by Nina Laurin
I should be happy but my joy is like a stone stuck in my throat. They’re beautiful, just what I like, and clearly expensive. But why did it have to be platinum and emeralds?
Like the ring—the real one, not the copy.
Colleen’s birthstone.
Throughout the rest of the day, Byron’s mood only gets better. We make a fire outside—it turns out Byron was right; the smoke does seem to keep the mosquitoes at bay—and we have cups of hot chocolate spiked with brandy. He makes lamb skewers on the grill outside. I do my best to say yes to everything, trying not to think about how I’ll barely fit into my jeans when we get home, but I’ll have a whole workweek to starve myself back to my regular size. Those stupid hormone shots aren’t helping. That’s when I remember I missed the one yesterday and the one this morning.
Instead of running back to the house to check on the vials I brought with me in the usual hiding place, I ask Byron to pour me some of that brandy. Just a finger, please. I sip it slowly, letting it warm my insides.
It’s well past eleven p.m. when we go back inside the house, only to realize it’s freezing cold. We left the windows open, unwisely, and the day’s warmth slithered away the moment the sun set. The whole place feels and smells like damp.
Byron goes around closing all the windows. “I’ll just start the fire again,” he says. “It’ll get the damp out in no time.”
I wish he’d just turn on the heat but in my yes-to-everything spirit, I let him start the fire in the fireplace. My face is overheated, my eyelids heavy. I let myself collapse on the couch. The springs still poke and prod me in the sides but I’m sinking into it, almost comfortable. I watch Byron arrange the logs in the fireplace, crumple up a piece of newspaper, light it. The fire devours it and jumps lazily onto the logs. Heat begins to emanate from them at once.
I watch Byron watch the fire, immobile. And then he half turns so I can see his profile, stark against the flames, and I’m stricken: There’s something sinister about it, the outline of his nose and his hard mouth, the tilt of his head.
That’s when he says the words, his tone casual yet inescapably deliberate: “So, are you going to try on the earrings?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I don’t believe this,” Byron thunders. “How can you not know where you put them?”
“Your sweater!” I blurt, remembering at last. “The one I had on in the boat. I put them in the pocket.”
He’s facing me head-on now. “My sweater?”
“You saw me, right?”
In the firelight, his features are softer, yet the anger in them stands out starkly, lining his face with deep, dark shadows. His eyes glint with anger.
“And where, pray tell, did you put the sweater?”
I look around. Nothing on the arms of the couch, nothing on the hook by the door. I get up and circle the room with growing frustration, already suspecting, deep down, the sweater will be nowhere to be found.
“I…I don’t know. I must have—” I’m blabbering pathetically but I can’t help myself. The warmth is gone, replaced with a thin shiver that works its way up through my legs and core until it makes my teeth clatter.
“The last I saw you in it was on the boat,” he says.
All I can do is shrug.
“Claire,” he says, shaking his head. Exasperated. “Those were real emeralds, you know.”
Oh, don’t I know it. I want to cry.
“We’re not exactly rolling in money either.” Implying, Thanks to you and your little shopping sprees when you should be looking for a job.
“Then why buy them at all?” I snap, cornered.
“Because I wanted to make you happy, dammit!” he explodes. He gets up and starts to pace, like he’s trying to crush something into the floor with every step. “You’re completely losing it lately. I don’t know if it’s staying at home so much, or your writing, or—”
“It’s not my writing,” I say under my breath.
“You got so shit-faced last night you couldn’t remember your name,” he snaps. “All because of a stupid rejection letter. So don’t tell me—”
“It’s not my writing. It’s you.”
The last word rings out in silence. He’s stopped pacing. “Me?” He lets out a shaky, disbelieving laugh. “You have to be joking.”
“You hardly notice I exist anymore.”
“Because I’m too damn busy trying to keep it all together! To keep food on our table, and to keep being able to afford nice gifts for you. Gifts that you see fit to leave all over the damn place.”
I cover my face with my hands and groan. My cheeks burn with shame. What have I—
“The sweater,” he says, and resumes pacing. “It’s probably still in the boat.”
“It can’t be. I wouldn’t have taken it off till I was inside, with all these damn mosquitoes—”
He exhales noisily, struggling to control his anger. “Claire, can you please stop talking and go get it before some raccoon takes off with it?”
I glance at the window with doubt. It’s so dark that I can’t see a thing beyond the windowpane. “Can’t you go get it?”
“I need to stoke the fire. Do you want to stoke the fire, maybe?”
I shake my head. “Fine. I’ll get it.”
“Hurry, please.”
I step into my rubber boots, which are waiting for me by the door. I think of throwing on my raincoat but decide not to. It’s only a short dash through the trees.
“Take the flashlight,” Byron says. “It’s on the table.”
Grabbing the flashlight, I step onto the porch and let the door swing shut behind me.
At once, I realize how thick the darkness is. It’s almost physical, a living, black mass surrounding me, and all I have is the faint glow of the windows behind me and the thin beam of the flashlight.
I circle the house and find myself facing the copse of trees that separates me from the dock. Except in the dark, it’s not just a few elms and skinny birches—it looks like an entire forest, thick and forbidding. The flashlight doesn’t seem enough. Its beam looks dim and weak, flickering on and off. I give it a whack against the palm of my hand but it hardly helps. The beam trembles with uncertainty as I take my first steps into the trees.
It’s not as scary as it looked. I walk ahead briskly until only a few steps separate me from the dock. My rubber boots make sucking noises with every step, sinking into the damp earth. I almost have time to get used to the darkness when my foot slips in the mud.
Everything reels. The beam of the flashlight draws a luminous arc as it slips from my grasp and drops to the ground. My behind hits the dirt with a dull thud that knocks the wind out of me. My teeth clack together painfully, trapping my cry. My hands land in the unappealing mixture of mud and pine needles. More icy-cold dirt seeps through my jeans. With a groan, I extricate myself. I can see the flashlight’s lone beam through the trees, only a couple of steps away, but as I reach for it, it flickers once, twice, and, to my horror, goes out.
I get back on my feet, dizzy and disoriented. Only now I realize I’m tipsier than I thought. But the warmth is gone, leaving behind only the achiness and sour taste on my tongue.
“Byron!” I call out, but my voice, instead of ringing strong in the silence, comes out squeaky and weak. The wind carries it off, far away onto the lake. I try again with similar mediocre results. “Byron!”
I take a couple more stumbling steps and stop in surprise when the lake appears in front of me, seemingly out of nowhere. Here, without the trees to obscure my vision, I can see a little bit better. The clouds don’t entirely cover the thin sliver of moon, and a flat blue glow bathes everything. It’s a breathtaking sight that I, a writer, should find it in me to appreciate but all I want is to get away.
I spin around, looking for the boat, which we had moored by the dock. Any moment now, I should hear its edge knocking softly against the post, along with the rhythm of the waves. But all I hear is soft splashing, the hum of insects,
and the croaking of frogs.
Where’s the boat?
There’s no boat by the dock. Did it get unmoored and carried off? I advance toward the very edge of the dock and peer over the water. But the lake is still and mirror-flat, empty.
Turning around, I can glimpse the house through the trees, and the sight gives me some reassurance. The windows glow warm orange, seemingly so close. I contemplate just making the dash, grabbing Byron’s sleeve, pleading him to come with me, and I’m about to make the first step when something among the trees moves. A shape darkens the window as it passes in front of it—a human shape.
“Byron?” My voice is a squeak. The shadow is gone—or not gone, just gone still, unmoving, invisible. Home—I want to go home, I think, fixating on the word, aware at the same time just how far away home is. Another thought crosses my mind. Help.
A branch snaps, sharp like a gunshot, so close. Too close. I jolt, buoyed by sheer panic. The flat, blue, alien landscape around me spins in the opposite direction. The boards of the dock creak, and to my horror, I feel one of them give beneath my weight.
My boot catches in the gap, and my foot slips free. The sky reels before my eyes as I topple backward, and a moment later, the icy water swallows me up. Cold wraps around me, trapping my scream beneath my skin. A million icy needles bite my flesh. Water roars in my ears.
I flail my arms and kick my legs but the water slows me down, like a fly trapped in honey. My clothes soak it up like a sponge, my shirt turning to ice-cold lead that fuses to my skin. Dragging me down. To the algae and the darkness and the mud.
My feet connect with something…squishy, spongy, grasping at my ankles and pulling me deeper in. I kick with all the strength of desperation, and for a moment, I break the surface. Scalding air fills my lungs, and I begin to cough, but just as soon, the mud pulls me under again, my nose and mouth and ears flooded with bitter lake water.
Help. Help.
My lungs are on fire while the rest of me is slowly turning to ice. I have to find more strength to kick. I’m going to drown oh my God I’m going to drown help me help me help me Byron Byron please—
An invisible force pulls me up, tugging against the resistance of the water. The lake doesn’t want to let me go but the pull is stronger, and a moment later, I feel the air on my face again. Water rushes out of my nose and mouth, and I take my first shaky breath. My wet, heavy hair clings to my face, obscuring my vision. All I can make out is the dark figure, grunting as it pulls me with all its might onto the bank.
It drops me there, and like a sack of wet sand, I sink to the mossy ground, gasping for breath and coughing for my life. As if my body only now realizes the danger, it begins to shiver with surprising force. My teeth clack so hard my jaw aches. I clench and unclench my frozen hands but can’t feel them.
“Claire?”
It feels like I’ve been lying here for a year, opening and closing my mouth in mute shock like a fish.
“Claire?”
There’s the dull thump of footsteps on the ground, and then Byron leans over me. “Oh my God, Claire. What happened?”
Without waiting for an answer—as if he knows the answer—he grabs me under the armpits and hauls me up. “You’re soaking wet,” he says, and he doesn’t sound all that shocked. “You fell into the lake?”
Yes. I fell. I fell—that’s what happened. I fell.
Then who pulled me out?
He did, of course.
But didn’t he just now come running?
I close my eyes, powerless, as he picks me up and carries me inside.
Everything else is in snippets.
Byron stripping away my wet clothes, the soaked, ice-cold fabric stubbornly clinging to my skin until I think it’s going to come away with it, leaving me red and raw.
Byron again, rubbing the circulation back into my legs, my arms. The fire crackles. Byron tilts my head and makes me drink something lukewarm and bitter—tea? I sputter but with every gulp I take, my core grows warmer, and then the warmth spreads into my limbs, rushing to the surface of my skin until I’m warm and comfortable and sleepy, oh so sleepy.
Byron, carrying me upstairs, my head lolling against his shoulder. This is nice, I find myself thinking. Like the good times before.
(Didn’t he just come running?)
(Who pulled me out of the lake?)
Byron lowering me onto the bed, into warm, clean sheets. He tucks the blanket under my chin. The lights go out.
Just like before.
When I come to next, it’s because the bed creaks and tilts. I faintly make out Byron’s shape on the edge of the mattress, hunched over as he gets undressed. Then the blanket shifts as he climbs underneath it. His touch is cool on my overheated skin, waking me up a little.
He fumbles, and I can feel his warm breath on the side of my face. On it, I smell brandy—copious amounts of brandy. Enough to make me wince. He doesn’t notice. He plants a slobbery kiss on my temple. The kisses travel down my cheek to my lips. I mumble something into his mouth when it closes over mine. I can’t breathe; stop it.
His hands are everywhere, on my stomach, kneading my breasts, between my thighs.
Hot, boozy breath carries a raspy whisper. “Open your legs. Come on—open them.”
Stop it. I want to sleep.
“Come on, Claire.” He nudges my thighs apart and rolls on top of me. I moan under his crushing weight.
“That’s right.” The blunt tip of his penis nudges the inside of my thigh. He guides it with his hand, panting heavily into my ear. It goes in, unceremoniously, and that first push is painful enough to jolt me fully awake.
“Shh.” He begins to rock back and forth, thrusting. It’s dry, uncomfortable, but my flesh becomes used to it and parts obediently. After a few thrusts, there’s no more resistance. I don’t have the strength to say or do anything so I just relax into it, let myself float under the ceiling. I don’t know how long it goes on; can’t be that long but I have time to drift in and out of consciousness a couple more times before he grunts, gives a last deep thrust, and I feel the scalding rush of his come on my raw insides.
“There you go. Good. Good girl. Sleep now.”
I don’t need permission.
I let myself collapse back into the quiet dark, like I never left it.
* * *
The next morning, I sit up, confused. It takes me a moment to figure out where I am: What is this shabby place, what is this light? Why does my body feel like it’s been gutted hollow, even my bones?
Then memory comes rushing back.
“Good morning,” Byron says. He’s standing on the stairs leading up to the mezzanine, steaming cup of coffee in hand.
Don’t even think of pretending none of it happened, again.
“Good morning.” I’m appalled at the hoarseness of my voice.
“Did you sleep okay?”
Is he joking? I sit up and feel the soreness between my legs. A little bit of warm liquid slithers out of me and stains the sheet under my behind—a sensation I despise. But it’s proof, ultimate proof that I didn’t dream it all.
I know I need to keep playing along, keep being the fun wife. I open my mouth to say yes, I slept okay, and how are you, but instead, my mouth twists, out of my control, like that of a child about to throw a tantrum.
“I want to go home,” is all that comes out. I want to go home, go home, go home. The words blur, deformed by the sobs that shake me.
Within a heartbeat, he’s by my side. “Claire. Oh my God, darling, what’s wrong?”
“Just take me home,” I whisper.
(Who pulled me out of the lake?)
“Is it because you fell into the lake? It’s my fault. I should have gone to get that stupid sweater. I’m sorry.”
It’s all I wanted to hear yesterday. God, it feels like a year ago. And today, it’s no longer enough. “Home,” I repeat, like the same obstinate, annoying child. “Home, home, home.”
“Claire,” he says, stern
now but still kind. “It could have happened to anybody. The lake is only a couple of feet deep by the shore anyway. Nothing bad could have happened.”
I give a single shake of my head.
And I watch his expression shift and change, the loving look slipping away like it was never there. His lips press tightly together, and the lines on his face deepen, showing his real age, reminding me of that gulf between us.
Without another word, he starts to pack our things.
By early afternoon, we’re driving up to the house. I never thought I could be this relieved to see the place. He has yet to say a word.
He gets out of the car, and I notice, finally, that he’s wearing the sweater. The same one that was supposedly left in the boat that wasn’t there.
He’s unloading the bags, and still, I can’t bring myself to move. To will my hands to unbuckle the seat belt, to open the door, get out. Go inside.
My phone buzzes. I reach into my purse, too tired to imagine who it might be.
An email. I thumb the screen to open it.
How did you like it, Claire? How did you like to drown?
I stare at the screen in mute horror.
Did you like drowning, Claire?
No no no no, I try to say, but my mouth only forms shapes, not sounds. This isn’t right, this isn’t right, she didn’t drown, she isn’t dead—
Sender’s name: Colleen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“That’s so messed up. Did you see that thing in the paper?”
I pull my gaze away from the surface of my coffee. “What?”
“The article in the online Star. Some woman was doxed. They put her address and phone number in a fake escort ad online. Scary stuff.”
I blink at him. My brain seems to have forgotten how to process simple information. “What woman?”
“No idea. Some receptionist. Isn’t that scary though? What’s surprising is that it doesn’t happen more often. It’s the age we live in.” He sighs and shakes his head.