As I pushed my way back through the crowd, a cross between Joan of Arc and Beyoncé, I burned with humiliation and defiance. I could feel Heath’s eyes on me. And the eyes of the blue-lashed girl. I hadn’t been able to resist striking first. Paying her tab for the night, and thus sending her an unmistakable message: Don’t mess with me; don’t mess with my man.
If the system had taught me one thing, it was that acting tough was a perfectly good substitute for actually being tough. Just like this bar and the people drinking away their Saturday night in it. Heath’s basketball buddy, the girl with the blue eyelashes, the laughing bartender. We all acted like a bunch of badasses with nothing to lose. But I knew it was a lie.
I was a lie. I was weak and I was scared. Losing Heath, losing my soul mate, would be like watching a sand castle that had taken twenty-eight painstaking years to construct be swept away by a single wave. It would end me, if not in body, then in spirit.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Outside the bar, I found a trash can and watched the cashews fall from my hand. I wiped the salt off my palms and stood there for a minute, thinking over my plan.
I would go with Heath to the retreat. Play the supportive fiancée while he met with the doctor and searched for his elusive closure. And in the meantime, I would do some digging of my own, try to get out in front of the situation. If I could somehow figure out what was causing Heath’s nightmares before this Dr. Cerny did, maybe I could cut this process short and get us home where we belonged. Get everything back to normal.
I did have something to start with, something I hadn’t given much attention to when it first happened because I’d been so rattled. Now I realized it was a clue, if only just a seed of one. Words Heath had said during one of his bad dreams, his voice raw and ragged with terror.
Break the mirror, he had chanted over and over until it reverberated in my brain. Break the mirror.
Chapter Two
Sunday, October 14
Five Days Before
The house lay at the end of a rutted gravel road that seemed to stretch on endlessly, rising, switching back, then rising again until I felt nauseated. It stood in a cove of dark pines, its steep crimson gables and stained-glass windows regarding our arrival with a stern expression.
A house with eyes.
I wasn’t being paranoid or dramatic. Like Heath had said, the cameras were actually part of the deal at Baskens Institute. Couples attending the famous Baskens retreats were not only paying for therapy sessions but also for the privilege of being observed while they twiddled their thumbs or engaged in their everyday spats. A bunch of lab animals, paying for their own exploitation.
I unfolded myself from Heath’s battered Nissan. The air smelled of moss and rotted wood and was at least ten degrees cooler than down in Atlanta. A cloud blotted out the sun, dousing blue sky and green forest in an inky gray, then moved on again. I shivered in the sunlight and thought of my iPad, which I’d tucked safely under the mat in the back seat. Heath hadn’t seen me hide it. I hoped it would be safe until I could retrieve it later.
“Where do you think the cameras are hidden?” I polished my cloudy glasses on the scrunched-up sleeve of my sweater. Ours was the only car in the circular drive. I wondered if the other two couples attending the retreat had flown in and been shuttled up the mountain. I hadn’t heard anything about them.
“They’re inside the rooms. Not out here.”
Heath climbed out, popping his neck and stretching. The drive from Atlanta had only been three hours, but in his tiny car it felt like twelve. The Nissan, an unfortunate iridescent royal blue, was a holdover from his college days that he swore he’d never give up, no matter how important the job he happened to have. His holding on to the old car was just one of the things I loved about him. He didn’t judge things by their outward appearance; he saw below the surface.
In the bright mountain sunshine, Heath sneezed twice in quick succession.
“Bless you,” I said.
“Something’s blooming.” He went around to the trunk.
Everything was dying as far as I could see, fall’s brown and red and gold emerging on the hillsides. A series of terraced lawns bordered the western side of the house, dropping out of sight down the slope of the mountain. Dense forest flanked the rear and eastern sides. Farther off, higher up on the shoulder of the mountain, I caught a glimpse of a thin waterfall tumbling between granite rocks.
The house was painted a deep crimson—the wood siding, the shutters, even the intricate gingerbread trim. Except for the door, which was a vibrant mustard yellow. The facade was dominated by a large overhanging gable, but the rest of the thing was a collection of off-center wings, jutting eaves, and precarious spindled balconies. There was an L-shaped wraparound porch and a hexagonal tower that rose from the top floor. An orgy of Victoriana.
The place was grand, but this close, it was impossible not to notice the faded, peeling paint and mildew-rotted eaves. The way the tops of the window frames sagged. How the roofline and walls joined at odd angles. And the house was wedged into the side of the mountain, too, good and tight. No place for me to go jogging, not unless I wanted to risk falling off a cliff.
I did an automatic count—two doors, four chimneys, eighteen panes of glass on that large, front-facing gable that appeared to be an enclosed balcony. I felt a little better, then. It was important to stay calm. I couldn’t let myself slide into panic.
“How in the world do people find this place?” I said.
Heath hoisted our bags from the trunk. “Dr. Cerny’s retreats are all based on word of mouth and referrals. Under the radar, super exclusive. Word is, he’s the guy who handles Bill and Hillary’s tune-ups.”
“I wonder if we’ll get their room. Sleep in their bed.”
He dropped our bags. “Would you like that?” He raised his eyebrows and we shared a smirk. For a moment, just a moment, things seemed perfect between us, like the conversation at Divine had never happened. Like we were just a normal couple who’d gotten out of the city for a last-minute mountain getaway. But I couldn’t pretend.
The night before, when I’d gotten home from Divine, I’d spent an hour on the computer, first Googling Baskens Institute, then rescheduling the rest of my appointments for the upcoming week so I could leave the next day.
The search results were sparse: there was no official website for the retreat center and only a smattering of pieces written about it, most of them years old. One, an article in the Wall Street Journal about Baskens’s reputation as a center for platinum-level relationship rescues, emphasized the exclusivity of the place. Nondisclosure agreements prevented clients from leaking any details about Cerny’s unconventional methods, but rumors of juicy scandals abounded—celebrity dirt or perverse deeds the Baskens surveillance cameras may have captured.
I moved on to shuffling the upcoming week’s tasks onto Kevin and Lenny. I dashed off a succinct, overly cheery email to each of them, glad that it was late enough not to have to deal with a million questions I didn’t want to answer.
Yes, Daphne Amos, who scoffed at psychotherapy, was accompanying her fiancé up to the mountains for a full week of it. No, I wasn’t taking part; I was tagging along to cheer him on and, in the process, dumping a crap-ton of extra work onto my partner and our employee. I could practically hear Lenny screeching in disbelief when she read the email.
Moving on to my final task, I opened Instagram, and, holding my breath, typed in a name. I’d heard it only once, from Lenny, that very first day I’d met Heath. Annalise Beard.