Chapter 36 The Jig Is Up
The Jig Is Up
After William had caught Sam in his study and stowed his axe, after he’d taken off his ice-encrusted parka and boots, they’d
come upstairs and Sam had sat miserably in the great room like a guest as William built roaring fires in all the woodstoves
and fireplaces—the power was out. “May I help?” she asked, but he said “No thanks.” He stalked into the kitchen, and she heard
him clanking around in there. Sam went and stood in the doorway, watching William fix dinner on the gas burner, which he’d
lit with a match. Crackers and tomato soup. “Is there enough for two?” she asked.
“Help yourself,” he said, and carried his bowl into the dining room.
Sam ate the leftovers out of the pot, although she didn’t want it at all. Outside the wind shrieked and the window walls trembled
and literally bowed inward, then hissed as they were blasted with snow. Sam would not have been surprised if they’d shattered
and the roof flew off the house. The fire flattened and fizzed in the stove. It was amazing how moving air could sound like
someone screaming.
She went back into the great room and found William making up one of the couches with the Pendleton blankets and his pillow
from upstairs. “What are you doing?” Sam said.
“What does it look like I’m doing, Simone?”
“Would you like some company?”
“Does it look like I’m inviting your company?”
Sam sighed. “William. Please. I’m so sorry. What can I do to make it up to you? I’ll never go near your study again, I promise.
I was just—”
“I know what you were doing, Simone.”
“What?”
“The jig is up,” William said.
“What does that mean?” Sam asked.
“It means I know what you were doing in my study. You were digging. Digging digging digging in my past like a little mongrel
bitch. Again. Looking for God-knows-what. Trying to discredit me. To bring about my ruination.”
“What?” Sam said. She felt again the danger she’d had the morning on the causeway, a sensation like vertigo. Was this really happening?
And she felt something else: Shame. He wasn’t completely wrong. But she’d been looking for evidence to prove he was in the
clear.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I wasn’t digging for anything. I was just curious—”
“You’re lying, Simone. I know it and you know it. I’ve known it all along, how untrustworthy you are. I could no longer ignore
it that morning on the causeway, after you woke me screaming in the night about some supposed phantom with a knife. And the
way you run around half-naked all the time. Loll about the house like some Lolita, trying to lure me onto the rocks. To throw
me off my game. Derail my deadline. Because I’m writing and you’re not. You’re trying to undermine me. You always have been.”
Sam was shaking her head, no no no. “None of that is in any way true. I would never—”
“I suppose it was inevitable,” William went on, tucking his blanket in around his feet. “I’m the more successful one. You’re
the dinghy to my ocean liner. I don’t know if you’re even conscious of your deranging envy. I suspect not. But everything
you’ve done in this relationship is designed to destroy me.”
Sam’s eyes filled with tears of indignation, sorrow, and fear. She couldn’t believe he was saying this. That he believed it. Did he believe it? Worse, had he believed it all along? It was so insane. Maybe it was just the heat of the moment. But he was
breaking them.
“Please stop,” she said.
“You showed me your true colors back in the summer. You’re a liar and a thief.”
“William,” said Sam. Her voice wobbled. She forced herself to speak extra calmly. “All I did was go into your study. It was
wrong of me. I violated a boundary and I apologize. But we have to be able to work things through—”
“It’s my fault as much as yours,” William said, as if Sam hadn’t spoken. He removed his glasses, folding the stems and setting
them on an ottoman, and pulled his striped blanket to his chin. “Fool me once, et cetera. I knew what you were, but I let
you back in. I thought if I proposed I could bell the bitch, that you’d stop this mad campaign. I loved you. Love, Simone,” he said, casting Sam a significant look. “But that’s done. You can’t leave now; you’ll never make it to the interstate
alive. But as soon as the storm is over and I’ve cleared the road, you’re gone.”
“William. You can’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“But we’re engaged! You just asked me to marry you.”
“Leave the ring on the kitchen counter, next to the fruit bowl,” said William.
“William, come on—”
“This conversation, like this relationship, is over,” William said, and folded himself into his blanket, turning his back
on Sam.
Sam stood looking at him, waiting for him to, if not change his mind and hold his arms out to her, then at least roll back
over and say something. He didn’t. She was still incredulous that this was happening, that he’d canceled their engagement,
that he’d throw their life away, that he believed the awful things he’d said about her, that things had gone this bad this
quickly.
Sam considered climbing onto the couch behind him, lifting her shirt and his, pressing her breasts to his back.
Healing them with skin. But she feared what William would do, and she wasn’t even sure what she meant by that, so after a few minutes of watching him pretend to sleep—or actually do it, since he could conk out that fast—and listening to the wind shriek and snow sandblast the glass walls and the fire pop and snap in the grate, she went upstairs alone.
Their bed was cold without William. Sam put on every extra blanket she could find and crawled in wearing all her clothes.
She plugged in her phone, and nothing happened. Of course. The power was out. Sam had only 21 percent battery, and she’d need
to conserve it for however long this storm lasted. Tomorrow, when it was at least light, she’d charge it in her Jeep. In the
meantime, she couldn’t scroll social or use the flashlight to read a book, and she was too cold to go find candles, so she
switched on low power mode and set the phone aside, then pulled the blankets over her head and made a little cave in which
she huddled, miserable.
How had she gotten to this place? Stuck on an island in rural Maine in the middle of a blizzard, with a man who’d dumped her
again, this time breaking an engagement. She couldn’t believe it. She really couldn’t believe this was happening. Why had
she gone into the study? What if she’d just left well enough alone? What if Sam hadn’t disrespected William’s one ask, hadn’t
snooped in his laptop, hadn’t let Zahra get into her head? What if she’d dismissed as preposterous the very idea that her
lover had stolen women’s stories? What if she’d laughed it all off and turned back to her own work? What if, in reverse, became
if only. Sam yearned to believe it, that in the morning there’d be some fix, that in the light of day over muffins and coffee
there would be something, some magic thing she could say that would make William forgive her and they’d come up to this bedroom
and make love and everything would be all right again.
But there was also this: She couldn’t get past the things he’d said.
I know what you were doing. Digging digging digging like a little mongrel bitch.
Trying to discredit me. To bring about my ruination.
The dinghy to my ocean liner. A liar and a thief.
I don’t know if you’re even conscious of your deranging envy.
I thought if I proposed I could bell the bitch.
Sam wished to God he hadn’t said them. She’d tried to ignore, to dismiss his earlier assessments of her character—careless, untrustworthy, thief, vampire—as barbs William just shot off when he was angry. But now she could no longer pretend they didn’t exist.
This conversation, like this relationship, is over.
And what about the other women, the ones he might have stolen stories from? Even if William was fast asleep, if Sam could
sneak past him without waking him, if the blizzard covered the sound of her creeping into the study, the laptop was locked.
Sam had failed completely. She’d really screwed this up.
“God damn it,” she said. She dashed away tears and sat up, throwing the covers back. She reached for her phone to text Drishti—not
LOL but Hey D, coming home for a visit, okay to stay with you and Franz for a minute while I figure some things out?
But as Sam swiped the phone open, its screen lit up with a text from an unknown number. She read it and sucked in a breath.
“Holy fuck,” she said.