by BETH KERY
It horrified me.
“Evan,” I shouted, sitting up abruptly. I winced in pain, glancing down at my arm. Blood shone at the juncture of my forearm and upper arm. A few drops had spilled on the sheets, the scarlet color on the snowy white fabric shocking my stunned vision.
“Evan,” I screamed, in a complete panic now. I scrambled to get up out of the bed.
The blue curtains whipped back. A blonde woman in her forties wearing pale green scrubs rushed to the side of the bed, placing her hands on my shoulders as I tried to stand.
“Calm down, Mrs. Halifax. You’re in the emergency room. Everything is going to be all right. Please, calm down. You’ve torn out your IV.”
“Where’s my husband? Where’s Evan?” I demanded, still struggling to stand.
“I’m here. Anna.”
I froze. I found myself staring at Evan’s face.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
The floor of the known world really has dropped away out this time.
I had no idea what those skittering thoughts meant, but my heart beat uncomfortably loud in my ears. I heard a whimpering sound and realized it came from my throat.
“I’m here, Anna. It’s okay,” Evan repeated, his anxious gaze glued to mine. I don’t think it was possible for him to look pale, per se, but he looked more washed out than I’d ever seen him beneath his tan. Drawn. He reached around the nurse, touching the side of my face, stroking me. I gasped at his touch, so warm and solid against my skin.
“You’re in the emergency room at Barton Memorial Hospital. You’re going to be fine. They were just waiting for you to wake up and getting you hydrated with the IV.”
“But… what happened?”
“You were drugged. Ketamine. The doctor was telling me just before you woke up. The lab results had just come back. It’s a powerful, very fast-acting drug. You don’t remember what happened?”
“No, I can’t seem to make sense of it—”
“Ketamine causes memory problems,” the nurse said. I realized that she’d let go of my shoulders, now that I wasn’t struggling anymore. She’d removed the IV completely and stepped aside. Evan saw the blood on my arm for the first time.
“Jesus. Is she going to be all right?” he demanded of the nurse.
“She’ll be fine. She was disoriented and pulled out the IV. I’ll be right back to get that bandaged up. Can you stay with her for a minute, Mr. Halifax?”
“Of course.”
Evan and I were alone in the little cubicle. There was something in his eyes I’d never seen before. Anxiety… yes, I recognized that. But there was something else. Wariness, I realized.
“Evan, what happened? Please tell me.”
“Noah Madaster happened.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw a bank of windows in a circular room flooded with sunlight. I inhaled sharply at the vivid abruptness of the memory.
Why the hell had I ever gone there?
“I found you in his suite. He drugged you. Do you remember the letter he sent you?” Evan asked me.
“Yes. He sent me a letter,” I said slowly, remembering Madaster’s large, bold script. I blinked, refocusing on Evan. “You found it?”
He nodded. “I came looking for you, and couldn’t find you anywhere. I got worried, and started going through some of your things, to see if anything was missing… if you’d taken anything, and then left Les Jumeaux. That’s when I found the letter.”
I strained to recall more, but the memories were isolated patches, a mosaic of separated pictures on a mostly pitch black background. I had a vision of Lorraine Madaster’s frightened face as she opened the door of the South Twin. I tried to force more memories, but the effort made me feel like I’d vomit. I pressed my fist against my stomach.
Against my will, I remembered Noah Madaster’s ugly, triumphant smile. I shuddered.
Who had he triumphed against? Evan. I was somehow sure of it, but I couldn’t recall why.
I didn’t want to.
Evan’s hands opened at my back, stroking me. He reached for my hand. After a few seconds, I realized his eyelids were narrowed. I looked down, to see what he was looking at. My thumbnail had turned an ugly purplish black color.
“Oh, Jesus.” Pure fear swept through me at the sight. I jerked my hand out of his, gasping.
“Anna? What is it?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, gasping for air. I wasn’t lying. I didn’t have a clue why I’d cringed when I’d seen the blackened nail, or why I’d jerked my hand from Evan’s touch as if it repulsed me.
Oh no, oh no, oh no. The feeling again of the world dropping out from under me. Nausea so strong, it was like a wave of overwhelming pain rather than a stomachache… like my whole body could vomit.
Another memory struck me with the strength of a two-by-four to the temple.
“You said you would kill him. Madaster.”
Evan blanched. “That, you remember. I thought you were unconscious when I ran into that room.”
“Evan?” I prodded anxiously.
“Of course I didn’t kill him. I might have, to be honest,” he said after a pause, grimacing. “But I was too preoccupied once I saw you, lying on that floor. I thought he’d murdered you, at first.” That haunted look had returned to his eyes in full force.
“What did you do?”
“I checked to make sure you were breathing, of course. Found a pulse. Noah was ranting. I called an ambulance, and then Wes. He was still over at the North Twin, and I thought he might be able to help you. Then the ambulance came and they brought you here.”
“But Madaster—”
“I contacted the police. A cop came here to the ER, and I filed a report against Noah for drugging you. I’m assuming the police have gone to the South Twin to question him, by now. I hope he’s been arrested for what he did.”
“Why did Madaster do it, though? Why did he drug me?” I whispered, rubbing my eyelids. “Evan?” I asked, opening my eyes when he didn’t immediately reply. That wariness I’d seen before was back full-fledged on his face.
“You don’t remember anything that he did when you started to lose consciousness?”
I realized that while I was searching his face, looking for answers, he was doing the same thing to me.
I don’t have any answers, Evan. I’m most worried about what you know… about what Madaster revealed to you while I was unconscious.
The curtain twitched behind him, and the nurse reentered the cubicle, carrying some first aid supplies.
“Excuse me, please,” she told Evan briskly.
“I don’t know why Noah did it,” Evan said, before he stepped away from me to make room for the nurse.
But by that time in our relationship, I had experience with Evan’s sidestepping of the truth. With a sick, sinking feeling, I realized he was lying to me now.
Evan stood aside to let the two police officers pass him. He closed the door with a muted click behind them. He turned to face me across the luxurious hotel suite. We’d checked into it yesterday, after I’d been discharged from the hospital.
At that moment, I sensed all of my own frustrated helplessness mirrored on Evan’s face.
“Madaster said that his nurse was the one solely responsible for drugging me. And that crazy bitch said it was true.” I paraphrased part of what the police had just told us. My voice rang hollow with disbelief and outrage. Ima Butler, the nurse, had confessed to putting the ketamine into my iced tea. She’d claimed she’d done it out of anger at the fact that Evan and I had been purposefully upsetting and agitating Madaster ever since we’d arrived at Les Jumeaux. Madaster himself had posted bail for Ima, and she was currently free on bond. I was still stunned by the turn of events.
“Why would she do that? Why would she take the blame?”
Evan shut his eyes briefly and
stepped further into the room. The suite we were in wasn’t huge, although it was at a luxury hotel on the waterfront with a balcony. A big electronics convention was taking place in town. Evan had had to do some finagling to get us a room in South Lake on short notice. He’d made it clear upon leaving the hospital that we would not be returning to Les Jumeaux, under any circumstance.
“She’s become one of his creatures,” Evan said, raking his fingers through his thick hair. “I can’t say I’m surprised she did it. I told you. It’s how Noah operates. He makes slaves, or the equivalent of them. It’s the type of person he wants around him: subservient. Eager to please. I’m pissed as hell that she took the fall for him. But I’m not surprised.”
Feeling deflated, I sat down at the corner of one of the queen beds in the room.
Two beds.
I’d slept in one last night, Evan the other. I’d been exhausted upon being discharged, wrung out and numb with everything that had happened in the past few days. I’d slept with Evan’s arms around me on the previous night, even when I’d discovered his betrayal.
But last night, I’d insisted we sleep separately in the hotel room. I didn’t understand why I did it, and that frightened me even more. And despite my exhaustion, I’d been restless in that bed; unmoored and drifting away from everything that had once counted to me.
“Anna, are you all right?”
The fierce concern on his face made my throat swell uncomfortably. I placed my hand on my throat and lightly rubbed the straining muscles. I’d been the witness of his raw, wild worry dozens of times since yesterday. It was unbearable, because I knew I couldn’t comfort him. I certainly couldn’t take solace from him anymore.
“Anna?”
He sat down on the bed next to me. My panic expanded in my chest when I felt his hand on my back. I cringed, and immediately tried to tamp down the instinctive response to avoid his touch. But Evan felt me flinch. He exhaled and dropped his hand onto his thigh.
“You’ve pulled away from me again. I’d hoped that after last night, well… I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said heavily. “That there might still be a chance between us, I guess. But there isn’t. Is there?”
I clamped my eyelids shut. How could I tell him that I felt like my heart was breaking every time I looked at his face? That his touch—once craved so much—now made panic claw at my insides. I got the same feeling every time I looked at the ugly bruise under my thumb.
How could I tell him why I felt that way, when I was having trouble understanding myself? The memories nibbled at the edge of my consciousness, threatening to bite viciously into me at any moment. I was barely holding it together.
It was all his fault. Madaster’s. He laid ruin to everything he touched.
“It’s so much, Evan. I can’t just act like everything is fine between us.”
“I know. I don’t want to press you. But, Anna—”
I heard his hesitation and turned to look at him.
“There is something I have to ask you.”
“About Madaster?” I asked uneasily. “I don’t remember much more about what happened than I did yesterday.”
It was kind of true. I didn’t have that many more flashes of concrete memory than I’d had after ten minutes of awakening in the ER yesterday. But increasingly, I strained to hold back that thick, sickening feeling of dread. It was that sinister horror that slinked closer whenever Evan touched me.
“No. Not about Madaster. Anna—”
“Just say it,” I prompted, feeling irritated at his reluctance. Trapped. The dread edged closer now, an insidious, hungry shadow. It crept forward, even without Evan touching me.
“Is it possible you were adopted?” Evan asked me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I’d thought the day before yesterday—the day at the library, and then hearing Evan’s confession—had been the longest, most miserable day of my life. Then I’d visited Noah Madaster in the South Twin, and that day had moved into first place.
Now I knew this day in the hotel room with Evan would be the hellish new winner.
It was enough to make a girl prefer oblivion to tomorrow.
When he said the word adoption, it triggered a wave of emotion in me. I shuddered uncontrollably.
“Of course not,” I cried out. “What would make you say something like that?”
“I’m sorry,” Evan said, clearly taken aback my reaction. “It was something Noah said while I was in his suite yesterday.”
The only thing that kept me grounded in that moment, that allowed me to stave off panic, was the weight and history of my happy, mundane childhood. I couldn’t allow that to be ripped away from me as well.
“I’m not adopted. That’s ridiculous. Don’t you think my parents would have told me?”
“I suppose,” he said slowly, and I could feel his gaze on my face: studying, gauging. Worried. “Although I’d imagine it’s a decision adoptive parents make early on and try to stick to: whether to tell the child, or let the child assume they are a natural part of the family.”
“You’re suggesting I’m unnatural?” He reached for me, and I struck his hand away. I stood—too abruptly, because dizziness hit me. Unnatural. Adoption. Unnatural. Adoption.
“What are you trying to do to me, Evan? Tear me apart, piece by piece?”
“No. God, no, I’m sorry—Anna!”
I rushed to the bathroom and slammed shut the door. When I heard him call my name again, I locked it.
I turned and stared at the pristine white bathroom. It was a blank canvas, blazing in my eyes. They say nature abhors a vacuum. Upon that clean, white canvas, the memories started to slash and splatter.
I believe that at that moment, if I could have ripped my heart from my chest in order to stop the pain, I would have.
I sat back on my haunches, gripping the toilet seat. The dread had been too much for me to contain. I’d vomited it up violently. There was a continuous roar in my ears. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hear Evan breaking through the lock on the door.
I looked up at him when he burst into the room.
“Madaster told me that I was Elizabeth’s child. I remember that now,” I told him dully. I couldn’t voice the other part… couldn’t possibly name whom Madaster had said was my father. Of course I couldn’t speak of Madaster’s monstrous claim. It’d be like sending a sharp knife through my own flesh. Self-preservation won out, I guess.
Evan stared down at me, horror plastered on his face.
My husband’s face.
My father’s?
My stomach and ribcage heaved again. Impossibly, more bitter fluid came out of me. I felt Evan’s hand on my back, stroking my body as it convulsed.
A moment later, my arms limply circled the toilet seat. I pressed my cheek against my biceps.
I’d read something else in Evan’s horrified expression when he’d looked down at me a moment ago.
“You think it’s true. Don’t you?” I asked him weakly. “You believe that somehow, some way, I’m Elizabeth Madaster’s daughter?”
Evan stood. I heard the water running at the sink, and then he knelt next to me. He pressed a cool, damp washrag against my forehead and cheek. Then he carefully cleaned my mouth.
“Anna? Look at me,” I heard him say firmly.
I forced my tired eyes to focus on him.
“It’s true that Madaster told me yesterday that he believed you were Elizabeth’s daughter. He was spewing all kinds of filth while I tried to get you out of that tower. But because Madaster said it… because he wants to believe it’s true, that doesn’t mean it is.”
I lifted my head off my arm. “Tell me that you didn’t believe I was Elizabeth’s daughter when you set out to seduce me.”
Tell me. Please, tell me.
He opened his hand on the side of my head, his finge
rs sliding through me hair.
“I never, ever thought such a thing. Why would I? You can’t think that I would have allowed what’s happened between us to happen if I believed that.”
“You never suspected it? Given how much Elizabeth and I look alike?”
“Of course not. Elizabeth told me everything, eventually. She was never pregnant.”
“She told you things only after you discovered her lies, or when she was trying to cleanse her consciousness of everything she’d done.”
“Anna, I know how old you are. I saw your birth certificate when we got the marriage license. Elizabeth would had to have been sixteen when she had you. I knew her then. It didn’t hap—”
“Didn’t you say she went away to school? When she was sixteen? Couldn’t she have been pregnant then?”
He looked taken aback, but only briefly. “No. There’s no way. It’s true that Elizabeth became secretive and evasive when she got older, but she told me everything when we were kids.”
“Except that Madaster had been abusing her since she was a child.”
He flinched slightly at that.
“Evan, what if I am related to him… to that monster?” I whispered, feeling the nausea rise in my throat again.
“No. I’m telling you, it’s not possible,” he said with a slashing gesture of his hand. I sensed he wasn’t angry at me. He was angry at Madaster for putting the idea into our heads. He was angry at himself, for even considering the possibility. Or for not considering it before.
“You don’t understand. Elizabeth couldn’t have children,” he stated harshly.
I sat up straighter. “She couldn’t?”
“No. She had an abnormality in her uterus. We tried to have a child at one point, but she never got pregnant. We went to specialists a few years into our marriage, but—” He shook his head, avoiding my stare. “She couldn’t have children, Anna.”
“But you’ve thought about it, haven’t you? You’ve wondered if it could be true, ever since Madaster claimed it yesterday. That’s why you immediately said the thing about my birth certificate, because you’ve been going over it all in your head since then, reassuring yourself it was impossible.”