The Last Resort

by Marissa Stapley

  “Tell me, was I wrong? I thought I saw something in you, but I don’t see it now. I thought you had nothing left to lose. I wanted to give you everything. I’m trying to build something here and I thought you might want to be a part of it. You could join us. I could make you great.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You said yes, you said it was what you wanted—”

  She thought back to that afternoon. His face, too close to hers. Her lips were swollen after their session, a strange taste in her mouth, an extra button on her blouse undone. “You drugged me,” she said. “You did it on purpose!”

  “What are you talking about? You drugged yourself.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why am I doing what?”

  “Lying.”

  “You called me, just now. You begged me to come.”

  “No, that’s not true!”

  “You were threatening your own life. I was so worried. I brought you food. It went against my professional sensibilities, perhaps, to come here alone, but I came because I care about all my clients. But your behavior when I got here, it was so wildly inappropriate it was embarrassing. Is this really what you want, Shell? It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “This is not what I want, not at all.”

  “My recommendation for you is rehab. I was coming in here to tell you that, but I wanted you to have something in your stomach first. Come on. Is this what you really want, Shell? Because it could be so different. Let me show you how different it could be. I don’t want to give up on you.”

  “You’re a—monster.” It came out like a question. Because could this be true? Could this really be happening?

  “I’m really quite gentle, once you stop fighting.” He leaned in and put his mouth on hers, and he was so casual about it, like a man at a buffet, sampling because he could. There was an antiseptic and familiar taste on his lips. She tried to pull away but he had his hands on her, holding her tighter and tighter.

  The door swung open.

  Colin.

  He backed out of the room and before she could scream, Miles covered her mouth with his hand. Colin. Why hadn’t he stayed? Hadn’t he seen how scared she was?

  “No one will believe you. Not even him.” Finally, he let her go.

  She gasped for air, then slapped him, as hard as she could.

  “Jezebel,” he hissed, jumping to his feet. And for a moment she was sure he was going to hit her back, right in the face, too. It seemed like a reflex for him. But he didn’t. He opened his mouth. She braced herself for the awful things he might say. But he didn’t say anything.

  He spat. It landed on her chest. “Apparently, I was wrong about you,” he said, in a cold, controlled voice. “And now, after I’ve come to your room to help you, you’ve thrown yourself at me, which your husband just witnessed, and you’ve physically attacked me, which my bruised cheek will attest to. I hope you’re as ashamed of yourself as you should be.” He started to walk toward the door, then turned back. “You chose this, you know—this life you have now. You focused on working, on being a ‘career woman.’” His voice had a mocking tone now. “And then, when it was almost too late, you had a baby. One baby. And you lost her, probably because you could hardly focus on her.”

  He left her there, slamming the door behind him. She managed to stand and lock it. Then she went into the bathroom and, hands shaking, she took off her clothes. She stuffed them into the garbage can. She stood in the shower until her skin was pink and tender, but she could still feel the way he had soiled her with his saliva and she was sure she would feel it forever. She stood in the shower so long her legs began to tremble. She stood in the shower until her grief turned to anger, and it started to burn, red-hot. She slid down the smooth wall and sat on the floor of the tub. Since the moment Zoey had died, she had had so many regrets, about the moments leading up to it and all the moments after. She had blamed herself for so much—but those things Miles had said, she knew they weren’t true. It was not her fault. It was not because of the choices she had made. She hadn’t known this for sure before, but she knew it now. The anger and grief began to feel like a volcano. She clenched her fists at her sides, opened her mouth and screamed.

  Everyone heard it. The word No echoed over the bungalows, over the ocean, into the waves. Later, they would all remember pausing. Later, they would know they should have seen it coming.

  Day Six

  Him: You keep saying you loved him. But he was violent with you.

  Her: Yes. All the time. I deserved it. I wasn’t worthy. My womb was an abomination.

  Him: Do you really feel that way?

  Her: What does it matter, how I feel? It’s just the way things are. It always amazed me that she didn’t feel that way, considering what she was. Who she is.

  Him: [Shuffling papers.] It was later revealed in the media that Miles had a genetic variant that caused stillbirth. Two other women came forward with the same story. From the group he was trying to start. He would say he had business meetings and go back to Texas. He impregnated two of the women during those meetings. We’ve talked about this. He had invited them to come back with him, when his wife was—taken care of, he would tell them.

  Her: [A sharp intake of breath.] I don’t believe those women. Those horrible, horrible women. And that’s not true, the part about the genes. It wasn’t his fault.

  Him: So, it was yours? Does that really make sense to you? Are you going to let him keep punishing you, even from beyond the grave?

  Her: You don’t understand.

  Morning. A tap on Grace’s office door. Johanna. Grace felt relief. She stood to welcome her. Despite her mental exhaustion, despite sleeping on her office couch the night before, despite the fact that for the first time in years her clothes were slightly wrinkled and her hair was unwashed and pulled back in a ponytail, she felt prepared.

  But it was Miles at the door, his expression angry. “Please,” she began, her heart plummeting. “I have clients all morning. Johanna, then Shell and Colin. You can’t be here.” He stood in the frame, looking into her eyes for too long, his eyes changing. She had seen this before.

  “Grace,” he said in a soft voice. “Why didn’t you come home last night?”

  She lifted her chin and met his strangely blank eyes. “You hurt me,” she said.

  “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t do this. Not right now. I have clients coming, I told you.”

  “Shell and Colin won’t be coming, you know.” He sidled past her, into her office and closed the door. “They’re probably never going to have another counseling session again. They’re hopeless. We’d probably have to give them their money back, but they never signed the contract.” He shrugged and looked around the room. “You know, it’s been so long since I’ve been in here.”

  A wave of desperate nausea. “What did you do to Shell? Why aren’t they coming to counseling?”

  “What a question. Can’t a husband come by to say good morning to his wife? It’s not like you have anything else to do. They’re not coming, I told you.”

  “What. Did. You. Do?”

  “What did I do? It’s more like what did she do. Shell has come unhinged. It’s such a disappointment. And he’s not so balanced, either. I understand they lost a child. Sad story. Sometimes that does something to you—something unfixable. Not everyone can be as strong as we were about it, Gracie.” She found she couldn’t speak. She felt paralyzed as he roamed her small office. He touched the lava rock she now kept close, on the table, and she wished he wouldn’t. He picked up her little glass clock. “That’s lovely,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

  “From—” she swallowed hard. “The market I go to,” she said.

  He turned. “Ben Reid mentioned, in one of our sessions, that his wife visited a market, too.”
He stepped closer. “Johanna. Did you see her on Sunday?”

  A roar in her ears. She heard the word No coming out of her mouth, as if from a distance. She remembered the woman at the market, the fear in her eyes, telling her a man had been on the path. She remembered the dark sedan. She watched as he tried a drawer. What was he looking for?

  “Stop it,” she said.

  He turned back to her. “What are you hiding?”

  It was such a ludicrous question. It was not a question they asked one another. Nothing. Everything. What are you hiding?

  “Wives shouldn’t have secrets from their husbands,” he said. “Wives shouldn’t hide in their offices at night, away from their husbands.” She held her breath, waited for it—but there was no rage in his voice.

  Still, she felt her legs go weak.

  “Oh, Grace. It is sad, isn’t it? The two of us. You’re not a wife. I’m not a husband. Not to you.” Now his hand was on top of her notebook. She forced herself to step forward, but he was too fast. He opened it, flipped a few pages. She tried to snatch the book away, but he was stronger. He was reading her list. “Passport? Cash? You’re feeling as I do, I see.” She started to walk toward the door. She didn’t have to stay in here with him, she told herself. She could make her own choices. There were people around. They’d hear her if she had to scream. But then his voice, a gentle hum. Cajoling, unnerving. “You’ve reached your breaking point, haven’t you? You’re ready to run, aren’t you? Me, too. It’s all becoming so—monotonous, isn’t it? So boring. But we can’t both leave.”

  She stopped walking. She bit down on her cheek, tasted blood, metallic and harsh. She turned. “You followed me. Didn’t you?”

  A small smile. “To the market that day? Of course I did. I have several times. I figured out your little secret, the way you like to hide from me. But you can’t. You should know that by now.” A pause. “Interesting, though, isn’t it? That she found you, too. I mean, we never knew you had a type, did we? I’ve always had mine, but you—”

  Her cheeks were burning with remembered shame. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “She hasn’t told you yet. She hasn’t told you everything. She will.” As if he knew more than he should. As if he had somehow been listening to their sessions and knew how close they were to a breakthrough. He looked back down at the notebook and flipped through a few more pages. “Maybe today.” She could see he had reached the final blank page. “It’s quite the story. I’ve been enjoying my sessions with Ben. He knows things about her no one knows. He knows things she doesn’t know he knows. A fascinating relationship, that one. He’s desperate for her love, and she’s desperate for—” He put down the notebook. “Well, you know what she’s desperate for, don’t you? You’re desperate for the same thing. You must be able to smell it. You must be able to almost taste it.”

  “Don’t. She’s my client. And it’s not like that.”

  “I know exactly what it’s like.”

  “How?” And she thought she saw it, his eyes flick toward one corner of the room. She spun around. “Where is it?” she said.

  “Where’s what?” His voice was calm and infuriating.

  “The camera, the bug, whatever it is. I can’t hide from you—but not because you’re some kind of god. It’s because you’re spying on me. In every way. Aren’t you?”

  “That’s just ridiculous. Anyway, no matter what happens, I’m sure you and Johanna will have some...lovely moments. Professional boundaries don’t bother her. Trust me. Now, if you’re planning to leave—” He closed the distance she had opened between them and she thought she might finally scream, thought she might finally alert everyone to the truth of him, the truth of them, but when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. It was a secret hidden for so long it had rusted, it wanted to stay put. “I don’t think I can let you do that, Grace.”

  She thought of all the times he had told her she would be nothing without him, the threats he had made. The night, after a guest had brought scotch in his bags and Miles had “confiscated” it and downed an entire bottle, he had said to her, I’ll kill you if you leave, Jezebel. And then you’ll burn in hell.

  “But you and Ruth,” she said. “You could be here with her. Just let me go, and find your love for her again. You can say I left you. You can play up a broken heart. And then, when the time is right, you two can marry. For real this time.”

  He laughed. “Marry, for real this time.” His tone was mocking. “I only did that to keep the two of you happy, that little sham of a ceremony. Did you really think she would ever be enough? That this would be enough? Look at me—angry, unhappy, just look at me, Grace. What is it you think I’ve wanted, all these years? You haven’t been able to give it to me, and neither can she.” He shook his head. “But you can’t leave. No. You need to just stay right here where you are. And wait.”

  “For what?” she whispered.

  “Look at me,” he commanded again. Look at me, he always said. She’d been looking at him for years. Everyone had. But she knew him better than they did, the people who came here, who traveled in and out. “What is it I want?”

  “More,” she answered, because she knew him so well. “It’s been growing in you for years.”

  He had his hand on her shoulder now. He was rubbing it gently, but still, it caused her pain, burning her from the inside out. “Yes. Good. That’s right.” He was speaking to her as if she were one of the guests. As if she were in one of his counseling sessions. “More of what I deserve. But, what is it you want, Gracie?” His voice cajoling, and it was a Pavlovian response to feel abruptly comforted by it, the way she had when she was so young, too young, scared and broken.

  “I’ve always wanted to help people. Instead...” Instead, I’ve put them in your path.

  “No. That’s not exactly it.”

  “I want—I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

  “Exactly,” he said, smiling that smile of his, the one that some people thought was movie star handsome but made her feel like he was so hungry he was going to eat her up.

  “Where is it? Just tell me. The camera. The bug. Just tell me.”

  He had no reaction to her words. Instead, “Wait,” he commanded. “You’ll get what you want.”

  Then he turned and glided from the room. She could picture him, in the silence that followed, like a snake, moving down her hallway and out the door. But where was his venom, where was his rage? A venomous snake like him didn’t just change his mind about striking. A venomous snake like him didn’t just suddenly lose his taste for the kill, for the feeling of power over another being.

  She walked to her desk and opened the notebook. Her words seemed almost childish now, her little list so hopeful. She saw it as he would have seen it. She saw how weak she looked. Running away, with Miles’s blessing, would not be running away at all. She squeezed her eyes shut but a teardrop still made its way down her cheek.

  What do you want?

  He knew. And he wanted to make sure she’d never get it.

  The walls were closing in. She walked slowly around the room, touching the walls as she went, but she felt nothing. She climbed up on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. Nothing. Nothing that she could see, at least. She closed her eyes. He was gone, but she could still feel it, what she knew he had really wanted to do: put his hands on her neck, block her air passage until she had to beg. The smell of his cologne in the room started to choke her, and she stumbled off the couch and toward the door, holding back her sobs so no one who shouldn’t be listening would hear them. I need to get out. Help me. Someone. Please. But who was going to hear her if she didn’t have the courage to scream? Who was going to help her if she didn’t ask?

  “Sorry,” Ruth said to Shell, barring the door to her office. “The internet’s down right now. And I have a meeting. You can’t be in here.”

  “
But I want to email my daughter,” Shell said.

  “A lot of people want to email their kids, be in touch with their families. You aren’t the only one. The internet is down today because of the wind. And I have a meeting to get to now, with Miles.” Just the mention of his name was enough to make Shell want to run. But she didn’t. She stood her ground, tried to appear calm.

  “Okay,” she said. “Maybe later?”

  Ruth shrugged. “Maybe.” Ruth turned and locked the door. Then Shell followed her down the stairs.

  “See you later, Ruth,” Shell said. She veered into a bathroom.

  Inside, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair was tied back in a bun. She started pulling hairpins out of it, one after the other, until there were ten in her hand. She slid the pins into her pocket. She went out into the hall, looked both ways, then headed toward the stairs that led to the tower, and Ruth’s office, once more.

  She’d learned how to pick locks from one of her brothers. The eldest. They had been teenagers, out past their curfew. She’d had too much to drink—it had already started, although she hadn’t realized at the time. And it had just been a few coolers. She remembered it all clearly, despite the drinking. Somehow, drinking had always provided her with razor-sharp clarity, and never, ever the oblivion she wanted. She knew she remembered how to do this because the year before, she’d left her purse at a store, and when she got back to the house, Zoey was crying for her milk and she couldn’t get inside to get it for her. She’d pulled a pin out of her hair and picked the lock from memory. She had laughed about it when she told Colin later.

  She tried and failed with four different pins before, finally, the satisfying click. She was back in Ruth’s office. Shell sat down in the now-familiar chair and looked out at the now-familiar view, which was windswept and gray, like a watercolor almost completely washed out by a glass of water, accidentally spilled. Heart pounding, she hit the browser button. As she had suspected, Ruth was lying about the internet being down. But, why? She didn’t stop to think about it. She had already decided what she was going to do. It had come to her during a long, sleepless night. She wasn’t alone. She couldn’t be. There had to be other women Miles had done this to. And she wanted to find them, although she couldn’t quite explain why. She was angry and she was afraid—but she wanted to know she wasn’t alone. She had thought of it in the shower, a way to reach out. Maybe if she knew there were others, she’d find the strength to figure out what to do next.