Chapter 17 #2
The phone rang once.
Then—
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” The female voice on the other end was calm, efficient.
“I . . .” My throat locked up. “I need help. There’s a woman. She’s trapped. In my basement.”
“A woman is trapped in your basement?” the dispatcher repeated, her voice shifting to a firmer tone. “What’s the address?”
“I don’t know.” I swiped my hand across my forehead. “I-I don’t know the address. It’s an old mansion outside Camden. People call it the Breakers. It belongs to Daniel Winthrop. Please, just send someone.”
“The Breakers?” she echoed. “Can you describe how to get there?”
“There’s a main road that heads out of Camden. You stay on it for about twenty minutes. Then there’s a gas station on the right, Tippers.”
“Tippers on Breezy Way and Route 1? Or Dennett and Thumps?”
“I don’t know!” The words cracked out of me. “Can’t you just trace my phone?”
“We’re working on locating you now. Take a breath. Officers are on their way. Do you know this woman?”
“No,” I said. “I’m just visiting with my husband. It’s his childhood home.”
“Is your husband with you? Does he know the woman?”
“No!” That came out too quickly. “He’s not here. He’s in Boston. And he doesn’t know her.”
Right? He didn’t know her. He couldn’t know her.
“Is she conscious? Injured?”
“She’s not injured. She was—she was sitting in a chair. Reading a book. Then she got upset. Started talking about a monster who hurts women.”
The dispatcher paused. I noticed a shift in rhythm, like she was weighing the words.
“A book,” she said. “She was reading?”
The weight of it hit me. How this all must sound.
I stepped away from the basement door.
“Are you safe right now?” she asked. “Is anyone else in the house?”
What if none of it was real?
“Ma’am?” she said again. “Are you safe? Is anyone with you?”
“I’m not hurt. And I think I’m alone,” I said quietly.
“Are there any weapons in the house?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Can you stay on the line and wait outside?”
“Yes,” I said, the word sounding small, half-trapped in my chest.
Then a thought snapped into place. Mochi.
He wasn’t in danger, but the idea of leaving without him made my skin crawl. I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed the cage, and stepped outside.
The sun was shining. A soft breeze carried the salty scent of the ocean up from the water and stirred my hair. It rustled Mochi’s feathers inside the crate. Warmth settled over my arms, kissed my cheeks, but none of it felt real. Not with what was happening. Not with what I’d just seen.
“I need to call my husband,” I said.
“Ma’am, please stay on the phone with me,” the dispatcher replied.
“I really need to call him.”
“Ma’am, please don’t—”
I hung up.
Daniel didn’t pick up. I tried again, pacing up and down the gravel driveway in front of the main entrance of the Breakers. The house loomed behind me, still and ancient, its windows staring at me like eyes.
Nothing. Still no answer.
My phone rang again. Unknown number—probably dispatch calling me back. But at that same moment, I saw the first flash of blue lights pushing through the wooded stretch of road.
Relief hit so hard, I could physically feel it. It was like someone had finally let go of my lungs after squeezing the breath out of them.
“Sunny,” Mochi said in his cheerful little voice. “It’s sunny.”
I watched the police car come the whole way over the one-mile stretch connecting the Breakers to the mainland.
When the cruiser pulled up beside me, I hurried toward the officer climbing out.
He looked . . . casual. Not alarmed. Not even curious.
Nothing about his face said he’d just arrived at a scene where a woman was locked in a basement.
Which was exactly what I’d told them.
“I’m the one who called,” I said quickly. “Follow me. She’s right here.”
We went inside as the officers fired questions at me. Was I hurt? Did I live here? Who owned the home? I set Mochi on a chair in the kitchen, my hands moving fast, my words even faster.
“This way. Please help her.”
The officer followed, radio crackling faintly at his shoulder. When I opened the yellow door, he looked down at the staircase and raised a brow.
“They tell people not to go down because the stairs are dangerous,” I explained, pointing. “But I think that’s just what whoever keeps her down here wants people to believe. To keep them out.”
His expression flicked to the staircase. The wood looked splintered and warped. A few of the steps sagged in the middle.
“You have to step on every second one,” I added quickly. “Those are the solid ones. See?”
“Ma’am, wait! This doesn’t look sa—”
But I was already moving. He followed slowly.
At the bottom, he took out his flashlight, clicked it on, and let his hand rest near the grip of his holstered gun.
“This way,” I said.
I started to move ahead, but he stopped me short with one arm stretched across my path. “Ma’am, please stay behind me.”
“Right. Yes. Of course.”
His voice remained calm, but there was a thread of doubt woven into it when he asked, “Where exactly is the woman?”
Like he didn’t believe me. Like the strange looks he’d been giving me since the moment he arrived hadn’t already said it all.
“She’s down this way,” I said, motioning. “Follow the lights on the wall.”
We reached the point where the tunnel split.
We turned right. Just like before. The air was colder, more still. The smell of stone and old moisture hung around us like fog.
“She’s right there,” I said, pointing. “There’s an entrance in the rock. It leads to a door.”
The officer shone his flashlight in the direction I was pointing.
I froze.
There was nothing.
Just rock.
“I . . . I don’t understand.” My hands slid over the wall, which felt cool and solid beneath my fingertips. “The entrance. It was here. Right here.”
I turned in place, scanning the space like the opening would suddenly reappear. “Shine over there,” I said, pointing down the tunnel.
The light stretched forward. A bricked-in dead end.
“I don’t understand.” My voice was thinner now. “She was real. This is real.”
The look on the officer’s face shifted. It softened into something careful, almost cautious—like someone trying to approach a scared dog that’s been hit by a car.
“Ma’am,” he said gently. “There’s nobody here.”
“No!” I snapped back at him. “There’s a woman here somewhere. You have to believe me.”
The weight of it hit all at once, flattening everything inside me. It was like something invisible and heavy had slammed into me.
“Wait!” I said, panic surging. “Maybe we took the wrong tunnel.”
I turned and rushed back to the fork.
“Ma’am!” the officer called after me.
I didn’t stop.
The second tunnel stretched longer. Colder. A few doors appeared on either side. I opened each one as I passed. Storage rooms. Empty shelves. Dust.
“She’s here somewhere!” I said over my shoulder.
The words echoed down the tunnel as the officer joined me.
“What’s your name?” he asked, his voice gentle. It was the kind of tone used for de-escalation, like you might use with someone ready to break.
“Oh, no. I’m not crazy,” I said, but I knew exactly what I looked like. The tears welling in my eyes didn’t help. “I’m not crazy. There’s a woman here. She needs our help.”
But was she really here? Even I had to admit that I sounded crazy.
“Emily!” Tara’s voice cut through the corridor. Her footsteps echoed closer. She looked terrified—genuinely terrified, like a woman who’d risked her life climbing down rotting stairs just to find out her friend had unraveled in a basement.
“What’s going on?” she asked as she rushed to my side. Her hand brushed my arm. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“I—”
Tara and the officer stared at me, their eyes wide, waiting for something that made sense.
“There was a—” My voice trailed off. I placed a palm on the stone wall beside me. The rock felt cool and damp.
“Is it okay if I talk to you for a second?” the officer asked.
I was about to say yes, but then Tara gave him a quick nod, already stepping with him a few feet down the hall.
I stayed where I was, my arms crossed loosely, my eyes fixed on their silhouettes as they spoke.
Tara did most of the talking. Her hands moved a little.
The officer nodded. She shook her head. Occasionally, they glanced over at me.
He gave her a look that said I understand, though I wasn’t sure what exactly he thought he understood.
Then they came back.
“Is there anything else you want to show me down here, ma’am?” the officer asked, steady and polite.
I shook my head.
“Let’s go back upstairs,” Tara said softly, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. Her voice was careful, warm.
“Use only every second step,” I murmured as we took the stairs back up.
The stairwell creaked under us. I moved as if I were sleepwalking, my head down, listening to the wood shift beneath our feet.
Back in the kitchen, sunlight spilled in from the large windows. Everything felt too bright. The air smelled like old coffee and lemon cleaning spray.
Hudson came charging in through the back door, holding Rascal’s crate in one hand and his phone in the other. His face had cracked wide open with panic. “Good God!” he said, his breath short. “Is everyone all right? What happened?”
The monster, the woman’s voice echoed in my head.
She’d said it wasn’t Daniel. But what about Hudson?
I scanned him as he stood there holding Rascal’s crate, his cheeks flushed, his hand shaking.
Inside the crate, the little dog lay curled on a blanket, fast asleep.
The man in front of me had just risked his life to save an old dog.
How could he be the monster she’d warned me about?
I sank into one of the kitchen chairs, my arms on the table, my head in both hands. The air buzzed with voices: Tara’s, Hudson’s, the officer’s. All of them were talking about what had happened. Talking about me.
“Ma’am?” the officer asked, his voice cutting through the fog of humiliation and self-doubt.
I looked up, blinking.
“Do you feel safe here?”
I paused, then nodded. “Yes.”
“Is there anybody you can talk to? Like a therapist?” he asked.
I nodded slowly, remembering that my first appointment with the new therapist was actually today.
“You’re not gonna hurt yourself or anybody else?” he asked next.
“No.” The word scraped against the back of my throat.
“Ma’am?”
“No,” I repeated, loud and clear.
“All right,” the officer said after a pause. “You take it easy for a bit, okay? These folks here’ll take good care of you, all right?”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
The officer stepped outside and spoke quietly with Hudson and Tara for a moment longer. Then he left, and Tara and Hudson walked back in.
For a moment, the kitchen felt frozen in time. No one moved. The only sound was the clock on the wall, each tick landing sharp and steady—tick, tock, tick, tock.
“Emily—” Tara started gently.
I stood before she could say more. “I’m a bit tired. I’ll wait for Daniel upstairs.”
“Yes, of course,” Hudson replied quickly.
“I’ll bring up some food and tea,” Tara offered, her voice all warmth.
“I’ll try calling Daniel again,” Hudson added. “He didn’t pick up earlier. The meeting.”
“Yes. Thank you. But can you wait until after his meeting? He doesn’t need to leave early for my drama.”
I’d already stepped into the hallway when I heard Hudson’s voice behind me—low, a little hesitant.
He said the intense summer heat could mess with people.
That he wasn’t feeling quite right today, either.
It was kind, an effort to build something gentler out of what had happened.
Like we were all trying to sand the edges off a sharp, ugly, embarrassing truth.
That I’d finally lost it.
But no matter how much we tried to round it off, facts were facts. The thought of Daniel coming back to find me like this . . . It made my stomach twist. I hated it. Hated myself for it.
I let my body drop onto the soft bed upstairs and stared out the wide window. The sky was a flat sheet of blue, cloudless and bright. Too calm. Too peaceful. It didn’t match anything I felt.
Here I was, the crazy wife.
And yet, every time I saw that woman, it felt so different from my usual flashbacks and nightmares. There was no high-pitched ringing, no screaming. Nothing. She felt like a real person in a real room. And she spoke to me like any other human would.
But what did it matter? She wasn’t real. Maybe it was time I stopped lying to myself about how bad my mental health really was.
I grabbed my MacBook from the nightstand and opened the tele-mental health website I’d signed up for. The landing page was simple. Instant telehealth visits with psychiatrists were available.
Before I could second-guess myself, I clicked on the “TALK TO A PSYCHIATRIST NOW” option. Two hundred bucks. Well, $199.
But what was $199 if it meant I could look Daniel in the eyes tonight, surrounded by all this mess, and tell him I’d already spoken to a psychiatrist?
That I was going to start antipsychotics and just had to pick up the meds tomorrow?
What was $199 if I could sit across from my therapist later today and tell her that I’d already done the thing she was going to recommend anyway?
That I’d taken initiative. That I was trying.
I paid with my credit card, and a video chat window opened. Estimated wait time: 8 minutes.
My gaze drifted back out the window.
Outside, the sky was still cloudless. Light blue and wide.