The Woman in the Dark

by Vanessa Savage

  “What? Mia…”

  “You had Joe. You’ve always had Joe and your painting, talking about bloody art all the time. I was Dad’s girl, so I thought if I didn’t let it be true, things would stay the same. But they didn’t. We came here and Dad… I didn’t have Dad anymore. I don’t have anyone.”

  I can hear a key in the front door.

  “He gave you the pills, didn’t he?” she whispers, and I close my eyes.

  “Go down now,” I say. “Run out the back way.”

  “I can’t. He’s already in. He’ll stop me.”

  “Okay. I’ll go downstairs and meet him,” I say. “I’ll distract him, take him into the kitchen, and you can sneak out the front.”

  “What will you do? You won’t tell him you’re leaving, will you?”

  “I’ll make something up. I don’t know what yet.” I put my arms around her, gather her up, like I used to when she was little, hug her as tightly as she hugs me. “I will sort this,” I say. “I swear to you I will make this all right. You’re my girl. Mine. I’ll sort it, then I’ll come and get you and everything will be okay.”

  She starts to speak, but I shake my head, pushing her out of the room ahead of me. “Go—wait for me.”

  CHAPTER 34

  My step falters as I get to the bottom of the stairs. I heard Patrick come in, but there are no lights on and the front door is open, swinging back and forth in the wind. I nudge Mia and push her outside. She takes a step away, but I cling to her sleeve. Why is the front door still open? Has someone followed Patrick in? I look down the street, but no one’s around. It’s so tempting, so tempting, to grab Mia’s hand and run away with her.

  “Sarah?” I let go of Mia’s arm as I hear his voice and I hear her hurrying away as I turn, a fake, bright smile on my face that freezes at the sight of Patrick’s face. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.

  “Where are you going?” Patrick’s voice drifts from the darkness of the hall and I take a step back. The door’s still open. I could still run. Patrick comes forward, out of the shadows.

  “Nowhere.”

  He laughs. I don’t like that laugh.

  “I was getting worried,” Patrick says. “I thought you’d gone.”

  I step inside to stop him from seeing Mia leaving. “I thought you had a meeting.”

  “I never made it. Someone put a letter through the door for me and I—I know what the meeting was about anyway. They’re firing me.”

  I see something that looks like blood on his shirt and my mouth goes dry. “Patrick… What have you done?”

  He sees me looking and touches the stain. “I’ve been making too many mistakes, forgetting meetings, not turning up.”

  Suddenly I remember the suitcase. The packed suitcase sitting in the hall, inches from him. My heart pounds and my stomach turns in lazy waves. I should have run with Mia.

  He follows my eyes to the suitcase. “You never intended to give the house a chance, did you?”

  “I did. Of course I did. I gave you my mother’s money, didn’t I? I gave you everything I had.”

  “And you’ve never let me forget that, have you?” He opens the suitcase, takes the clothes out by the handful, dumping them on the floor. “The only money you’ve ever contributed to this marriage. Money I had to practically beg you for.”

  He takes the now-empty suitcase and unlocks the cellar, throwing it down the stairs. “I’m not going to let you. I won’t let you leave me like that. I won’t let you sneak off.”

  He grabs my arm, pulls me farther into the house, then leans across me and pushes the door closed. As my pulse rate shoots up, I imagine Patrick’s control as a piece of elastic, constantly stretched since we got here and now stretched a little more by Mia telling him about my exhibition and Ben, even more by that bloody suitcase, further again by his job. And the house, constantly nibbling away, eroding the thread that’s left.

  “We can’t stay here anymore.” The words come out as a whisper. “I know what you did. I know about Eve…”

  “No.”

  “We have to leave.” I try to keep my voice calm, keep my focus on stopping his control from snapping. But when I go to step around him he moves in front of me, blocking my path. “Maybe… maybe you getting fired is a good thing. You can find something else, something less stressful. You can sell the house, give yourself some breathing space. Have a real fresh start.”

  “And you? You and the children? Are you planning on coming with me?”

  I hesitate too long.

  “No.” He says it too loudly and I flinch. “I won’t let you leave me. And you’ll never get the children.”

  I grit my teeth. “I won’t stay here. It’s rotten, it’s evil, it’s bad for me, it’s bad for the children, it’s bad for you. You can see that, can’t you? You and Joe and Mia… And now you’ve lost your job.”

  “It’s not the fucking house.” His voice rises and I take a step back. “It’s you, passing judgment all the time, making me beg for your mother’s fucking money when I’ve paid for everything the entire time we’ve been together. You’re the reason I’m stressed. You’re the reason the kids have gone so far off the rails. You’re the reason I lost my damn job because I had to spend all my time worrying about you and your state of fucking mind.”

  I try again to push past him, but now his hand is at my neck and he shoves me against the wall, his hand tightening, cutting off my breath. I reach for his arms, dig my nails in, scratch as hard as I can. He swears and lets go of me. I slip and stagger and he grabs for my hair, pulling it until I scream, then hauls me back, raises his fist, and punches me. My face explodes, I swear it does. I fall, both hands clutched to my cheek, afraid to find it shattered. There’s blood—my lip, my nose. I can taste it, sour and coppery.

  I curl up small. In films, in books, when they fight and get up and run and fight back, how can that be real? I can’t move. I can’t think. All of me is concentrated here, in this fire on my face.

  He gathers me up. He’s rocking me like we’re dancing and he’s crying. I can feel his tears falling on my face and they sting, salt in my wounds.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m so sorry. I never… I won’t… I’m so sorry.”

  He rocks me back and forth and I’m crying too, for the couple we once were, the man who danced with me, who had that smile, all that love, all those plans.

  “You’re right,” he’s saying. “It’s this house… I thought I could make everything right. When I grew up here, it was so perfect. Then I came back and the windows were rotten, it was damp and falling apart. My parents were… There was something wrong with them. There was always something wrong with them. But I thought, when the house was mine, I could make it all better.”

  He sits me down on the bottom stair and reaches for a tissue from the box on the hall table. He dabs it on my lip, wiping away the blood.

  “The house was taken away and I never got the chance. Not then. This, though, now, us, this was my second chance. You were so ill. I was so scared after your overdose. I was so scared I was going to lose you and I thought the house could make everything right.”

  He leans in. I think he’s going to kiss me and I cringe away.

  “No, Sarah,” he says frantically, pulling me into his arms again, muttering his words into my hair. “No, no—don’t back away from me. Don’t be scared of me. Please—I never wanted… I thought if I had the house back, I’d have it all. But it’s not right. You, the children, the house, none of it is perfect. Not like it should be.”

  As he says this, he pulls away and I can see the anger simmering again, frustration fueling it. He stares down at the blood-spotted tissue in his hand and his voice drops to a whisper. “When we met, do you remember how we’d plan our lives? All those dreams we had?”

  I remember. I remember silly conversations, pie-in-the-sky stuff, the things a new couple says. It wasn’t real, his talk of the house by the sea, the kids, the dog, his conviction o
f how perfect it would be. I never thought it was his real bloody life plan.

  “Please don’t leave me, Sarah.”

  I back away from the hand he reaches out. Don’t touch me. The words are in my head, but I can’t say them. I’m scared of making that anger burst out again. He touches my face, gently this time, cupping my jaw, his thumb brushing my lip.

  “It’s the house,” he says again. “It’s this house. I’ll sell it.”

  “Sell it?” I don’t believe him. He’s been obsessed with getting this house back his whole adult life.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? I will, I’ll sell it. What’s the point in having the house if I’m living here alone? I never meant to live in it alone. It’s supposed to be a family house.” He rests his forehead against mine. “Please… I’d never have… If we hadn’t been here, if I hadn’t gotten so caught up in the house and everything, I would never have lost control like that. You’ve seen it, you said it to me before, it’s the house. Give me another chance. We’ll sell and we’ll move and it’ll never happen again.”

  I don’t speak.

  “We’ll move,” he says. “We’ll move and it’ll be better—it’ll be like it was before, you’ll see.”

  I close my eyes as he rocks me and I want to cry. Better like before? When? When I thought we were happy, but he was coming to this town once a month and never told me, drinking in a pub he never mentioned, obsessing about a house I thought was a long-forgotten piece of his past, lying about business meetings when he got home to me and the children?

  He’s rocking me and it’s like we’re dancing again, scruffy me in my thrift-store coat and Patrick with the smile that was all for me, and I wonder if there’s any of that Patrick left… if that Patrick ever existed at all.

  “I’m sorry,” he keeps saying. “But I won’t—I can’t let you leave me.”

  The cellar door is still open: I can feel the cold draft on my face.

  “Where are Mia and Joe?” he asks.

  My heart is galloping. “No idea,” I say, resisting the urge to look at my watch. Will Mia be on the train by now?

  “I wanted Mia to be wrong, but then I got this letter,” he says, pulling an envelope out of his pocket.

  “What?”

  “I went out, driving around, trying to get my head around it, wanting not to believe it. And then I went into town and I saw your paintings in the gallery. I saw your name on the poster and I knew Mia was right and that you’ve been lying to me for so long. And she was right about the other thing too, wasn’t she?”

  “What are you talking about?” I can feel the cold spots Mia talks about, but they’re not in the house: they’re inside me, growing bigger.

  He opens the envelope and holds up a photo of me and Ben—and all the cold spots meet. I’m ice inside and, oh, God, oh, God, I have to get out of here. I lurch upright and turn to run, but he’s too quick, his hand shooting out to grab my arm, pulling me back and spinning me around to slam against the wall.

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Sarah,” he says, pinning me there. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Please, Patrick—that photo, it’s not—”

  “Not what it looks like? That’s what I wanted to believe. It didn’t make sense to me… Someone pushed it through the letter box.”

  Anna, I think. Eve.

  “I was here, trying to convince myself it was innocent, that someone took the photo for some vindictive reason of their own, but then I remembered what Mia said.”

  “What did you do?” I whisper, and there’s that look again, skittering past me.

  “Mia’s a good girl,” he says. “She told me everything. She told me the truth, but I got angry with her because I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “It’s not true,” I mutter. Not true. “It’s just an exhibition—he’s one of the artists from the gallery. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “You think I wouldn’t recognize him? You were sketching him, this artist. You told me he was made up, a figment of your imagination, but you drew him, his house. You’ve been inside his house. You’ve been lying to me all this time. Months.”

  “He’s a friend, that’s all.”

  He stares down at the photo again and so do I. It’s a photograph of us in the café, me leaning toward him. It’s like the painting of the couple on the bench—it could be interpreted so many ways. Friends or lovers? Anna’s voice whispers in my memory.

  It was noisy in the café so I leaned toward Ben to hear something he said better, but it looks like we’re kissing in the photograph. It looks like we’re in love: Ben’s hand is touching mine and I remember the feel of it, how intimate it seemed, that brush of skin on skin.

  “He was always jealous of me when we were at school. Jealous of me, jealous of this house when he lived in a poky apartment in town. Just friends? Don’t lie to me.”

  “We are just friends,” I say again. “I swear to you, Patrick, I have not been unfaithful—”

  “Stop.” He lifts his hand and touches my face. His hand is cold on my cheek. “I love you. I’ll die loving you. You’re the same. You can’t live a life without me.”

  His hand squeezes my jaw and I let out a small cry of pain. His shoulders sag, and his hand drops from my face. “Why couldn’t I ever be enough for you?”

  “You were once,” I say, and tears burn in my eyes. “You were all I ever wanted, but you never trusted me. You lied to me, Patrick. From the moment we met, you’ve been lying. You’ve done this with all your lies—you killed all that love.”

  “I helped you. I saved you.”

  “Like you couldn’t save Eve? That’s the story you told me, isn’t it?”

  He hunches over, like he’s in pain. “You know you’re killing me?”

  I can see it in the agony on his face. But staying with him would kill me. And if the twisted obsession he has that he calls love has to kill one of us, I’d rather it was him. “Let me go,” I say.

  “You can’t leave me. I’ll tell Joe the truth about who he is and what you did.”

  “I don’t care anymore.”

  “You will care. They’ll never speak to you again. You’ll never get custody, not even of Mia—I’ll tell them about the breakdown, the overdoses. You’ll be completely alone.”

  “Better alone than with you.”

  His hand comes up and slaps me hard. My head bounces back and hits the door. He reaches for me, pulling me to him, hugging me tight and muttering, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, holding me so tightly I can’t breathe. He follows his words with kisses and my shock turns to panic. I can’t get out of his arms and we’re alone in the fucking Murder House and he’s kissing me and saying sorry.

  “Let me go, Patrick,” I say. “Please let me go.”

  He steps back, still so darkly handsome in his suit, his hair getting too long, falling over his eyes. He bends to kiss me, not on the mouth, just below my ear. “Please, Sarah,” he whispers in my ear. “Don’t make me punish you again.”

  He starts stroking my arms and I close my eyes and think about the gallery and Ben. He looked so happy as he went through my paintings, talked about us working together. None of it real, the sanctuary he offered me, tainted forever now by his history with Patrick, but those moments… A whole other life there, waiting for me.

  Patrick’s hand moves up to grab my shoulder, pulling me back toward him when I try to get away, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

  “Tell me you love me,” he says, like a plea.

  “I don’t,” I say. “I hate you.”

  I do. Him, this house, this life, the whole thing born from an evil lie. Such a bitter contrast to the other one, the one I could have. I hate him so I tell him. It’s all I have, this little ability to hurt.

  Before I can think, he’s dragging me down the hall, wrenching the cellar door wider. “You think you can do this to me? You think I’ll let you?” I cling to the door frame with my raw, blistered skin and he bends my finger
s back until I scream, then pushes me in, keeps pushing me so I half fall down the stairs, and he follows me and we’re both there, in the cellar, in the dark.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. But he’s not. He’s not sorry at all. His voice is ugly with grief and anger and he’s not done punishing me yet.

  “Please let me go,” I say.

  He stares at me. “No. Never.”

  If I’d said yes to that date with Ben, the first time he asked, before I knew who he was, before I knew how much history he had with Patrick, what would we have talked about? What would I have said to him?

  I used to be a whole person, not a half, but I got lost somewhere.

  I wanted to leave my husband, but I was scared.

  This glimpse of a whole new life, you, the gallery, is more precious to me than you could ever imagine.

  But maybe I wouldn’t have had to say any of that. He’s a painter and we could have talked about art, and books, and music. I would have liked him in a muted way.

  He has hair the color of wet sand and ocean eyes, that color somewhere between green and blue. He’s stocky and broad; everything about him is warm and I would have let him undress me in his cottage by the sea. I would have smiled as he lifted me and carried me through to his bed.

  He’s not a handsome man, no lean muscle and flat stomach and sharp edges, like Patrick, but I could have lain with my head on my artist’s chest and I could have slept and that would have been my sanctuary, not a studio now haunted by memories of a teenage Patrick.

  I think of this as Patrick reaches for me, as he stops me from leaving. I think of my artist and his cottage by the sea and what might have been as Patrick pushes me onto the dirty cellar floor, one hand around my throat, choking off my screams as he pulls my jeans down and rips at my panties. His hand digs into my thigh as he forces my legs apart and shoves himself inside me. He rapes me, and I can’t breathe and it hurts and—oh, God, stop.

  Patrick, stop.

  But he won’t. He doesn’t stop and as he cries afterward and says, sorry sorry sorry, over and over again, I close my eyes and pretend I’m in a cottage by the sea, my head on my artist’s warm chest, sleeping.