“We don’t… I mean, do we... have children?”
“Do you see any children in this house?”
“No, but…” I attempt to stab a piece of sausage with my fork—it’s been overcooked so badly, it’s shriveled. “I always wanted kids. I would’ve thought… I mean, if we’re married…”
He chews on a bite of his sausage. “We tried to have kids. But the doctor said you were infertile.”
I suck in a breath. “Oh… but… aren’t there treatments for infertility?”
He lifts a shoulder. “You know how you are. You were always scared of going to the doctor because of what happened with your mom. And you’re terrified of needles. So we decided not to do IVF. You said it was fine just the two of us.”
“Oh…”
Of course, I knew we didn’t have children. It was fairly obvious. But to find out that we couldn’t, that we would never…
But what does it matter? It’s not like I’m in any shape to take care of a child like I am now. It’s a blessing we never ended up having kids.
Graham goes to the refrigerator and opens up the door. He pulls out a container of blood-red liquid. I watch in fascination as he pours a heaping glass of it.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Pomegranate juice.” He deposits the glass on the table. “You love this stuff. You drink like two glasses of it every morning.”
“I do?” The drink in front of me looks utterly unappealing. “Are you sure?”
He winks at me. “Which one of us has memory loss? Trust me. This is your favorite thing in the whole world.”
“No, thanks. I’d just like a cup of coffee.”
“Come on. You don’t want your favorite drink?”
I press my fingertips against the glass, pushing it several inches away from me. “Just coffee. Please.”
“Fine,” he grumbles.
Graham stomps across the kitchen to the fancy coffee machine that has more control buttons than our shower. He gets the coffee brewing, and I make a point of pushing that awful drink he poured me a few more inches away from me. That looks awful—I don’t even want it near me.
Graham returns to the kitchen island. His eyes stray down to the glass of red liquid. “You really don’t want it?”
“No thanks.”
“It’s expensive, you know.”
I don’t know what to say. Based on the appearance of this house, we can afford to waste a glass of juice. “You can have it if you want.”
Graham grumbles to himself as he swipes the full glass of pomegranate juice off the table and pours the contents into the sink, staining the bottom of the sink a deep red color. My stomach turns at the sight of it. Then he slams the glass down on the kitchen counter.
I don’t know why he’s acting this way. I didn’t do anything that horrible—I just refused a glass of juice. Why is he throwing a tantrum? This doesn’t seem like normal behavior.
The letter I wrote to myself says he’s a good guy. He’s my husband.
But I don’t trust him.
Chapter 28
All morning, I’ve been sitting on the sofa, flipping through the channels on the television, feeling increasingly claustrophobic. I would love to go outside and take a walk, but Graham made it clear this morning that I couldn’t go outside alone. He said it wasn’t safe.
That woman Camila is upstairs, doing God knows what. Supposedly, she’s cleaning, but I haven’t heard any vacuum noises or running water. Something about Camila makes me uneasy. I don’t quite trust anyone. It’s obvious from the scar on my head that there’s some grain of truth to the car accident story, but it feels like there’s something I am missing. A missing piece of the puzzle.
To hell with Graham’s warnings. I’m going to go take a walk.
I’m already wearing a pair of sneakers I found in the closet, so I head straight for the front door. I’ll just walk around the block. Nothing bad is going to happen if I do that. I’ll probably be back home before Camila even notices I’m gone.
I reach out to turn the lock, the same way I did when I left the house yesterday to go to work. Well, it wasn’t really yesterday. It was seven years ago. But it feels like yesterday. In any case, the lock looks different than it did the last time I remember. Instead of the dial that I used to turn to unlock the door, now there’s a keyhole.
Oh my God.
The door is locked from the inside.
Pushing back a surge of panic, I make a beeline for the back door. I can hear my dog, Ziggy, barking from the backyard, but I can’t get to him. Because there is a lock on the back door as well.
I slam my palm against the back door in frustration. Are they kidding me? How could they lock me in here? I mean, yes, I was trying to leave without permission, but for God’s sake, I’m an adult. I wasn’t going to do anything dangerous. I was just going to take a walk around the block!
And I still can. There are other ways to get out of this house. They can’t keep me prisoner here.
I return to the front door, my hands shaking. There are two picture windows on either side of the door. I might not be quite as nimble now that I’m thirty-six instead of twenty-nine, but I think I can climb out of a first-story window. I have to try, anyway.
I grab onto the grooves at the bottom of one of the two windows. I yank upwards, but the window doesn’t budge. Not even a centimeter—even when I throw all my weight into it. That’s when I notice there’s a switch at the base of this window as well, keeping it locked. I try to turn it, and that’s when I discover that the window lock has a keyhole on it also.
The blood is rushing in my ears as I go from window to window, confirming that each and every window has an identical keyhole in the lock. It takes me less than five minutes to verify that all the windows and doors on the first floor of this house are locked from the inside.
I’m trapped here.