Chapter 10
Grace
Everything blurs again, static muting the world.
I don’t resurface until Nate and I are on a noisy tarmac.
I sleep through the short flight, curled up beside him, the arm rest between us raised.
His fingers never release their hold. There’s a strange generosity to Nate’s touch, and without the terrible yearning I associate with Nick.
It’s unsettling, feeling close to him right now.
Nick’s death is an oncoming toothache, the rot slowly going deeper, approaching nerve endings that’ll be alive with agony soon enough.
A flight attendant serves snacks partway through the trip, but I ignore the food.
Nate doesn’t push me to eat. The flight ends, and the next time I’m properly cogent is when he’s lowering me into another car.
I catalogue things vaguely. Leather seats.
A grapefruit and jasmine air freshener. The man beside me leaning over the console, the harsh line between his brows deepening.
“Are you with me, Grace?”
“How long?” I ask, my body demanding to shut down again.
“The drive is a little over two hours. Sleep now.” His hand goes to my thigh. “I’ve got you.”
I put my hand over his, intending to remove it. He shouldn’t be touching me like this. But I end up interlocking our fingers, and the last thing I hear is a throaty murmur, something like approval as our linked hands lock against my belly.
The sound of the highway reaches me in between sips of sleep.
Nate’s hand drifts away, though I feel it return occasionally to shift my hair off my neck, or trace along the inner seam of my jeans.
My sleep deepens and I dream, my brain replaying the worst moments of the day: Mother’s face when I opened the door; Constable Tim’s expression when I told him she would kill me; Nate arriving, looking like my dead husband from a distance, but nothing like him at all…
When I finally get past the static of dreams, I hear the soothing sound of waves approaching a shore.
The waves enfold me in deeper rest than should be possible.
I float, suspended yet comfortable, restoring some of what I lost, though loss still aches somewhere deep—in my diaphragm, or my pericardial cavity, or my parietal pleura.
It’ll ache from within for a long time, maybe forever.
A voice drifts across the waves, low and intimate, and much too close. “Ready to surface, love?”
“Mmm,” I answer, trying to turn over, only to realise I’m not in bed. There’s firm leather beneath my cheek rather than a pillow. My eyes flutter open.
We’re in Nate’s parked car, and I can barely make out the shape of him beside me. The wave sounds are issuing from the radio, drawing me out of sleep.
“How long was I out?”
“Most of the ride home.” A squeeze to my thigh. “I let you continue sleeping for a good two hours after we got here.”
Four hours total, which makes sense, given that night has closed in. Stars are visible through the sunroof above, the Milky Way muted by the tinted window. The clock on the dashboard confirms what the stars say. It’s late.
“We’re here?” I sit up properly to look around. Everything is dark outside, though I see windows outlined in light close by.
A new noise arrives from Nate’s side, something like a whine.
“Hang on.” My full awareness returns. “Wait, is that Shep just outside?”
“Yes, and he’s not meant to whine like that—ever.” Nate peers through his window, disapproval in his rigid shoulders. “Back to your place, Shep. Place.”
Instead, scrabbling footsteps go around the car, then the huge dog appears outside my window.
I recognise him from the few pictures Nate has sent over the years: a huge black dog with smart, sweet eyes.
As I watch, he does a series of capering turns, clearly begging to be let in.
Smiling, I fling my door open and the dog bounds forward and nuzzles right into my lap, his whines filling the small space.
“Oh, you absolute love,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around him. Shep gives a pitiful sigh and burrows further into my lap, his whole backside sticking out of the car, wagging tail thumping against the open door. He smells like sun on fur. He’s heavy in the best way.
“Absolute lug,” Nate mutters.
“I’m Grace,” I tell the big dog, and he gives me a grin as if in answer. “And you are much sweeter than you have any right to be, aren’t you?” I ruffle his ears and he leans up to give me a sloppy kiss.
I laugh despite the slobber, but Shep pulls away at a command from Nate.
Light erupts outside the car, blocking out the stars, but now I can see that we’re on a large concrete driveway in front of a house that’s dark behind the floodlights.
A natural stone walkway leads to the front door, with a line of dwarf trees on either side.
Nate blocks my view a second later, backlit as he extends a hand to help me from the car.
I hesitate, realising that we’ve travelled a long way while I’ve been out of it, and that I have only the vaguest notion of where we are.
He reaches into the car and takes my elbow.
“Time to come inside, Grace,” he murmurs.
Before I can say anything or find my feet, he scoops me up, kicks the car door shut, then carries me bridal-style towards the house.
“Where’s Shep?” I ask, craning my neck to see more of our surroundings.
“Making the rounds.” He looks down at me. “He’s a working dog, Grace. He’s got a job to do.”
“Does that mean he’s not allowed in the house?”
“Sometimes he comes inside,” Nate carries me past the dwarf trees, “when he’s been a good boy. I don’t consider ambushing you in the car to be good behaviour.”
It’s too dark to see much of the house, though I can tell that it’s sleek and new, which corresponds to what I’d pictured when Nate gave us vague descriptions of the place he was building several years back.
I make out weatherboard walls stained a dark brown and vast, shining windows.
As we reach the front door, I realise that the house sprawls inwards, its structure embracing us.
I strain in Nate’s arms, trying to ascertain more details even as he pushes the front door open.
“Hang on, I want to see this place properly—and I want Shep back.”
“The lug will be back later.” Nate carries me into a big foyer with an open closet, a tasteful shoe rack, and a pair of arched doorways leading further into the house.
The walls are a subdued white, the ceiling high and sloping.
“Shep’s got an electronic doggy door in the kitchen, so don’t worry about him. ”
Nate sets me down and I stare around, a vague sense of recognition permeating from the outside in.
Through one doorway, there’s a long, curving corridor; through the other, a huge living room sprawls towards a massive stone fireplace.
Craning my neck, I see yet another room further on, the house’s curving design hiding it.
A shiver runs down my back. I know this design.
“This—this is your house?”
“Ours,” he corrects, toeing off his shoes. “Shoes off in our house, little heart.”
My unease deepens. Before I can comply, he bends down to ease off my sneakers.
He sets them beside his leather casuals, then holds out a hand for me to take.
I step back instead. The long sleep in the car has cleared my head enough that I’m starting to question what I could only sense before.
This entire situation is strange, if not outright wrong.
“Nate, is this… I feel like I know this place.”
I move past him into the living room. He follows without comment, allowing me to look around.
Tall windows line the curve of the outer wall, and I note that the central panes are foldable doors that would effortlessly invite the outside in.
Stepping past a pair of charcoal grey couches, I try to peer outside.
It’s too dark to see, but I hear the faint sound of the ocean—close by, and certainly not a recording like the one in the car.
I follow the windows towards the fireplace, peering through to a much smaller room on the other side.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, the design coming together with computer-generated lines of my own making. I’ve seen it all. I sketched it all, years ago, as the first stage in reclaiming my studies.
“So, tell me,” Nate nudges my shoulder, “what’s it like to see the house you pictured yourself living in but never built? The accordioning hallways are all here. Just for you.”
His words echo the email I sent him that morning.
I can’t speak. There’s a heaviness in my chest as the house unfolds around me, first in my mind, then in reality.
I go to the far side of the fireplace, where a long corridor unspools down a scrolling line; it’s exactly what I created, the library tucked away behind the living room, visible through the shared fireplace.
I know I’ll find the dining room next to the library, and the kitchen adjacent to that, leading to the sprawling garage at the very tip of this side of Horseshoe Manor.
I glance down, seeing that Nate chose wide hardwood flooring, stained a similar brown to the exterior walls.
The library is nearly empty, though there’s a reading nook built alongside the wide window.
By day, it’ll be a sun-soaked spot to relax.
“I chose European oak for the floor and left most of the walls cream to keep the decor minimal.” Nate waves a hand at the empty shelves and the serviceable furniture. “Except the master bedroom, it’s what you’d call ‘warm brutalism.’ As close to a blank canvas as possible—for you.”
Old email threads unfurl in my mind as I follow the volution of the corridor, remembering how Nate fished for information on my preferred decorating style.
His choices here reflect the truth: despite my love of architecture, my preferences for interiors aren’t all that well developed.
Mother’s house is a mix of 90s maximalism and art deco.
Her style bled through the walls when she and Nick started shopping together.
Meanwhile, I sometimes smuggled in second-hand treasures from the local shops, when I was well enough to explore on my own.
A turn-of-the-century rocker from England.
A miniature set of rosewood drawers from South Africa.
And my favourite: an absinthe-green florist’s table from 1920s France.
The kitchen is all stainless steel appliances and warm granite countertops.
So far, it’s the one room I dislike—from the too-wide island in the centre, to the ill-positioned breakfast bar cutting off the flow to the side.
The doggy door Nate mentioned is there, a fancy automatic slider next to a pair of French doors, and I hope to see Shep come inside soon.
Moving further into the kitchen, I spot a powder room next to the pantry that wasn’t in my original design. I step inside without a word, shutting the door and grabbing the edge of the sink with both hands. I try to breathe myself back to calm.
“You’re fine,” I tell the woman in the bathroom mirror. “Everything is going to be…”
I can’t finish the sentence. This is not fine. Most assuredly not. I need to find my footing right here and now, and manage the situation. Starting with demanding answers to the questions burning in my mind.
Heading back into the kitchen, I seat myself on one of the stools at the island and meet Nate’s eyes. “I think we’d better talk about this.”
Nate doesn’t take the seat beside me. Instead, he turns my stool and he leans in close, smiling in a way I can’t place. “Let me show you the rest of the house first.”
“No.” I lean back, trying to gain some distance. “You’re going to answer my questions. Why didn’t you tell us you’d built this place—why didn’t Nick tell me?”
“The deception was on your end, Grace, not mine.” He shrugs. “Had you shared your architectural designs with Nick, he’d have recognised this place when he visited.”
I’m too deep into suspicion to feel anything else right now, though I know grief is just around the corner, alongside the inevitable pain. I force it away as I ask my next set of questions.
“Why didn’t you just tell me about this house?”
“I did,” he steps even closer, his day-old stubble scraping against my cheek.
“In every email, I told you I had things to show you. Here they are.” He draws back to wave at our surroundings, at the overstuffed kitchen, at the horseshoe-shaped house beyond.
“The house you’ve always wanted—and the husband you’ve always needed. ”
It takes me a moment to understand.
I fly off the stool. Suppressing my instinct to bolt, I stumble to the other side of the kitchen island, facing him with the granite countertop between us.
“I don’t understand. You say you built this house for me and now—what do you mean, husband?” I realise that my suspended grief is trailing down my cheeks, tears I brush away impatiently. My voice is hollow and piercing all at once. “My husband is dead, Nate.”
“Actually,” Nate says, producing an envelope from his pocket, “he’s standing right here, with documentation to prove it.”
He slides a paper across the island, the words Particulars of Marriage emblazoned on the top. Beneath that, I see today’s date, my name, and Nate’s. My stomach pulses with pain, my body doubling over as my mind catches up with what he’s saying.
“What I signed,” I whisper, “earlier today, that was…?”
“That was your agreement to marry me. So,” he circles the island, his lips spreading in another smile, “welcome home, wife.”