Chapter 44
Marin
Charles wants to watch a movie.
I’m going to need a moment with that sentence.
Charles—the man I drugged, transported across state lines, and chained to a support column in the basement of a house—wants to watch a movie.
Specifically, he wants to watch The Notebook.
He says this with a straight face. He says it like a man ordering room service at the Four Seasons and not like a hostage making requests from a concrete floor.
The basement is not the bedroom. I need to be clear about that.
The basement has soundproofed walls, a sealed door, no windows, and a potty chair I bought at a medical supply store forty minutes away.
The cashier looked at me—thirty-two, healthy, in full makeup—and asked if it was for my grandmother.
“It’s for my husband,” I said. “He’s recovering.”
“Oh, bless. What happened?”
“Everything.”
The potty chair sits four feet from the column.
Charles can reach it with the slack I’ve given him in the restraints—enough to shuffle over, do what he needs to do, and shuffle back.
Supervised the first few times. Now I just leave him to it.
We don’t discuss it. Ever. It is the one subject on which Charles and I have reached a complete and binding agreement.
He tested me once. Early on, before the basement, when we were still upstairs. I loosened one cuff for the bathroom and he lunged for the window. I tased him in the shoulder. He dropped like a bag of sand. When he came to, I was sitting in the chair reading a novel.
“The next one goes somewhere less comfortable,” I said.
He hasn’t tested me since.
So when he asks for The Notebook, it’s not the request that throws me. It’s the tone. Calm. Pleasant. Borderline conversational. Like we’re two people who didn’t relocate to a basement because he pissed the bed four times.
“You don’t even like The Notebook,” I say. “You told me romance movies were ‘emotional propaganda designed to set unrealistic expectations for men.’”
“I’ve had time to reflect.”
“You’ve had time to develop Stockholm syndrome.”
“Maybe.” He shifts against the column. “Or maybe I’m trying to do what you asked. Remember? You wanted a real conversation. A reset. Two adults figuring it out.” He pauses. “This is me figuring it out.”
I don’t trust this. I don’t trust this the way I don’t trust gas station sushi—the presentation is fine but something underneath is going to kill me.
But he’s calm. He’s been calm since the basement. No yelling. No threats. No legal posturing. No weaponized Tuesday dinner quotes. He ate the casserole. He took the pills. He said thank you yesterday and I nearly called a priest because I was sure he’d been possessed.
“If I bring my laptop down here,” I say slowly, “you understand that doesn’t change anything.”
“I understand.”
“The cuffs stay on.”
“I assumed.”
“And if you try anything—you remember what happened last time you tried anything.”
“I remember.” He rubs his shoulder where the taser caught him. Involuntary. He doesn’t know he’s doing it. “Vividly.”
“Good.”
I go upstairs. Find my laptop. Open Netflix. Scroll past fourteen true crime documentaries—which feels pointed—and find The Notebook.
I carry it downstairs. Set it on the floor between us. Angle the screen so we can both see it.
Then I do something I haven’t done since I brought him back down here.
I sit down. Not on the stairs. Not in the doorway. On the concrete floor, next to him, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his arm through the sleeve of his shirt. The floor is cold and hard and this is insane and I do it anyway.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t look at me. Just watches the screen.
Rachel McAdams is yelling at Ryan Gosling in the rain and I’m sitting on a basement floor next to the man I kidnapped watching it happen and for one brief, deranged moment, this feels normal.
This feels like a Friday night in our apartment when things were good—before Vanessa, before the dinner, before I learned what a Faraday bag was.
“This is nice,” Charles says. Quiet. Not looking at me.
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t just say. Every time you just say something, I end up buying restraints or crying in a grocery store.”
He almost laughs. And this time he doesn’t kill it. He lets it live—a real, actual laugh that fills the basement and bounces off the soundproofed walls and does something to my chest that I refuse to examine.
“I missed this,” he says.
I don’t respond. Because if I respond I’ll believe him. And if I believe him I’ll loosen the cuffs. And if I loosen the cuffs I’ll lose every piece of leverage I’ve built. And I don’t lose leverage. I hold it until my fingers bleed and then I hold it with my teeth.
But God, he sounds like he means it.
We watch the rest of the movie in silence. When it ends, he turns to me.
“Same time tomorrow?”
I stand up. Brush off my jeans. Check the cuffs. Check the slack. Make sure the potty chair is within reach.
“We’ll see,” I say.
He smiles. Not the angry smile. Not the Tuesday dinner smile. A real one. Or the best imitation I’ve ever seen.
And that’s the part that terrifies me. Because angry Charles I can handle. Angry Charles is predictable. He insults me and I armor up and we circle each other like professionals.
Kind Charles is a weapon I’ve never seen before.
And I don’t know if the safety’s on.