Sunday, October 14
Five Days Before
The stairs to the second floor led up to a long hallway filled with more sideboards, wardrobes, and chiffoniers—scrolled mahogany behemoths from a bygone era. Along the hall, I counted three doors and one at the very end. All closed.
Reggie executed a perfect flight-attendant gesture. “That first room is vacant and the door is locked. The McAdams and Siefferts are in the next two rooms. You”—he pointed at the far end of the hall—“will have that room, the largest suite, which overlooks the front of the house.”
“What’s back that way?” I pointed at a closed pocket door, only a few feet from the stairs, which blocked the other end of the hall.
“That’s Dr. Cerny’s suite. The entire wing is strictly off limits, but he has his own set of stairs that lead down to the kitchen and back door. Another set lead up to the attic. The attic is off limits as well, of course.”
“Say it one more time, and I guarantee you somebody sneaks in there.” I grinned, but he didn’t return it, just led the way to our room, swung the door open, and stepped back. He puffed his chest, and as I entered, I turned a slow, appreciative three-sixty and saw why.
Our bedroom was the one I’d seen when we’d first driven up. Nearly all glass, the walls retrofitted over the spindles of what had formerly been a porch. Heavy cream silk curtains lined the wall of windows, and every piece of furniture—bed, nightstands, dresser, and desk—was a meticulously restored Danish-modern original. At the far end of the sitting room, a leather-and-walnut recliner was artfully arranged beside a Delft-tiled fireplace. Which was, of course, invitingly laid with wood, ready to light. The room was bright and spotless and smelled of lemon verbena.
Heath shed the bags in a heap at the foot of the bed and moved toward a small oval mirror hanging over a blond-wood dresser. He glanced at his reflection, then moved to the wall of windows. The sun must’ve broken through the clouds and pierced the heavy canopy of trees, because all at once the room was filled with light.
I bent over to examine the fireplace and yelped in surprise.
“Oh, yes,” Reggie said. “I should’ve warned you.”
Heath turned.
“It’s a face, in the back,” I said.
“We call him the fiery fiend,” Reggie said. “He’s in every fireplace in the house. Part of the original design, I’m told.”
I glanced around the room. “And what about the cameras? Where are they? There’s not one in the bathroom, I hope.”
Teague tilted his head. “Camera, singular. It’s in the main room. And my advice is to forget all about it. Pretend it’s not there. The more naturally you behave, the more you are yourselves, the more Dr. Cerny will have to work with.”
Heath had unlocked several of the windows and thrown them open. Cool air blew in, the scent of river and rock and pine overpowering the lemon smell.
“The cameras are activated every morning at eight a.m. and shut down from ten p.m. until midnight, at which point they run again until five a.m. They’re also down briefly from one thirty to two thirty every afternoon. A free block.” He raised his eyebrows, giving us a moment, I supposed, to get his meaning. “I know it feels somewhat uncomfortable, but keep in mind, filming patients is a legitimate technique for research and diagnosis. There are several well-regarded labs all over the world that employ it to great success. Learman’s Intimacy Institute at BYU and James Deshpande’s facility that explores work-related violence.”
I snuck a look at Heath. He was leaning out one of the windows, gazing off into the distance. Unfazed by the fact that we were being watched like zoo animals. Or criminals.
Reggie clasped his hands. “Well, then. I’ll let you two get settled, freshen up, then in exactly fifty minutes, we’ll meet downstairs for the tour and your meeting with Dr. Cerny. We’ll have you around the place and back to your rooms by seven for dinner.”
He left, and as I unpacked, Heath disappeared into the bathroom.
“So the schedule around here seems really precise,” I called out. There was no answer. When he came back, he returned to the opened windows and leaned out into the darkening night air.
“You okay?” I said. “It seems a little chilly to have the windows open.”
“I like the way the mountains smell.” He turned to me, a playful look in his eye. “You know, Reggie said we have fifty minutes.”
“Well, more like forty-five now.” I pointed around the room. “But more importantly, it’s showtime, remember? We’re being watched. Even though, I should point out, we haven’t signed the releases yet.”
“I bet the Siefferts are in their suite, banging it out hard-core.” He kicked back on the bed and aimed his blindingly sexy grin at me.
I turned away. Mrs. Sieffert, or whoever it was who’d been lurking in the dining room watching us, was certainly, one hundred percent, not upstairs banging it out with her husband.
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you kidding me?”
“Come. Here.” He said it in that voice—the one with the deep, slow cadence that made the area below my stomach twinge. He crooked one finger, and I moved to the bed, only a hair out of his reach.
“You want me to come closer?” I asked. “Never say real quick.”
I bent to him, just so my hair fell over his face and my breasts brushed his chest. He moaned. He reached for me and I crawled up beside him. Cradling me with one arm, he pulled the white comforter over us, and I closed my eyes as he fitted the length of his body against my back and legs. He was already hard.
I spoke. “There was a woman when we came in. Kind of spying on us from downstairs. Did you see her?”
“No.” He nuzzled my neck.
“She was staring at us, like . . .”
He kissed my neck gently, reached around and removed my glasses.
“Like . . .”
He whispered in my ear. “Whatever happens—no matter what I do—don’t move.”
I didn’t, not when he unzipped my pants under the covers, then eased them down past my knees, ankles. Not when he did the same with my underwear. Not even when he ran his hand along the inside of my thigh.
I let him touch me for as long as I could stand it, then guided him into me, turning my face into the pillow. After it was over, he buried his head in the crook of my neck and whispered one last time, “Always us.”
Maybe it was the sex or just that I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in months, but right after, I fell fast and hard into a dreamless sleep.
When I woke, the room was lit with the soft glow of the bathroom night-light, and Heath was sleeping beside me. The window was still open and I inhaled a lungful of cool, pungent air. I guessed the months of nightmares really had depleted both of us, more than I’d realized. If nothing else, the two of us might actually be able to catch up on all our lost sleep in this creepy house. I groped around on the nightstand for my phone. Right. I’d turned it over to Dr. Teague. Reggie. Crap.
I found my glasses under my pillow, then dug under the comforter for my pants. Easing out of bed, I crept to the fireplace, trying not to think about the fiery fiend’s grotesque, leering face. I ran my hands along the mantel. A small brass clock on it ticked softly: 9:40 p.m. I bit my lip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept like that.
We’d missed our first meeting with Dr. Cerny. As well as the tour and the signing of the releases, which was not at all the way I’d planned to start things off. I was not usually one to oversleep, arrive late to an appointment, or forget details of clients’ orders. But then again, I usually had a phone glued to some part of me, pinging alerts right and left.
We’d also missed dinner. Damn. Scallops, I remembered with longing. Reggie had said it was scallops and wine. It was possible somebody had saved our meals in the fridge or something. Possible, but not for sure, and that was the thing that really got me, the not knowing. And right now, with the house spreading out like a maze around me, the worry that I wouldn’t be able to find anything to eat—I could feel the old food obsession dancing around the edges. Could feel myself close to panicking.
Daphne. Stop.
I went into the bathroom and dug in my makeup bag, pulling out a hair band and slipping it over my hand. I snapped it against my wrist—once, twice, three and four times. Then inhaled and exhaled, letting the pain pull me back to the physical room. I couldn’t panic. Not now. I needed to get organized, be thinking about my plan. How I was going to find the car and check my email. How I was going to deal with the information, if any, that Annalise Beard decided to share.
I peeked through the door at Heath and watched him breathe for a moment. It was a relief to see him like that—practically comatose, arms flung out and mouth open. How odd that he couldn’t sleep in our cozy little house, but here he conked out like an innocent babe. I had the feeling sleep wasn’t going to return so easily for me, not with my gnawing stomach and my nerves. But being up wasn’t such a bad thing. I might as well try to find where Reggie had put our car keys.
Out in the dark hallway, all the doors were shut. The McAdams and Siefferts must have turned in early too. The pocket door with tarnished brass fittings at the opposite end of the hall—the one leading to Dr. Cerny’s quarters—was open just a couple of inches.
I tiptoed to it and peered through the crack. Beyond it was a spacious landing area, as big itself as our bedroom. At the far end, I saw another closed door—Cerny’s suite, no doubt. On the left side of the landing, there was a set of stairs that probably led down to the kitchen. From the right, another set of stairs, narrower than the others, wound up to the next floor.
The attic.
I heard a noise, coming from the attic stairs. A clicking sound, then a low drone. I glanced at Cerny’s door at the opposite end of the landing. It was far enough away that I could probably slip in unheard, if I was careful. I pushed the pocket door open and eased through.
I crept to the attic stairs, put my foot on the first step. Waited. When nothing happened, I mounted the next step, then another and another, keeping to the edge so the boards wouldn’t creak. At the top of the stairs, I found a black fireproof door, cracked open just the slightest bit. The drone was louder; I had definitely found the source. I listened for any indication that I’d disturbed Cerny. When I heard nothing, I pushed open the door and walked in.
The tiny, hexagonal garret was crammed to bursting with all sorts of oversize metal hardware. Machinery and shelving ringing the room like a cabal of mechanical giants. Dozens of thick black cords snaked across the bare wood floor. To my right, a row of three boxy video monitors sat on a sagging plywood shelf. On the left were two enormous machines as big as refrigerators, covered with rows of multicolored buttons, dials, and gauges. And more unidentifiable machines next to those.
“Hello, Dr. Strangelove,” I whispered.
In the center of the room, a battered metal desk and folding chair faced the monitors. Only a yellow legal pad and pen were on the desk. I opened the drawers—all six of them—but they were empty. No car keys. I crept around the desk, taking in the strange setup. The computers, if that was what they were, must have been the main servers, linked to the cameras downstairs and to the monitors up here. To timers, as well, most likely. And there was probably, somewhere, a mechanism for recording the captured footage so Dr. Cerny could review it later. I could see slots that looked like they might fit VHS tapes, but I was hopeless at technology, and the rest of the knobs and buttons and dials were meaningless to me. Frankly, the whole tableau looked very KGB circa 1980.
I examined the monitors. Feeds from our in-room cameras, maybe? They were dark, at least they appeared to be at first glance—but then a curtain fluttered in the corner of one, and I jumped in fright. The cameras were running, even though it was after ten. Either somebody had screwed up or the timers were off.
I moved closer.
Each camera must have been mounted near a fireplace mantel, allowing for a wide shot of the suite, even a bit of the windows. On our monitor, the one on the far right, I could see the bed, the door to the bathroom, and the small sitting area. The monitors were illuminated the slightest bit, by some light source outside the house, maybe. The moon or a floodlight on one of the eaves.
Heath was still sprawled out, his leg kicked out from under the comforter now. On my side of the bed, the comforter was thrown back, and I noticed, with a guilty flush, the twist of underwear lying on the floor. I turned my attention back to my fiancé—that beautiful, strong, tormented man—and, as I watched him sleep, thought back six months ago, to the night of his first nightmare.
Heath asked me to marry him on a perfect April night.
We were at our house—the bungalow Lenny’s father had agreed to sell to us to bolster Heath’s fledgling private foray into Atlanta real estate. We’d eaten pizzas loaded with every leftover vegetable I could scrounge from the fridge and now were relaxing on the back deck. The sky was perfect and clear, promising a star-sprayed canopy after the crisp spring dusk had passed.
We were stacked together on one of Barbara Silver’s hand-me-down Adirondack chairs, my head resting back against Heath’s shoulder. As we’d watched the night settle around us, he’d been gathering my hair over my shoulder and gently twisting it. It felt so good, I’d nearly fallen asleep.
After a while, he ran one finger down the length of my arm. His skin, pale like mine but with an olive tint, was warm. He turned up my hand and laid a ring in the center of my palm. It looked like an antique, a simple silver band, but heavy, engraved, and set with diamonds. The lines of my palm converged in the ring’s center.
“It was my grandmother’s.” Heath’s voice was soft in my ear. I tore my eyes from the ring, twisted in the chair to look at him. The kitchen window was a bright block of light behind him, so I could barely make out the expression on his face, but I knew he was smiling.
The Silvers were wonderful, but I’d never had a family, not a real one of my own. All my junkie mother had left me with was an enormous need for privacy and an annoying eating disorder, not family heirlooms. But now, starting that night, everything would change. I was about to become a part of a new family. The family Heath and I created together.
“Daphne,” he said, and this time his voice had a ragged edge to it. A vulnerable, open need that made me feel scared and exhilarated, all at the same time.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.” Then I reached up and laced my fingers through his thick black hair and drew his face to mine. He took off my glasses and kissed me, and I thought, for the thousandth time since meeting him, I’d never been kissed so well in my life.
In the bedroom, I was impatient, peeling off my shirt and then Heath’s, but he gripped my wrists to make me slow down. I pulled him to the bed, but the more urgently I moved, the more he resisted. Every time I pressed against him, he would pause whatever incredibly delicious thing he was doing, fix his eyes on mine, and gently push me away. He grazed his fingers over every plane of my face.
In the light from the hallway, I could see that his brown eyes had lightened to a pure, reflective amber—the way they did anytime he was tired. His lips parted, then pressed together. It seemed like there was something he wanted to say.
“What is it?” I gave him a playful shake even as alarm shuddered through me. This was always tricky territory for me—opening up, talking about my feelings. And Heath and I didn’t usually go there, but this night felt different. He shook his head and kept staring at me with those amber eyes. There was something more than tiredness in them—something I’d never witnessed before. He was afraid, afraid to tell me something.
Suddenly I was afraid too. I had a crazy urge to cover his mouth with my hands or to run out of the room. But I didn’t do either. Instead I calmly pulled aside the sheet, tugged down his underwear, and went to work on his body until all thought of conversation had been forgotten.
Later, he pulled the sheet over my shoulders and murmured in my ear. A simple wedding, he said—maybe in our backyard, or even at the courthouse. A honeymoon in the Caribbean. I nodded to all of it. The details of a wedding were irrelevant to me. Neither of us had enough family to count and only a handful of friends. What mattered was we were back to normal. Whatever he might have wanted to say, he’d changed his mind. The delicate balance between us was restored. I was safe.
Heath pressed a kiss against my hair, and I burrowed into the blankets, my eyes fixed on the diamond band on my left hand. It winked in the bar of light from the bathroom. Heath had gotten it sized to fit me perfectly.
It was perfect.
Everything was perfect.
Sometime in the night, I felt the blankets jerk and I woke, disoriented. The streetlights had shut off and the room was ink black. Heath, on his hands and knees, was mumbling and pawing at the covers, like he was searching for something.
“Break the mirror,” he said. “Break it. Smash it.”
He leapt up and darted across the room, yanking up the blinds on the bay of windows in our bedroom. He laid his hands on the wavy old pane of the center window, gently at first, his fingers spreading outward. Between them, I could see the cloud of his breath on the glass.
“Heath?” I said, but there was no answer. Only the sound of his breathing. It was heavy, like he’d just burst over some invisible finish line.
“We can open the window, if you want.” I could hear a tremor in my voice. Maybe he was having a panic attack and needed fresh air. I told myself to stay calm.
“Do you—” I started.
With no warning, he balled his hands into fists and smashed them into the window. The glass cracked but didn’t shatter. I gasped, then he drew back again, ramming his fists clear through to the other side. The window splintered, breaking into a million triangles.
A moth fluttered around his head, and the sheer voile curtains billowed behind him. He held his hands out, palms up, and a beaded line of blood trickled down his forearms. His eyes were wide open but hollow, and the look on his face stopped my breath. It was a triumph I’d never witnessed on anyone’s face before.
“I did it, Mom,” he said.
I shrank back against the wooden headboard and waited—for what, I didn’t know. After a few seconds, Heath moved to the bed and lay down again, curling his body away from me. I heard him sigh once, deeply, then begin to snore.
I eased off the bed and crept around to the other side. It was hard to see in the dim light, but the worst cut seemed to run along the edge of his hand, all the way down past his wrist—a good three inches and a series of angry, oozing crosshatches across his knuckles. But the bleeding had already slowed, even though some of it had soaked into the blue sheet beneath him.
In the kitchen, I made myself a cup of tea and drank it standing up, staring out the back door, willing my hammering heart to slow. I flung open the door of the pantry. Rows of cans and boxes and packages lining every shelf. Plenty of food for now. Plenty for always. I counted until my breath evened out.
The next morning, when I got out of the shower, Heath was sweeping the floor. He shook his head when I asked him what the dream had been about.
“I don’t remember.” He squatted and swept the glass into the dustpan.
“You don’t remember anything?”
“No.” He dumped the pan into a garbage bag.
“Was it something about your mother?” I asked, my throat closing with dread.
The question hung in the air between us. Here was his chance to tell me anything he’d held back. Here was my chance to do the same.
“You said something about a—”
“Daphne,” he interrupted. “It was just a bad dream. No point in talking about it. But I’m sorry about the window.”
He slung the bag over his shoulder. Something in the clipped tone of his words, the closed look on his face that I’d never seen before, kept me from pushing any further. I had the distinct impression that we’d ventured into a tenuous place. That if I wasn’t careful, I could lose him. I nodded my assent, and he left the room.
The nightmares continued, at least two or three times a week. Occasionally Heath got physical, delivering a particularly fierce kick or jab to my ribs. Once I caught an elbow on my jaw, leaving me tender and bruised. When Lenny saw me at the office the next day, her eyes got big, and she sent Kevin on a coffee run.
Her silence made me nervous. “It was an accident,” I said. “He was asleep—dreaming—and got agitated. I just happened to be in the way, that’s all.”
“Did he mention what he was dreaming about? Zombie Nazis? Killer T. rexes? The IRS?”
I avoided her gimlet eye. “He said he didn’t remember.”
“Maybe it was about his mysterious, murky past, that he doesn’t like discussing with you or anyone. Which you let him get away with because y’all seem to have this weird pact where you don’t talk either.”
I sighed. “Everybody has a right to privacy. Some of us just need more than others.”
“I know,” she said. “And I’m not trying to pry, I swear. I’m just . . . I love you, Daph. And I think it might be a relief to let it all go.”
“Mm-hm,” I said.
“Something to think about,” she said. “That’s all.”
“We need to put the Mathison drawings into CAD,” I threw over my shoulder as I stalked off in the direction of our minikitchen.
“I love you,” she yelled after me.
“I love you too,” I yelled back, and that was the end of that.
She might’ve been off base thinking Heath was an abuser, but she was right that the nightmares were a sign of something more going on with him. The truth was, I had known for a while now that below Heath’s perfect exterior, inside him, lay a wilderness—I had recognized it that first night because I had the same thing. Before, it had made me feel connected to him in a way I couldn’t put into words. But now I knew there was something seriously wrong—something my fiancé didn’t think he could tell me.
And it occurred to me, for the first time, that both of us could end up lost—so easily and without any hope of rescue—in that vast, hostile wilderness.