threads I am not entirely privy to, and she calls me every two weeks with updates that amount to: not yet.
What I have is the question. Why those five people? What did we have in common that made us worth researching to that depth, worth approaching in that specific way? I have compared notes with two of the other guests and we cannot find the connection. Different industries, different ages, different social circles. The dinner party was the only apparent overlap.
And the dinner party, as far as anyone knows, was not a dinner party anyone planned for us to attend together. We were brought there by different routes, at different times, by a host who had simply made a large table and invited everyone she knew.
Or so she thought.
I think about Claire sometimes, in quiet moments. The ease of her. The way she wore the knowledge of me without any visible weight to it, as though she had simply known me for years and had come to spend an evening with an old friend.
The uncanny part is not that she knew the things she knew. The uncanny part is how comfortable she was with knowing them.
As though it were the most natural thing in the world.
As though she had been in my life, quietly and without my knowledge, for a very long time.
I do not know if that is what happened.
I am not sure the not-knowing is worse than the alternative.
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