I get up. I get up and allow him to drag me forward, my bare feet stumbling on the steps, the kitchen slowly appearing through the haze of my tears. What is he doing? Where is he taking me? What is his plan?
We make it to the garage, the door shoved open, the concrete cold against my bare feet, and I understand when he reaches the utility room. The panic room. We had laughed when we saw the real estate listing. Who really needed a panic room? And in the garage? Why wouldn’t someone just get in their car and drive away? Also strange was what had been inside the so-called “Panic Room”. The hot water heater, washer and dryer. “It’s a utility room,” Simon had argued with the real estate agent. A utility room with an impossible-to-break-through door. It used to have a code. We used to be able to step into our utility room and arm the door. It would lock, and nothing could get in. Not fire, nor toxic gas, nor an army of home invaders.
But a punch code had been too risky. If Bethany had wandered down there and locked herself in… we would have had to tear down the walls to get her out. So we’d removed the punch code and put a normal lock on the door—one with keyed access on both sides, one impossible for Bethany to accidentally (or purposely) lock. The key is hung on a nail high above the light switches, and we lock and unlock the room when it isn’t in use. The impenetrability of the room has come in handy. We had all of our files inside that room, the left wall a line of cabinets. All of our photos. Our passports and stock certificates—anything deemed irreplaceable. Now, he shoves me inside, and I stagger to my feet, all of my manuscripts coming into focus, the original pages that I sweated and cried over, in neat stacks on the shelves. Will I die in here? The possibility hammers at my subconscious, and all I can think about is Bethany. Growing older and never knowing. Developing curves under his watchful eye. Unprotected. Unaware. Until it is too late. I fling myself at the doorway and collide with steel, Simon slamming the door closed.
I don’t hear the rustle of his keys.
I don’t know if he said something else to me.
I don’t hear anything through the six-inch steel walls. But I can feel the shudder of the knob in my hand. I can feel the resistance as I try to twist it. Locked. I step back from the door; the scream fading before it even hits my throat. The room is completely soundproof. It’s the place we put chirping fire detectors that won’t shut up. Bethany once called it magic, its ability to completely shut off noise. I called it creepy. Right now, it is terrifying. I open my mouth and force breath in and out.
I lift my head, my eyes tired from reading, my hand aching from writing. Inside my chest, my heart hammers, and I am torn between the urge to walk away and the need to finish this. Can I go through this all in one sitting? Can I relive this horrible day all at one time?
Part of me is afraid.
The other half of me knows that this is the only way. I have fallen into the snake pit, and I can’t rest, can’t stop. I have to fight my way through all of the memories, before the poison in them kills me.
I flex my fingers, working the muscles in them, popping my knuckles and stretching back the phalanges, one at a time, until the blood flow returns. I get off the floor and move to Simon’s desk, stretching to the right, and then to the left, before settling down on his chair. Turning to a fresh page in the notebook, I return to hell.
MARK
“Call Charlotte Blanton. Find out if she’s from North Virginia.”
He remembers the tight pinch of her features, the panic in her eyes. He thinks back, through all their chapters, and tries to connect this strange new name to their story.
He opens a web browser and types in her name, adding in the New York Post and submitting the search. The screen goes blank, then her profile appears. He clicks on the link and, within thirty seconds, has a phone number and email address.
Settling back in his seat, he pulls his cell phone from his breast pocket and opens the flip phone, one that makes his daughter roll her eyes and officially brands him as technologically-inept. Pressing in the number, he lifts the phone to his ear.
“Charlotte Blanton.” A crisp efficient voice, yet still one dipped in youth.
“Charlotte, my name is Mark Fortune. That name probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but I’m calling on behalf of a friend. Helena Ross.”
Silence. A long pause. Clearing of a throat. “Yes?”
“She had a rather odd question for you. She wanted to know if you are from North Virginia.”
Another long pause. “May I speak to her?”
Mark glances in the direction of the room Helena had disappeared into. “She’s in the middle of something right now. I can’t interrupt her.”
“Huh.” The woman sounds as if she doesn’t believe him, as if he’s intentionally keeping her away.
“She’s a writer,” he tries to explain. “It’s hard to—”
“I know what she is.” Her voice was so cold, so cruel, that he blinked. “I know what she is.” What. What was Helena? A writer. Or was the woman referring to something else?
“Are you from Virginia?”
“I’m from Tennessee, Mr. Fortune.” She pauses. “But my family lived in Wilmont, Virginia for two years when I was ten. That’s what Mrs. Parks is referring to.”
Parks. Her married name, though she didn’t now use it. But something in the sneer of Charlotte’s voice… there is a history between the two women, that much is suddenly clear. He backtracks, wanting to be out of this conversation, before he says or does the wrong thing, before he stumbles onto a bed of fire ants and causes an issue. “I appreciate your time. Thank you.”
“I’d like to speak to her.” She speaks before he has a chance to end the connection. “Can you make sure she calls me?”
“I’m not sure anyone can make Helena do much of anything,” he admits. “Especially not me.”
“At least ask her. It’s very important that I get her side of things. Before my article.”
An article. The threat flares his protective instincts, and he straightens in his seat. “An article,” he says slowly. “About what?”
“That’s what I’d like to talk to her about. Please ask her to call me.”
She ends the connection and he slowly closes the phone, spinning the chair toward the door, and thinking.
He is destroying the evidence. Or hiding it. He could put it all in his car and drive anywhere, throw it in a hundred dumpsters, or bury it in fifty different places. There is that land we own, two hundred acres up in New York—the place he goes on hunting weekends. He could hide it there, or rent a storage unit or burn it all.
Once the evidence is gone, it will be my word against his. I stop pacing, the scenario so bleak that it hurts, my stomach cramping, my breath catching. I push my fingers into my side and try to calm my breathing, slow my heartbeat, to think. No one will believe me. My own mother won’t. And with the recent events—especially my visit to the divorce attorney—all of it will be suspect to the timing of my “discovery”. My discovery with no evidence. The discovery of a woman ill-fit to be a mother.
If we get a divorce, I could lose her.
If we stay together, I will kill him. I can’t live with him. And he won’t let me. He won’t let his loose thread of a wife dangle. My knowledge is too dangerous, my will too strong. If he doesn’t kill me today, tonight, this week… he will soon.