Chapter 19
The village library was housed in a converted federal-style building that always smelled of damp slate and lemon wax.
It was the only place within twenty miles that maintained a hardwired terminal connected to the regional inter-library loan cooperative—a clunky, text-only database that bypassed the scrubbed, automated search results of the commercial internet.
On Wednesday afternoon, while Tucker was in Hartford for a compliance seminar and Brianne was reportedly auditing an asset management branch in Boston, Felicity sat in the far corner of the history room.
The green glow of the terminal screen reflected across the lenses of the reading glasses she had bought at the pharmacy, though her vision was perfectly sharp.
Her fingers tapped the mechanical keys, a loud, plastic clatter that felt dangerously conspicuous in the quiet room.
QUERY: AUTHOR_ID / "brICKER, BETHANY" / LEGAL_NAME_CROSS
RESULT: 0 RECORDS FOUND
QUERY: REGISTRATION_ID / "THE INCONVENIENT WIFE" / PRINT_FACILITY
RESULT: COURIER PRESS, INC. (MANCHESTER, NH) / PRIVATE ACCOUNT #4409
Felicity stopped, her fingers hovering over the home row. Private account.
She knew how corporate shells operated from her years analyzing logistics datasets; you didn't obscure the printing facility unless the buyer was willing to pay a premium for anonymity.
She opened her notebook and copied the account number down into a tight, neat column of figures.
It wasn't a dead end. It was a trail of breadcrumbs, but it was buried beneath layers of administrative paper that a woman with no legal authority had no right to pull.
"Finding what you need, Felicity?"
Mrs. Gable, the evening archivist, stood at the end of the aisle with a stack of local historical journals cradled against her apron. Her smile was soft, well-meaning, and layered with that gentle, careful hesitation that had become standard whenever anyone in the village spoke to her lately.
"Yes, thank you," Felicity said, her voice sounding flat as she instantly cleared the terminal screen with a single stroke of the escape key. "Just looking up some regional census data for the historic society."
"Of course," Mrs. Gable murmured, her eyes lingering for a second too long on Felicity’s pale, unpowdered cheeks before she turned away. "Let me know if you need the microfiche. Tucker mentioned you’ve been spending a lot of time on research lately. He said we should keep an eye out for you."
A dull, rhythmic thud started behind Felicity’s temples. Tucker had called the library. He was building the perimeter, dropping small, sorrowful hints to the local staff just like Arthur had done on page ninety-two of the novel.
By five o'clock, she was back in her own kitchen. The gray October light had died out completely, leaving the floor-to-ceiling glass to reflect the sterile white quartz of the island back at her like a mirror.
She needed a cup of black tea to cut through the cold nausea that had settled in her throat since she left the library.
Her movements were hyper-deliberate, a slow-motion performance of an ordinary woman making a normal domestic choice.
She filled the matte-black electric kettle—the heavy, cast-iron model Tucker had purchased for her birthday because he liked the industrial weight of it—and set it on its base.
She stood with her hands flat against the quartz, watching the digital numbers on the base rise: 140°F... 160°F... 180°F...
The kettle chimed its three-tone digital sequence.
Felicity reached out, her fingers closing around the thick, molded plastic handle of the iron carafe. She lifted it, intending to pour the boiling water into her stoneware mug.
There was no warning.
The heavy plastic cylinder of the handle simply severed from the iron body of the kettle, the lower joint snapping with a clean, mechanical pop. The weight of the cast-iron carafe dropped instantly, tilting forward as it fell toward the counter.
A torrent of boiling, two-hundred-degree water cascaded over the back of Felicity’s right hand and wrist, pooling inside the sleeve of her wool cardigan.