Chapter 9
By Sunday afternoon, the heavy rain had tapered off into a pervasive, silver mist that hung low over the gravel driveway, blurring the boundary between the manicured perimeter and the wild pine woods.
Brianne’s departure at noon had been a quiet, efficient affair.
She had packed her leather tote, folded her guest linens with razor-sharp hospitality, and allowed Tucker to drive her down to the depot in the village.
The house felt larger now that it was empty again. Felicity stood at the kitchen island, a lukewarm cup of herbal tea sitting untouched beside her hand. She was staring at her phone, which lay flat on the white quartz. There were no new notifications. No emails.
Giving up her position as a senior data analyst at the logistics firm had been an administrative negotiation, one she and Tucker had conducted over an expensive bottle of Barolo in their old city apartment.
It makes sense, Lissy, he had urged, his fingers tracing the rim of his glass with that unassailable corporate logic.
The commute from the woods will kill my billable hours.
If we’re serious about trying for a family, about taking the stress levels down, you need a gap year. Let me carry the weight for a while.
She had agreed because it sounded healthy.
It sounded like the kind of mature sacrifice a woman made for the long-term wellbeing of a marriage.
But now, six months into the silence of the woods, there was no pregnancy.
In fact, they’d only been intimate a handful of times in the past few months, the greater commuting distance seeming to echo a growing distance in their relationship.
There was only an immense, echoing stretch of daylight between the hours of eight to eight most days, a vast inventory of hours where her mind, once trained to look for micro-deviations in massive datasets, had nothing to parse but the shifting of the shadows across the concrete floor.
The sound of the garage door rumbled through the walls, signaling Tucker's return from the train station. Felicity closed the calendar app, picked up her tea, and walked toward the mudroom to meet him.
"Traffic near the junction was an absolute mess," Tucker muttered as he stepped inside, kicking his loafers off into the tray.
He looked tired, his jaw shadowed with a light stubble that always appeared by Sunday afternoon.
He reached out, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his face into the crook of her neck.
He smelled of rain and the damp wool of his jacket.
"God, it’s good to be back. I love Brianne, but forty minutes of her complaining about her junior associates in a closed car is enough to give anyone a migraine. "
Felicity leaned into him, letting the warmth of his chest soothe the cold, analytical knot that had been tightening in her stomach all morning. "Did she get off okay?"
"Yeah. The twelve-fifteen was right on time," he said, pulling back to look down at her, his hands resting gently on her hips.
His eyes scanned her face with a quiet, observant intensity that made her pulse jump.
"You look a little less tense today. The quiet suits you when Bree isn't here spinning everybody up. "
"Tucker," she said softly, her thumb tracing the seam of his fleece pullover. "Do you think I'm spending too much time alone?"
Tucker blinked, a flicker of surprise crossing his features before his face settled into that careful, deliberate expression he used when navigating a sensitive client meeting.
He guided her back into the living room, sitting beside her on the charcoal sofa and keeping her hand locked firmly in his.
"Why are you asking me that now?" he asked gently.
"I was just looking at my old work calendar," she admitted, keeping her eyes fixed on their joined hands.
"Some days, the hours out here... they feel very heavy, Tucker.
When you're in the city, and the house is just creaking, I start analyzing everything.
I start looking at the mugs, or the dish by the sink, or that stupid book... "
"Lissy," he interrupted, his voice dropping into a low, completely reasonable register that made her feel instantly foolish. He squeezed her fingers. "We knew the transition would be a shock to the system. You went from managing a forty-person department to a house in the woods. Your brain is understimulated. When a highly analytical mind has nothing to analyze, it starts manufacturing patterns out of thin air. It’s exactly what Bree and I were saying yesterday—it’s just cabin fever. "
"But the book?—"
"The book is a mid-list thriller written by someone who probably looked up 'signs of a meticulous housewife' on a blog," Tucker said with a soft, affectionate chuckle, leaning over to kiss her temple. "It’s a funny anecdote, Pooh Bear. Nothing more. In fact, Brianne texted me from the train platform saying she looked up the author on the firm’s internal legal database just out of curiosity. Bethany Bricker is a registered pen name for a romance writer out of Vermont. The publisher has tons of other books that are similar. It’s a literal formula. "
Felicity sat perfectly still, the relief that should have washed over her arriving instead as a dull, numbing chill. A romance writer out of Vermont. A registered pen name. It was completely logical. It was an unassailable fact, verified by Brianne, delivered by Tucker.
"Oh," Felicity whispered. "I didn't know."
"See?" Tucker smiled, his entire demeanor lightening as he stood up and stretched his arms. "No conspiracy.
No intruders. Just an understimulated brain and a very common trope.
Tell you what—I have to review the closing documents for the Vanguard merger tonight, but why don't we go into the village tomorrow evening for dinner?
Just the two of us. Get you out of these four walls. "
"I'd like that," she said, forcing a small, grateful smile.
"Great. I'm going to change out of these clothes and set up in the study," he said, tapping her chin affectionately before walking toward the stairs.
Felicity remained on the sofa, listening to the familiar, comforting rhythm of his footsteps overhead. She looked down at her hands, then turned her head toward the bookcase where The Inconvenient Wife remained hidden behind the heavy monographs.
Maybe they were right. Maybe she was simply going stir-crazy.
Her life had become so small, her daily interactions so sparse, that she was turning a standard, mass-market novel into a personal haunting.
The newsstand receipt she had found earlier—the one for the trade paperback—was likely just a textbook or a business journal Tucker had picked up for himself.
He read legal publications constantly; why had she assumed it was this specific book?
He’d said it wasn’t; she should believe him.
She felt a wave of profound embarrassment wash over her, followed closely by a deep, hollow exhaustion. She had let a silly, coincidental sequence of events make her look paranoid in front of her husband and his oldest friend.
She stood up, determined to return her world to its normal axes.
She walked into the kitchen, carefully taking her favorite blue mug from the shelf and placing it back into its exact position in the gradient, ensuring the handle was turned precisely forty-five degrees to the right.
It wasn't a military garrison; it was just her kitchen.
She opened the refrigerator to see what she could pull together for a simple Sunday night supper. As she reached for the crisper drawer, her phone vibrated in her pocket.
It was a text from Brianne.
Made it back to the city! the message read. Thank you both for such a lovely weekend. Lissy, please take care of yourself. Don't let the big house get in your head—remember what we talked about! Call me this week if you want to vent. xx
Felicity stared at the glowing screen. The words were warm, entirely well-meaning, and filled with a protective, sisterly care. She let out a slow, quiet breath, typing out a quick, grateful reply before setting the phone on the counter.
She was fine. The house was safe. She was going to make dinner, she was going to go out with her husband tomorrow night, and she was going to forget that Bethany Bricker had ever written a single page.