Chapter 17
Seventeen
Paisley
The next morning, I open the old laptop of Chase's that he gave me. It's been teasing me from where it's been sitting in the corner of the living room. Every time I go over to work on the puzzle, it taunts me. The one thing I've ever wanted to do for most of my life, is write.
Never a romance, because after what happened with Stanley, I didn't really believe in it.
I've had thoughts of writing a psychological thriller, like the ones I've seen before. Scream and Fear, those have always kept my attention more than love stories. So when I pull the laptop toward me, that's what I'm thinking about.
My fingers hover over the keyboard, and my heart pounds. It's just words, I tell myself. Just putting one word after another. Like putting one foot in front of the other. But it feels bigger than that. It feels like I'm standing on the edge of what could change everything.
Chase is out in the barn taking care of Blackjack, giving me space and time to figure this out. He left an hour ago with a kiss on my forehead and a whispered, "You've got this."
I hope he's right.
I open a blank document and stare at the white screen. The cursor blinks at me, like it's impatient. Waiting for me to give it a story.
But what story do I want to tell?
The answer comes to me almost immediately, rising up from the same dark place that had driven me to that field. A woman who thinks she's going crazy. A husband who's gaslighting her. A truth that's worse than she could have imagined.
My fingers start moving before I can second-guess myself.
The first time I found the photograph, I thought I was losing my mind.
The words pour out of me. One sentence becomes a paragraph, which turns into a page. Before I know it, I'm lost in the story.
It's playing out in my head like a movie.
Emma is married to a man named David who seems perfect on the surface but is slowly, methodically destroying her sanity.
Little things at first like moving her keys, denying conversations they had, telling her she's remembering wrong.
Then bigger things. More dangerous things.
Much like the way Stanley made me feel like I had everything wrong, when I really had it all right.
I shouldn't have trusted him after we filed for divorce.
I write about a photograph she finds hidden in their attic.
A photograph of a woman who looks exactly like her, but it was taken twenty years before Emma was born.
I throw myself into paragraphs about her questions, his dismissals, the way she starts to doubt everything she knows.
Even when she knows she's right, he insists she's wrong.
I'm writing notes, ahead about when I think she discovers the truth. That David has done this before. With other women who look like Emma. Women who are all gone.
I'm so absorbed in finishing the outline that I don't hear Chase come back in. Don't realize he's there until he speaks.
"Hey."
I jump, my hand flying to my chest. "Jesus, you scared me."
"Sorry." He grins, snow dusting his shoulders and his cheeks red from the cold. He shakes his clothes out and puts everything in its proper place. "You were really focused, I had to speak a few times before you acknowledged me. What are you working on?"
I glance back at the screen, where I'm outlining that Emma is going to discover a box of IDs in David's study, each with a different name but what appears to be the same face. "I'm, um. I'm writing."
His whole face lights up. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." I feel shy, and exposed, but I want to be honest with him. "You said I should try, so. I'm trying."
He crosses the room, and I instinctively angle the screen away. I'm not ready for him to read it yet. Maybe I'll never be ready. But he doesn't ask to see it. Instead, he leans down and kisses the top of my head.
"I'm proud of you."
And the way he says it with the pride in his voice makes my chest warm. "It might be terrible."
"It won't be."
"You haven't read it," I argue, trying to temper expectations.
"Don't need to. I told you," he leans down again, putting his forehead on my shoulder. "I know you."
I reach up and run my fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp affectionately. "Thank you. For pushing me to do this."
"You don't have to thank me. This is all you." He straightens up. "How much have you written?"
I check the word count at the bottom of the screen. "About fifteen hundred words. A couple pages, so I'm going to have to be writing a lot to get a full book. I don't even know how long regular books are, I'll have to do some research."
"That's amazing. For your first day?" He reaches forward, grabbing my chin, and pulling it back so that we can look at each other. His dark eyes shine brightly. "That's really amazing."
"I don't know if it's any good," I shrug, trying to play down the accomplishment.
"Doesn't matter right now. Right now, you're just getting it out.
You can worry about good later. Don't authors have editors and stuff?
I'm sure there's a whole process, and you'll figure it out.
" He pauses. "Listen, I was thinking. When you're done writing for the day, we could decorate for Christmas.
If you want to. I've got a tree we could cut down, and there are decorations in the crawl space in my ceiling. "
Christmas. I haven't celebrated Christmas in years, not really.
Stanley always said it was a waste of money, a commercial holiday designed to make people spend beyond their means.
We had a tree and exchanged gifts exactly twice in our marriage.
I stopped thinking of it as anything but another day a long time ago.
I'd had plans on spending it with our baby this year, but it wasn't meant to be.
But the idea of it now, here, with Chase? I want this more than I thought I would.
"I'd like that," I tell him.
"Yeah?" He raises his eyebrows, a small smile playing against his lips.
"Yeah. Give me another hour or two? I want to hit three thousand words before I stop."
"Take your time. I'll get everything ready." He heads toward the hallway, then pauses and looks back. "Paisley?"
"Hmm?"
"I really am proud of you. Just wanted to make sure you knew that."
Before I can respond, he's gone, leaving me alone with my laptop and the ideas pouring out of me.
I dive back in, my fingers flying across the keys.
My outline continues. Emma will discover that David has been drugging her, making her forget things, making her doubt her own memories.
She will find the other women's journals, hidden in the crawl space beneath their bedroom.
She will read about their slow descents into madness, their desperate attempts to escape, their final entries that all end the same way.
A line comes to my mind, and I have to write it down. It's going to be further in the story, toward the end but I don't want to forget it.
I'm leaving tonight. He doesn't know I know. If you're reading this, I didn't make it.
My heart races as I type it out. It's almost as if I'm living in this story right now, that I'm Emma. I haven't felt this alive in years, not even when Chase is making me fly as he fucks me. This is the excitement I've needed.
The words come faster now, my fingers struggling to keep up with the thoughts in my head. This is what I've been missing. This rush, this feeling of being creative, of bringing something to life that didn't exist before. The way I was going to bring a baby into this world.
I write until my wrists ache and my eyes blur. I write until I hit three thousand words, and then I write a little more, unable to stop at such a crucial moment. She's starting to feel slightly off-kilter and she's confronting David.
I'm telling you, Emma, don't ask questions about things you don't want answers to. You'll regret it in the end.
Finally, at thirty-two hundred words, I force myself to pause. To save the document. To close the laptop and step away. I don't want to burn myself out, don't want to tap into the energy, and then lose it for a couple of days.
My whole body is thrumming with adrenaline.I stand up and stretch, my back cracking, and that's when I notice what Chase has been doing while I was lost in this world I was creating.
I can't believe that I didn't even hear it.
This must be what people talk about when they say they've hit a flow state.
The living room is full of stuff now. A massive evergreen tree stands in the corner by the window, its branches full and green and smelling like the forest outside. Boxes of ornaments sit on the floor beside it, and a pile of garland waiting to be draped.
"Chase?" I yell.
He comes out of the kitchen, carrying two mugs of hot chocolate. "Done writing?"
"How did you," I gesture at the tree, at the decorations. "When did you do all this?"
"While you were sitting there writing. I didn't want to disturb you." He hands me one of the mugs. "You looked pretty intense over there."
"I was." I take a sip of the chocolate, loving the warmth that coats my throat and chest as the liquid moves down my body. "I can't believe you did all this."
"Haven't decorated anything yet, just got it all in one spot. Thought we could do that together."
I look at the tree, at the boxes of ornaments, at Chase standing there with hair wet from the snow outside. He's got a smile on his face and something like hope cracks open in my chest.
"I haven't decorated a Christmas tree in a few years," I admit.
"Then we're even. I haven't decorated one since my wife died."
We stand there for a moment, two broken people who are maybe starting to heal, and then I set down my mug and move toward the boxes. We can either make it awkward or we can begin to move on. "So how do we do this?"
"Lights first." Chase is already pulling a strand from one of the boxes. "Always lights first, then ornaments."