Chapter 18
The chicken was perfectly moist, roasted with lemons and a handful of the fresh rosemary Felicity had chopped earlier that afternoon.
Tucker ate with a clean, efficient appetite, his knife cutting through the breast meat in three neat strokes, his mind visibly parsing the leftovers of his Vanguard conference call while his body performed the baseline requirements of a husband at his own table.
"This is incredible, Lissy," he said, setting his fork down with a soft clink against the porcelain.
He reached across the walnut surface, his large thumb smoothing over the back of her knuckles.
His skin was warm, his touch completely uncalculated.
"See? This is what we needed. Just a normal, quiet evening without the noise from the city. Your color is returning."
"Thank you," Felicity said. Her voice sounded thin, a dry reed catching in her throat.
Brianne sat to her right, her posture immaculate, her black sweater absorbing the low, golden glow of the chandelier. She was sipping her Pinot Noir with a slow, meditative appreciation, her sharp blue eyes tracing the reflection of the glass against the polished wood of the table.
"It really is peaceful out here, Tucker," Brianne murmured, her voice dropping into that low, affectionate register that signified her place as an extension of their family.
"I was telling Lissy earlier during tea—the silence takes some getting used to, but once you find your footing, it’s a sanctuary.
You just have to let the old habits go."
"Exactly," Tucker agreed, pointing his wine glass toward Brianne before taking a sip. "That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her for six months. You can’t run a household with the same micro-analysis you used for a forty-person logistics department.
It’s an entirely different dataset, Pooh Bear.
You have to allow for a little bit of slack in the system. "
Slack in the system.
Felicity looked from Tucker’s relaxed, handsome face to Brianne’s smooth, unblinking expression. The data points were screaming in her head, a loud, discordant frequency that made the digital hum of the wine fridge sound like an alarm.
"I was just wondering," she murmured, her voice perfectly level, completely compliant. "I’ve been trying to find more information on this book I've been reading. The database listing for The Inconvenient Wife... it’s restricted at the publisher level. It’s a limited distribution.
I just thought... if it wasn't on the shelves anywhere in the state, it must have come from somewhere very specific. "
"Lissy, please," Tucker said, his tone dropping into that smooth, clinical register that made her feel as though she were being handled by a professional. He looked across the table at Brianne, a quick, exhausting flash of mutual weariness passing between them that made Felicity’s stomach turn. "We’ve already established where the stories came from. It’s a telephone game from the partner retreat.
Someone at that table told their wife, or their wife’s sister, or a friend who writes under a Vermont pen name.
It’s an occupational hazard of telling an embarrassing story after three scotches.
Can we please, for the love of god, leave Bethany Bricker in the recycling bin? "
"The world isn't a dataset, Lissy. Sometimes people just repeat things they hear at bars, and sometimes writers pick them up because they sound interesting. It's just a book."
Felicity looked down at Brianne’s hand resting against her skin. The jasmine perfume was thick, a sweet, heavy vapor that seemed to fill the small space between their chairs.
A wave of dawning, terrifying clarity washed over her, so violent it made her dizzy.
They weren't just dismissing her fears. They were collaborating on the dismissal.
They were standing on the exact same side of a line, presenting a united front of gentle, patronizing reason to ensure she didn't trust the evidence of her own eyes.
Tucker was entirely rational, completely blind, and perfectly weaponized by his own impatience.
He wanted a simple, quiet life in the woods; he wanted his wife to be healthy so he could focus on his billable hours and his multi-million-dollar corporate mergers.
He was choosing the easier explanation because it required nothing of him.
And Brianne was right beside him, feeding him the script. She was building a gentle, bulletproof cage of medical logic around Felicity, all while holding her hand and offering her chamomile tea.
The book hadn't entered their locked home by accident. It hadn't been picked up at a transit kiosk by a well-meaning husband.
Someone inside this room had put it there. Someone inside this room knew every secret, every quirk, every private humiliation of her life, and they were using it to construct a trap with terrifying precision.
"Of course," Felicity said, forcing her lips to curve upward into a tight, closed-mouth smile, though the horror was a physical weight pressing down on her tongue. "You're both right. It's just cabin fever. I'm sorry for bringing it up again."
"Thank you," Tucker said, letting out a long, visible sigh of relief as he reached for the wine bottle to top off Brianne’s glass. "Now, Bree, tell me about this compliance chief from the regional office, because if he’s still insisting on reviewing the internal emails from the third quarter, we’re going to have to file a formal disclosure waiver before Monday afternoon. "
The two of them leaned back into the conversation, their voices instantly falling into that rapid, comfortable volley of corporate jargon and shared history that left Felicity standing entirely outside the circle.
She sat in the soft leather of her chair, her body perfectly still, her mind staring into the dark, empty space of the dining room.
The trap was fully operational. Tucker had already chosen his side; he had chosen reason, he had chosen comfort, and when the final scene approached, he would choose Brianne.
Felicity looked at her husband's confident, smiling face, and then at the woman sitting beside him, realizing with a sudden, suffocating certainty that she was completely alone in the woods, drawn into the final chapters of a murder someone had planned.