Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
brIE
“Ma’am.”
The security guard taps my window with her nightstick.
“One second,” I say, pretending to search for my keys. I’ve been staring at the sign at the corner of the parking lot for nearly four hours.
120 MINUTES MAX. CUSTOMERS ONLY.
$500 FINE.
“Ma’am!” She taps a little harder this time. I want to feel outraged, but honestly, the fine is more than my entire net worth, including this rusted Mazda. She can tap all she wants if it means I can stay. “The mall is closed.”
She’s pretending I’m a customer who mistimed her visit, and I appreciate it even though the truth is painfully obvious to anyone who sees the boxes piled in my back seat.
I have nowhere else to go.
I roll down the window. “Five minutes. Please. I’m waiting on a phone call.”
“Wait somewhere else.”
“It’s about a job.”
“Come on, lady.” She’s already dropped the ma’am. There’s a flicker of exhaustion in her eyes. If I make her angry, this could go badly. She might even call the police. And if she calls the police, I’ll have to call Neil for help, and this will all be over. “I’m just doing my job, OK?”
“Please. This could change my life.”
Suddenly, the phone rings. The guard raises a single eyebrow, clearly surprised that I’m actually telling the truth. I suppose everyone must lie to her face. Bullshit and boredom—that’s the life of a security guard.
“Five minutes.”
“Ten?”
She shakes her head but walks off without writing me up. As I wind up my window, she calls out a sincere, “Good luck!”
I’ll need it. I spent three hours looking for jobs this morning, and this was the only one that came with accommodation.
Help needed. Rural homestead.
It’s perfect.
“Hello?” My voice wavers. “Brie speaking.”
“Brie! I’m sorry for the late call. I only just got home.” His voice is soft, slightly higher-pitched than expected, but self-assured. He’s already talking like we’re old friends. “My name is Bradley. From Pine Ridge.”
“Oh.” I pretend to struggle to remember. “Hi.”
“Is now a good time?”
“Sure.” I feel like I’m a teenager again, talking to a crush after school, trying to act casual, trying to hide my own profound desperation.
“Let me explain the position.”
As he talks, I lose focus. I haven’t slept in nearly two days.
My back hurts. My legs hurt. Hell, my brain hurts.
Last night, I drove to a cheap motel an hour outside the city, a decision I regretted this morning when I tried to fill up at the gas station, and my card was declined.
I’m guessing Neil saw the charge and cleared out all the money from our shared account.
I can’t really complain. It’s his money. But that left me twenty dollars cash to my name, which I spent on gas and breakfast. I’m just glad I left the motel before he found me.
“How does that sound?”
“Perfect,” I say, without thinking.
“I know it’s not very glamorous work. But you’ll have your own place and plenty of free time. It’s beautiful out in the woods. Are you a runner?”
I want to say yes, but this is a lie that will be easily discovered. “No. But I love to hike.”
“You’ll love it here.” He laughs, the generous laugh of a happy person.
And why wouldn’t he be happy? I searched the property before applying, and it’s a massive house in the middle of the woods.
This goes against everything my mother taught me, but in my experience, happy people are usually rich, even if rich people aren’t always happy.
“But I suppose I should ask some interview questions. Tell me about yourself.”
He wants a nice young student to work on his property over the summer, so I do my best to pretend that’s who I am.
I can’t tell him the truth. He’s not going to want the real Brie MacKenzie, the desperate twenty-nine-year-old fleeing an obsessive boyfriend, the grown woman who seems unable to make a single sensible decision about her life.
“I just graduated,” I say. “I want to get a summer job before settling down.”
“Where are you from?”
“Here. In the city.”
“A Northwest native. I love it. I’m from Iowa myself. I came here for college and never left. Either the place or the college.”
“You’re a professor?” I ask, anxious to keep the focus away from myself.
“Soon, I hope. I live out here with my wife. She’s a writer. I’m in the English Department at a small liberal arts college out in the sticks. Not too far from the property. I suppose it’s a cliché.”
“It sounds…” I begin, then pause, unsure of how to finish the sentence. I want to say it sounds like a dream, but it’s too embarrassing to admit.
“Insufferable?”
“No! It sounds magical.”
“I’m kidding.” He laughs again. It’s a strange conversation.
I can’t remember meeting anyone with this much spontaneous joy.
“Not about being insufferable, of course. We’re very much that.
Now, what about yourself? You don’t need to tell me anything, but just so you know, we’re not looking to host a couple. Cards on the table.”
“No couple,” I say. “It’s just me. I’m single.”
Single. Unattached. Is that what I am? For three years, I let Neil decide every part of my life. He decided where we lived, what we did, and who our friends were. He even weighed in on my education.
How could I really be single while he’s out there, refusing to let go?
“Good for you,” Bradley says. “I think I’m supposed to go through what we offer. Shall I do that?”
I blame love. Love is a habit, a routine; a word repeated until it is believed. Maybe it was a form of psychosis. A shared hallucination.
He thought I didn’t love him enough. After one of our long, drawn-out arguments, I would sometimes think, yes, he’s right, I don’t love him enough. It’s my fault. I just need to try harder.
“Yes,” I say. “Please.”
I wasn’t stupid, though. I could see what was happening. He was making plans for my life, and every day those plans became more entrenched in his mind. Marriage, babies, a house. All of it.
And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
I could have so easily slipped into that life. On paper, he was the perfect man. Just after we got together, Neil Rotman became a partner at Simmel and Dewitt, a prominent law firm in the city.
And what was I? A docile do-gooder who spent her youth caring for her sick mother? A woman pushing thirty who has only just graduated from college, with no real work history or skill, a woman fit to breed, and little else?
No. That can’t be true. I won’t let that be true.
“How does that sound?”
I haven’t heard a word Bradley has said, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll work for free if they give me room and board.
“Great,” I say. My voice shakes. “Are you offering me the job?”
“Sure.” He says this as if it’s an inconsequential decision, as if he’s not literally saving my life. “Let’s do it.”
I see the security guard walking slowly across the lot. I can’t stay in this car for another week. Even if I can get food and shelter, I’ll need money.
I can’t go to my friends, because they’re all friends of Neil and they’ll push me back into his orbit. And I can’t go to my family because I don’t have one anymore.
“When can I start?”
“As soon as possible. How’s next week?”
Instead of the nightstick, the guard has something even more terrifying in her hand: a phone. If I don’t leave, she’s going to write me up for a ticket.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I say, starting the engine. “How about tomorrow?”