Isolation
Sarah K. Stephens
Copyright © 2020 Sarah K. Stephens
The right of Sarah K. Stephens to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Print ISBN 978-1-913942-04-5
Contents
Love crime, thriller and mystery books?
Also by Sarah K. Stephens
Day 15
1. Day 1
2. Margot
3. Tobias
4. Brenna
5. Felix
6. Margot
7. Day 2
8. Felix
9. Day 3
10. Margot
11. Tobias
12. Felix
13. Day 4
14. Felix
15. Margot
16. Day 7
17. Day 9
18. Margot
19. Tobias
20. Mark
21. Felix
22. Margot
23. Felix
24. Brenna
25. Mark
26. Day 11
27. Day 14
28. Margot
29. Day 15
30. Mark
31. Felix
32. Tobias
33. Daphne
34. Mark
35. Brenna
36. Felix
37. Daphne
38. Margot
39. Darren
40. Felix
41. Tobias
42. Felix
43. Mark
44. Margot
45. Brenna
46. Felix
47. Darren
48. Mark
49. Margot
50. Brenna
51. Tobias
52. Margot
53. Brenna
54. Daphne
55. Darren
56. Felix
57. Brenna
58. Darren
59. Tobias
60. Brenna
61. Felix
62. Margot
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
A note from the publisher
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Also by Sarah K. Stephens
It Was Always You
The Anniversary
For Mom, always my first reader
Day 15
Felix
One thousand steps.
That’s how many it takes to cross from one end of our home to the other. I know it’s strange that it’s such an exact number. But there are lots of strange things happening right now, and the fact that I can walk from our dinner parlor to the end of the kitchen in a perfectly round number seems to be a little less weird than everything else.
But, if that bothers you, I can give you other measurements.
375 seconds. Six minutes and fifteen seconds.
59 breaths.
10 rooms to cross.
25 windows to look out of.
5 people to avoid.
Except today is different. Today, I only get to 785 steps before I see the body.
“Four people to avoid.” This new fact slithers out of my mouth before I can replace it with something more appropriate, like “Oh no!” or “Help!” or “Are you okay?” even though I can clearly see that they aren’t.
Their pale white fingers clench into a claw that grips at nothing. And there’s blood. So, so much blood that I can barely see two eyes blankly staring through the wet curtain of it.
I shouldn’t be able to count, but I do and it only takes me 523 steps to run upstairs, past my bedroom and into the panic room. I curl myself into a ball against the soft soundproof walls, pulling my hands over my eyes like a toddler who thinks nobody can see them if they can’t see anything themselves.
And that’s where I wait for what I know is coming next.
Coming for all of us.
Day 1
Brenna
I take a sip of coffee and snap open the paper. Mark used to tease me about being old-fashioned when I insisted that we keep getting the paper delivered.
“Everything is online now,” he’d said. “And besides, we live so far out it doesn’t seem fair to make someone come and deliver it.”
But I’d held firm, and so for the last ten years we’ve had the paper dropped off each morning in our box at the end of our drive. Until he wasn’t able to, Mark would go and get it for me each day before breakfast.
The headlines are the same as the days before, with slight changes in the number of cases reported and the political firestorm of blame swirling around. I automatically skim them, push them to the back of my mind and suppress the surge of bile they inevitably trigger, and turn instead to the business section. One of our main competitors, Digital Global, was supposed to put out a big patch to their software today and I’m wondering if The Times got a scoop on how insufficient it is. Or rather, I’m wondering if they decided to print the information my company leaked purposefully to diminish the significance of this supposed improvement.
The business section is smaller today, and looking over the content reveals nothing related to my company, Chronos, or to Digital Global. Most are estimates of the financial impact of recent events, and I don’t need to read the paper for that info. The notifications on my phone for our stock investments keep pinging away, each share price lower than the next.
I decide to put the paper away and try to refocus on something positive. My therapist keeps pushing mindfulness training, but for the $200 an hour I’m paying her I should really be getting more than “sit still and listen to your breathing” as the solution to all my problems.
There are pictures of Felix and Daphne taped to our subzero fridge, along with a smattering of drawings they’ve done over the last few years. I will my mind to focus on them, but all I can manage to do is push down the surge of dread that’s threatening to overtake me like a smothering pillow.
Margot will be getting the children up soon.
And then they’ll be here, in our huge sunny kitchen with the Italian black marble and the breakfast nook, scarfing down cereal and singing songs and poking each other in the shoulders until cereal is everywhere.
How much cereal do we have? I think. Do we need to get more?
I try to take another sip of coffee, but my hand trembles as I bring the cup to my mouth. If I’m not careful, I’m going to scare them. I need to get a handle on myself.
“Brenna?” The voice trickles in like the sunlight through the gauzy curtains our decorator picked out last spring, when I needed a distraction from the other remodel we were doing.
I look up and see Ma
rgot, eyes puffy from sleep and her dark hair coming loose from the sloppy top knot she pulls her hair back in at bedtime. She looks like she slept deeply, and as I watch her come into the kitchen from the hallway she reaches up and rubs her eye with her fist, like a baby might do.
She’s so much younger than you, I remind myself. Be kind to her.
“I was finishing my coffee,” I tell her as I pour the rest of my cup into the sink and set my empty mug on the counter.
She and I both stare at it for a moment, realizing perhaps at the same time that it is going to stay there until one of us washes it. Greta, our long-time housekeeper, left yesterday to go back to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to take care of her aging mother. She said she didn’t want to risk being away from her if everything went into lockdown.
Margot steps towards me, but I reach out to take the sponge before she can get to it. I squeeze out some dish soap and scrub the mug. It has a picture of Donald Duck on the front, and I cover his orange bill and ridiculous sailor suit in sudsy water so I can’t see it for a moment. Mark was always a big fan of Looney Tunes, and I can almost taste the scent of his aftershave mixed with the bitter aroma of his dark roast coffee as he’d drink it in the morning, tan and strong in his shirt sleeves and sneaking quick kisses from me as I rushed to get ready.
“Here, let me do it,” Margot says, and she reaches her arms around my waist and grabs the cup from me. I feel her hip bones press into the soft flesh of my backside, and her breath comes softly at the nape of my neck.
But then there’s the patter of little feet on the floor, and Daphne bursts into the room, followed by the more solid steps of Felix.
“I woke up by myself,” Daphne announces, her arms outstretched in a joyous Y.
Margot moves fluidly away from me and over to the fridge, where she pretends to scan the shelves for milk.
And like that, we’re strangers again.
2
Margot
“Just pick one, please,” I tell Daphne.
I’m holding up two dresses, one covered in a bright red strawberry print and sleeveless, the other a rich cream velvet with a hunter green sash to tie at the back. Both are totally inappropriate for a seven-year-old girl to wear on a weekday in the middle of March, but I don’t care. These are the first two I grabbed out of the closet when Brenna asked me to help with Daphne while she tended to something Felix needed.
I’m a nurse, not a nanny.
Although, of course, I want to be helpful. Don’t get me wrong. I’m reading the headlines too, and I know these are extraordinary times, unprecedented days, or whatever other phrase you want to use to describe what’s happening right now in the world. That’s partly why I’ve gotten in the habit of waking the kids up in the morning, while Brenna has a chance to actually eat something for breakfast—although more likely she’ll just chug a huge mug of coffee—before she heads into the office.
We’re all going to need to be a bit more flexible in the days to come.
Maybe a lot more flexible.
Daphne stares intently at my offering, her cherub-like face framed in soft golden-blond curls. She blinks at me and tilts her head to the side in deep concentration. She is an absolutely gorgeous child, and I’m convinced this is why she’s developed certain—habits, you might say—that make the adults in her life a little too gullible.
Correction. Most of the adults.
I grew up with four sisters. I know when I’m being played.
“Okay, it’s the strawberry one.” I swing the velvet dress back into the closet and shift the straps of Daphne’s dress off the hanger, knowing full well what’s about to happen.
“No, not the strawberries. I want the other one,” Daphne chirps up, all decisiveness suddenly.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “You seemed like you weren’t sure just a moment ago. I don’t want you taking forever to get ready. I have other stuff I need to do.”
“I promise. I’ll get ready so fast. Pretty please, let me wear it!”
I move the other dress from the closet and hand it off to the seven-year-old. Daphne promptly moves to the private en suite bathroom that’s attached to her bedroom and closes the door.
I don’t wait. I could cook my mother eggs and pancakes—by myself—by the time I was seven. There’s no reason Daphne can’t dress herself. And before I’m even halfway down the hallway I hear the click of the shoes she’s managed to put on along with her chosen dress, with a tied bow at the back and everything.
“I’m ready,” she announces to no one in particular.
Just then, Brenna appears around the corner with Felix in tow. He has dark rings under his eyes, like he didn’t sleep well for the last several weeks. Brenna hasn’t mentioned anything specifically to me, but I’ve been able to gather that there’s something wrong at school.
When I first moved in nine months ago, I thought the eaves under the window of my room were moaning in the wind—sure, the house is renovated beyond an inch of its life, but it’s still old in its bones—until I realized it wasn’t the house. It was Felix.
“You look gorgeous,” Brenna says to Daphne.
And it’s true. She does.
“I did it all by myself,” Daphne informs her mother. Brenna glances at me.
“Did you now?” she tells her daughter. “Aren’t you such a big girl!”
Daphne beams and then click-clacks off to somewhere else in the house.
Brenna, Felix, and I are left in an awkward trio in the hallway.
“I could dress myself by the time I was in kindergarten,” Felix informs us solemnly.
My point, exactly.
. . .
Mark Stone was the unofficial poster boy for renewable energy tech that “looks as good as it does good.” At least, that’s what I read online when I was first hired for this job. I already knew who Mark Stone was—he was a media darling before he got sick, and everyone in the US knew the name to the same extent—but after coming over to Brenna’s office in town for my interview I did a deep internet dive. There were so many profiles of him looking gorgeous and fit, staring out into the distance in his $3,000 suits as he contemplated the industry his electrical engineering degree and his sheer chutzpah had helped create, that I wasn’t prepared for what I found when Brenna eventually hired me and I came to the house.
And let me be clear. I’m an excellent nurse. I’ve worked in nursing homes and hospice care and the NICU. I might be under thirty but I’ve got the experience. I know what bodies and minds look like when they’re wasting away.
But even still, seeing Mark Stone that first time in contrast to the Mark Stone I saw in those photo spreads and articles? It was almost painful.
Getting into the house was a complicated process to begin with. I had to buzz in at the front gate, and then drive my beat-up Chevy Corsica down their winding front path until I came to the crescent-shaped curve with several parking spaces for visitors. If you’ve ever seen any of the Pride and Prejudice movie adaptations, where Elizabeth Bennett rides up with her aunt and uncle to the gates of Pemberley, then you know what it felt like coming around a bend on that wooded road and then suddenly seeing this palatial mansion sitting right on a lake and surrounded by pastures and fields where chestnut brown horses were grazing. It was like biting into an overripe fruit that spilled out luxury all across your mouth and down onto your shirt.
And you might have choked on it a little.
Brenna met me at the door, a real vision of cool executive style in a creamy blouse, sleek navy slacks, and a fresh blow-out that made her blond hair shine in the sunshine that poured in onto the stone doorstep.
“Did you find us okay?” were her first words to me at the entrance, and I had to laugh because there was a huge sign at the initial turn off from the main road, and then subsequent signs after that, announcing that Granfield Estate was to the right or left (and deliveries go to the back). It was impossible to mistake that I was anywhere else. Or that most of the people coming to visi
t this ridiculously opulent house were a different class than the people who lived there.
Brenna gave me a tight look that I smiled into.
“I’m sorry to laugh. It’s just that your house is pretty unmistakable,” I explained.
I was tempted to say more, but I know from working with so many families under pressure that senseless chatter is a burden they have to endure, not a welcome distraction. Every day they have friends and neighbors and family buzzing around them, too uncomfortable to let a pause slip in and for the reality of the situation to shift forward in their conversation. I’m not like that. I don’t mind silence.
I watched Brenna’s face as she took my coat and hung it behind a nearly invisible closet door in the front hallway. Sure enough, as I let the quiet sink in around us for a few seconds I saw her eyes soften and a small smile play at the corners of her mouth.
Isolation: a gripping psychological suspense thriller full of twists Page 1