Chapter 7
For three days he was silent.
He didn't shout, didn't threaten, didn't seek reconciliation — he simply watched.
I knew this calm of his: that's how water goes still before it turns into a whirlpool.
I went to work at Jen's, met with the lawyer, gathered papers — and all the while I felt his gaze on my back, heavy, appraising, the gaze of a man plotting something and in no hurry.
On the fourth day he came into the kitchen with the car keys and a strange, almost forgotten softness in his voice.
— Get ready. We're going.
— Where? — I didn't lift my eyes from the laptop.
— Out of town. To my father's place. — He paused. — Eli's there.
There it was. The one word I still answered to with my whole body, my whole torn-up soul. Eli. He knew how to get to me — he always knew.
— You wanted to see him, — Mark went on, watching me. — So. Let's go. And we'll talk while we're at it. Calmly, without lawyers, without Dana. As husband and wife. Maybe it's not all lost yet.
I didn't believe him for a second. In his "maybe it's not all lost yet" there was exactly as much sincerity as in the smile of a shopkeeper luring you into a dark back room. But he'd said "Eli" — and that was enough. I snapped the laptop shut.
— Let me call Dana. To tell her I'm going.
— You'll call later. — He was already standing in the doorway. — From the car.
I took my phone, my jacket, the documents — my unfailing bag — and went after him. In the elevator I dialed Dana, but the connection dropped on the very first ring. And when we got into the car, Mark held out an open palm.
— Phone.
— What for?
— So that for once you'll be with me and not with your screen. Hand it over. You'll get it back when we're there.
I hesitated — for a second, one fatal second — and he pulled the phone from my fingers himself, calmly, matter-of-factly, and slid it into his pocket. And in that matter-of-factness there was something that sent a chill crawling down my spine.
The drive took two hours. The city fell away behind us, then the suburbs, then fields began, scattered small towns, dense woods on both sides of the highway.
I looked out the window as the asphalt flowed backward, and with each mile I felt the thin thread tearing, wearing away — the thread that tied me to my new, barely begun life.
To Dana. To Jen. To the lawyer. To myself.
— Where exactly are we going? — I asked when we turned off the highway onto a broken dirt road running into the woods. — Mark, I thought your father's place was in town.
— This is a different house. — He didn't take his eyes off the road. — Farther out. Quiet. No one to bother us talking there.
— And Eli?
— They'll bring Eli. Later.
"Later." The lie was so obvious, so brazen, that my breath caught. There was no Eli here and there wouldn't be. There was only this forest, this road to nowhere, and the man beside me, whose profile suddenly looked to me like the face of a complete stranger, a frightening man.
The house stood off by itself — large, dark, behind a high blind fence. No neighbors, no lights around, only a wall of pines and a silence that made my ears ring. Mark cut the engine.
— We're here.
I didn't move.
— Take me back, — I said quietly. — Right now. There's no Eli here. You lied.
— Get out of the car, Ariana.
— No.
He sighed — wearily, as if I were a capricious child — got out, came around the car, opened my door and, without a word, took me by the elbow.
Not roughly. But with that calm, inexorable force I could do nothing against. He pulled me out, led me to the house, unlocked the heavy door and shoved me inside — into cold, into darkness, into the smell of uninhabited wood.
And then, behind my back, the lock clicked. And I felt that click with my whole body — like a sentence.
— What are you doing? — I spun around. — Mark. What does this mean?
— It means we'll finally spend some time alone together.
— He tossed the keys into his pocket — the very ones he'd just locked the door with.
— Without lawyers. Without Dana. Without your new clever thoughts.
There's no signal here, Ariana. No neighbors.
No one. Just you and me. The way it should be.
— You've locked me in.
— I've saved you. — He spoke slowly, with that dreadful conviction that's more terrifying than any shout.
— From the fool Dana and this lawyer of yours are turning you into.
You've gone completely mad over your little papers.
A couple of days of quiet — and you'll remember who you are and where your place is.
I threw myself at the window — beyond it the forest went black, and the glass was solid, double-paned, and the frame was locked tight.
Threw myself at the door — locked. At another — locked.
He watched calmly as I dashed around the house like an animal in a cage, and there was almost pleasure in his eyes.
— Run out of steam? — he asked when, gasping, I stopped in the middle of the dark living room. — Sit down. I'll light the fire. You're cold, after all.
And that was when not panic but fury rose in me. The same fury that had first woken in the bathroom and had lived in me ever since, a smoldering ember.
— Do you even understand what you're doing? — I stepped toward him. — This isn't infidelity anymore, Mark. It's not scenes. You've locked a person in a house against her will. That's a criminal offense. A real one. You'll go to prison.
— Who? — He smirked, kindling the fire. — Who'll put me away?
You? From what phone will you call, baby?
Who'll you tell — the pines? You got in the car yourself.
You drove out yourself. Everyone saw you calmly leave the house with me.
The wife went to the lake house with her husband to make up. Who's the criminal here?
He got up, brushed off his hands, and came right up to me. I made myself not step back.
— You've gotten clever, I've noticed, — he said quietly, looking into my eyes. — Too clever. It ends badly, Ariana. Badly for you. So let's do it the nice way. We'll stay here, you'll cool off, remember whom you belong to — and we'll go home. And everything will be like before.
— It won't be like before, — I said. — I've told you that already.
— Here — it will. — He swept a hand around the dark walls. — Here there are no other options.
He went upstairs — to take a shower, to change, feeling himself master of the situation.
And I, left alone in the dark living room, did not sit down and wait meekly.
I went to the window and tried the latch — dead.
I pushed the second door, which seemed to lead to a terrace — locked.
I searched the entryway for a second set of keys — nothing.
The house was built like a trap, deliberately, in advance. He hadn't set this up yesterday.
When he came down, I was standing by the fireplace, pointedly calm.
— All right, — I said. — You're right. Let's talk. Since we're here.
He froze on the bottom step, peering at me, looking for the catch. My sudden meekness was more suspicious to him than any shout — he knew the old Ariana too well to believe in this one.
— Look at that, — he drawled. — Wised up.
— Grown tired, — I corrected. — Just tired of fighting. That's what you wanted, isn't it?
He relaxed — a little, a hair's breadth, but I noticed.
He believed it, because he wanted to believe it: it was more convenient that way, more familiar.
And in that lay his weakness, which I was only beginning to feel out.
He needed me to break. So I'd let him see a crack — the one that in truth was no longer there.
— I'll pour us some wine, — he said, heading for the kitchen. — Father's got something decent stashed around here somewhere.
He turned his back to me. For one second. And that second was enough for me to slide a glance over the pocket of his trousers, where he'd dropped the keys to the car and the house. They were there — I could see the outline.
He clanged bottles in the kitchen, and I counted the beats of my own heart and calculated: could I reach the pocket while he slept.
Or the old phone in the drawer that needed charging.
One call. One short call to Dana with an address — and everything would change.
I'd memorized the turn off the highway, the broken dirt road, the blue sign at the entrance to the forest. I hadn't been staring out the window from misery.
I'd been looking and memorizing the way back.
— To us, — Mark held out a glass, returning. — To you finally coming to your senses.
I took the glass but didn't drink. I'd had enough of those seven years when I drowned his infidelities in wine.
— Tell me about Eli, — I said instead of a toast. — Since you brought me here "to talk." How is he? Does he ask about me?
Something flickered in his face — he hadn't expected this question, hadn't prepared an answer for it. And for a second the mask slipped.
— He asks, — he muttered, looking away. — Bothers everyone with his questions. "Where's Mama, where's Mama." Wears his grandfather out.
And that was when something broke loose in me — but not downward, as before, the other way, pulled taut like a string. My boy asks where Mama is. My six-year-old son asks every day where I am — and the man across from me counts that a nuisance.
— He asks where Mama is, — I repeated very quietly. — And you locked Mama in the forest so she couldn't go to him.
— I locked up a wife who's lost her mind, — he snapped, and his voice hardened again. — And who, out of sheer foolishness, nearly wrecked a normal family.