Chapter 18
NOW
They evict me from the hospital at half past seven with Richard still unconscious and my clothes still stiff with his dried blood.
The nurse who processes my paperwork won’t quite meet my eyes.
She’s heard something – from Harvey, from colleagues, from the whisper network that runs through every institution.
Whatever she knows or thinks she knows, it’s enough to make her want me gone.
I take a taxi back to East Hampton because my car is still at the house and I can’t face calling anyone for a lift. The driver glances at me in the rear-view mirror – at my ruined clothes, my unwashed hair, the exhaustion carved into my face – and says nothing. Just drives.
The silence suits me fine.
The town looks different in morning light.
Softer. More picturesque than ever, like a photograph staged to sell a lifestyle I was never meant to have.
The sycamore trees are shedding their leaves now, carpeting the lanes in copper and gold.
The houses gleam behind their hedges. Everything is beautiful and orderly and utterly indifferent to the fact that I’m falling apart.
I pay the taxi driver with shaking hands and watch it disappear round the bend before turning to face my house.
The kitchen window is boarded up. Someone – police, probably – has nailed plywood over the hole the intruder made.
It looks wrong against the yellowish stone.
A wound that hasn’t healed. A mark of violence that the rest of East Hampton will have noticed and catalogued and discussed over their morning coffee.
I let myself in through the front door. The hallway still smells like blood – or maybe that’s just my imagination, my brain filling in details that cleaning crews have already erased.
Richard’s blood has been mopped from the pale oak floors, but I can still see where it pooled.
Can still feel it soaking through my fingers as I pressed against his skull and begged him not to die.
I close the door behind me and lean against it, breathing.
I should shower. Should change out of these ruined clothes and wash the hospital smell from my skin. Should eat something, sleep, do any of the things that constitute basic human function.
Instead, I walk to the kitchen window – the one that isn’t boarded – and look out at the park.
And I see them looking back.
Not obviously. Not rudely. Just an odd quality of attention that towns specialise in.
A woman walking her dog who glances towards my house and quickly away.
An elderly couple on a bench who aren’t even pretending any more – just sitting there, watching my windows like they’re waiting for something to happen.
For me to confess. Or collapse.
Or confirm the theories already circulating through East Hampton.
I step back from the window.
This is how it starts. The isolation. The suspicion that curdles into certainty. I’ve seen it happen to other people – watched from a distance as communities turned on those they’d decided were different, dangerous, wrong. Never thought I’d be on the receiving end.
Never thought I’d deserve it.
My phone sets off in my pocket. I retrieve it with quivering hands.
A text from Emma.
Heard what happened. So sorry. Hope Richard recovers.
Here if you need me.
The message looks supportive on the surface, but there’s something missing from it.
The warmth that characterised our earlier exchanges.
The sense that she actually wants to help rather than is just going through the motions of neighbourly concern.
This reads like an obligation. Like she’s checking a box before stepping back to a safe distance.
I don’t respond.
Another message. Natasha this time.
Thinking of you. Terrible news about the break-in. Stay safe x
Stay safe. As if safety is something I can choose when someone is stalking me, breaking into my home, hurting the people I care about. The message feels hollow. Like a procedure. The kind of thing you send when you want to seem caring without actually getting involved.
I don’t respond to that one either.
The morning crawls by. I eventually shower, standing under water so hot it turns my skin pink, trying to wash away the hospital and the blood and the memory of Richard’s body crumpling to the floor.
I dress in clean clothes that feel like armour.
I stand at various windows watching East Hampton go about its day.
Around noon, I force myself to go outside. Not far – just to the end of the driveway to retrieve the post from the box by the gate. But even that short journey feels like running a gauntlet.
Caroline is across the park, talking to a woman I don’t recognise. They both stop speaking when I appear in my doorway. Both turn to look, concerned and curious. I can almost see their thoughts happening. The assessment of my appearance, my demeanour, my guilt or innocence.
I walk to the mailbox. Retrieve a handful of envelopes I don’t bother to examine.
Walk back to my front door. The whole time, I feel their eyes on me.
And when I glance over my shoulder before going inside, they’re still standing there.
Still watching. Their conversation has resumed, heads bent together, and I know with absolute certainty they’re talking about me.
About the break-in.
About the widow at number seven who brought violence to their quiet streets.
Inside, I drop the mail on the console table and press my palms against my eyes until I see stars.
This is what I was afraid of. This is why I kept to myself and didn’t want to integrate, why every friendly overture felt like a trap.
Because I knew – somewhere deep in my bones I knew – that the moment things went wrong, they’d turn on me.
That East Hampton’s rich little welcome was always conditional.
That I’d never really belonged.
That my wealth didn’t automatically make me belong here.
That my life is a lie; my past, the person I am.
Hell, even my money is a lie.
The afternoon is worse. I watch through various windows as the town continues its surveillance. The kids. The dog walkers. The mothers with strollers who pause just a little too long on the sidewalk opposite my house. Everyone stealing curious glances. Keeping their distance like I’m contagious.
A delivery truck pulls up outside my house.
The driver approaches my door with a parcel I don’t remember ordering, and I watch through the peeper as he rings the bell, waits, rings again.
I don’t answer. Can’t face even this brief interaction, this moment of being seen and assessed by a stranger who’s probably already heard rumours about me.
He leaves the parcel on the doorstep. I wait a couple of minutes before opening the door to retrieve it. Then I stand in my hallway staring at the box, already informed by the label that it’s one of the skincare products I forgot I ordered.
I don’t open it.
Just leave it on the console table next to the mail I still haven’t looked at.
By late afternoon, the isolation has become its own kind of torture. I haven’t spoken to anyone since the taxi driver this morning. Haven’t seen a friendly face since Richard’s fingers twitched in mine and I whispered to him that everything would be okay.
Another lie. Everything is not okay. Richard is unconscious in hospital. Harvey is building a case against me. And East Hampton has decided I’m dangerous.
I think about calling the hospital to check on Richard’s condition, speaking to anyone would paralyse me. So I don’t call. Just sit in my darkening house and watch the shadows lengthen across the park.
When evening comes, I realise I haven’t turned on any lights.
The house is dim around me, fading into greys and blacks as the sun sets.
For once, I don’t race to illuminate every room.
Don’t blaze against the darkness like a beacon signalling my fear.
Instead, I sit in the growing dark and let East Hampton wonder what’s happening inside number seven.
I lean back into the couch cushions. The darkness is complete now.
I’m sitting in a black room in a silent house in a town that has decided I don’t belong.
Somewhere out there, someone is watching.
Someone who knows what I did. Someone who sent me notes and my own wedding ring and who broke into my home to hurt me.
And somewhere else, Richard is lying in a hospital bed, fighting to survive because he tried to protect me.
The guilt rises in my throat like bile. I swallow it down. Force myself to breathe.
The darkness doesn’t answer.
But somewhere in East Hampton, someone is watching my unlit windows.
Someone is planning their next move.