6. Carrie
— ? —
Carrie
Three days.
That’s how long I’ve been at Tom’s cabin.
Three days of pine trees and lake water and silence so complete that I’ve started to hear my own heartbeat.
Three days of sleeping in his bed while he folds himself onto a couch that’s at least six inches too short for his frame.
Three days of watching him cook, badly, and pretend that he doesn’t notice me watching.
The cabin is small. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that opens into a living room dominated by a stone fireplace.
Everything is wood and worn flannel and the smell of coffee that’s been reheated twice.
There’s a workshop out back where Tom builds furniture for a living, and some mornings I wake to the sound of sandpaper on wood, steady and rhythmic as a heartbeat.
He asks nothing.
That’s the thing I can’t wrap my head around.
In six years of marriage, Ulises never stopped asking, for my time, my attention, my compliance, my body, my gratitude.
Every kindness came with a price. Every gift was a debt I owed him later.
But Tom gives me the bed and takes the couch and cooks me breakfast and leaves books on my nightstand and never once says you owe me or when are you going to tell me the truth or what exactly are you running from.
We talk only about the present. The birds outside, he knows all their names and their calls, and he’ll point them out to me on our walks around the lake.
The way the light hits the water in the morning, turning it gold and orange and pink.
His work, he’s making a rocking chair for a client in the city, and he shows me how to tell good wood from bad, how to feel for the grain, how to know when a piece is ready.
We don’t talk about Ulises. We don’t talk about Martha. We don’t talk about the fall, or the hospital, or the fake amnesia that’s starting to feel less a lie than a prayer, please let me forget, please let me be someone who doesn’t have to remember.
On the third morning, I find him in the kitchen, frowning at a pan of scrambled eggs that have gone slightly gray.
“I think I overcooked them again.”
“You definitely overcooked them.”
“In my defense, eggs are a lot harder than they look.” He scrapes the sad remains onto a plate and hands it to me with a sheepish grin. “I promise I’m better at making furniture than food.”
“The bar seems low.”
“Ouch.” But he’s smiling, and warmth uncurls in my chest at the sight of it.
I take a bite of the eggs. They’re rubbery and possibly the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
“Not bad,” I lie.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m an excellent liar.” The words are out before I can stop them, and the smile fades from Tom’s face.
Silence. The kitchen feels smaller suddenly, the space between us tight with a thing I don’t want to name.
“Carrie.”
“I’m sorry.” I set down my fork. “I didn’t mean.”
“Don’t apologize.” He pulls out the chair across from me and sits down, his eyes steady on my face. “You don’t have to keep pretending with me. I already know you’re faking the amnesia.”
“Then why haven’t you said anything?”
“Because it’s not my business.” He shrugs, but there’s nothing casual about the tension in his shoulders. “You’re running from something. You don’t want to talk about it. I figure you’ll tell me when you’re ready. Or you won’t, and that’s fine too.”
“Just like that? No questions?”
“You came to me for help. You didn’t come to me for an interrogation.”
I stare at him. This man who is the opposite of his brother. This man who cooks terrible eggs and builds beautiful furniture and sleeps on a too-small couch so I can have his bed. This man who looks at me and sees a person instead of a possession.
“Why are you doing this?” The question comes out smaller than I want it to.
“Doing what?”
“All of it. The cabin. The space. The patience.” I gesture around the kitchen, at the bad eggs and the coffee pot and the window looking out onto the lake. “You don’t know me. You have no reason to help me. But you’re doing it anyway, and I don’t understand why.”
Tom is quiet for a long moment. He picks up his own fork and pushes the eggs around his plate, not eating, just moving them.
“Three years ago,” he says finally, “there was a family dinner. My grandmother’s birthday. You were there with Ulises.”
I remember that dinner. Vaguely. It was before things got really bad, or before I stopped pretending they weren’t bad.
Ulises had been charming that night, the way he always was in public, and I’d spent most of the evening smiling and nodding and trying not to notice the way he criticized everything I said.
“I remember,” I say slowly. “You and Ulises had a fight about something.”
“About a lot of things. We’ve never gotten along.” Tom sets down his fork. “But that’s not what I remember about that night.”
“What do you remember?”
“You made a joke. Something about the crab cakes looking like they died unhappy.” A small smile tugs at his lips. “I laughed too hard, and for a second, you looked... happy. Really happy. Like you’d forgotten to be careful.”
I don’t remember that. But my chest tightens at the thought of it, at the idea that there was a moment, even a small one, when I let myself be someone other than Ulises’s perfect wife.
“And then Ulises looked at you,” Tom continues, his voice quieter now. “And the happiness just... drained out of your face. Like someone had flipped a switch. You went back to being careful, being polite, being whatever he needed you to be. And I thought.” He stops. Shakes his head.
“What?”
“I thought, she’s trapped. I recognized it because...” He lets out a breath. “Because I spent my whole childhood watching my mother make that same face around my father. And I swore I’d never be the kind of man who made someone feel that way.”
The words land hard. Ulises never talked about their family, not really, just vague references to their father’s “high standards” and their mother’s “difficult temperament.” I never asked for details. I didn’t want to know.
“Tom.”
“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” he says. “You don’t have to tell me anything. But I want you to know that whatever you’re running from, whoever you’re running from, you’re safe here. I won’t let him hurt you.”
I don’t know what to say. The kindness in his voice is so foreign, so unexpected, that I don’t know how to receive it. In six years of marriage, I’ve forgotten what it is to be cared for without conditions. To be helped without being reminded of the cost.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He nods. And then, because he seems to understand that I need the subject changed, he picks up his fork and takes a bite of the terrible eggs.
“So,” he says, chewing thoughtfully. “How bad is it really? Scale of one to ten.”
“Eleven.”
“That’s fair.”
I laugh, actually laugh, the sound surprising me, and Tom grins, and the tension in the room burns off the way mist lifts from the lake at dawn.
***
That night, I can’t sleep.
I lie in Tom’s bed, which smells of him, sawdust and pine and a warmth underneath, and stare at the ceiling. The cabin is quiet. Too quiet. Every creak of the floorboards makes me tense, every rustle of wind through the trees makes me think someone is coming.
No one is coming, I tell myself. Ulises doesn’t know where this cabin is. You’re safe. You’re fine.
But my body doesn’t believe it. My body remembers the feeling of his hands on my wrist, the cold cruelty in his eyes, the way he said you belong to me, a fact and not a threat.
I throw off the covers and pad down the hall to the living room.
Tom is asleep on the couch. His feet hang off the end, at least six inches of ankle and bare foot sticking out into the cold air. His face is slack in sleep, softer than it is when he’s awake, the tension lines smoothed away.
He’s been sleeping this way for three days. Because of you.
Guilt twists in my chest. Or gratitude. Or a complicated tangle of both that I don’t have the energy to pull apart.
“Tom.” I whisper it before I can talk myself out of it.
He wakes instantly. “Carrie?” He’s sitting up in half a second, alert and worried. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”
“No, I just.” I feel stupid suddenly. A grown woman standing in the dark, too scared to sleep alone. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Nightmares?”
“Something like that.”
He studies me for a moment, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. I can’t read his expression, but there’s nothing threatening in it. Nothing that makes me want to step back.
“The bed is big,” I hear myself say. “We could... share. If you want.”
The words sit there between us. I don’t know why I said them. I don’t know what I’m offering, comfort, closeness, more than that? All I know is that I’m tired of being alone with my fear.
“You sure?” His voice is careful. Gentle.
No.
“Yes.”
He stands, gathering the blanket from the couch, and follows me back to the bedroom. We climb into bed on opposite sides, three feet of mattress between us, the covers pulled up to our chins the way children hide from monsters.
The silence stretches. The moon shines through the window, throwing bars of shadow across the walls.
“Tom?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know who I am anymore.” The confession slips out before I can stop it. “I spent so many years being Ulises’s wife, doing what he wanted, saying what he wanted, being who he wanted me to be, that I don’t know who I am without him. And that terrifies me more than anything.”
He doesn’t respond right away. I think maybe he’s fallen asleep, or maybe he doesn’t know what to say.
Then his hand finds mine under the blanket.
He doesn’t squeeze. Doesn’t move. Just holds.
And my heart, against every instinct, against every wall I’ve built, against everything I’ve learned about trusting men who seem kind, does the one thing it hasn’t done in years.
It hopes.