The Sunday Wife: A Lockdown Thriller Page 7

Dried jerkies and cured cheeses and even cans of nuts and dried fruit were buried in the bottom reaches of the box. By the time I’d emptied it, I calculated that I had enough to get me a few more weeks at least. If I rationed everything daily. My mouth began to salivate as I wondered what kind of delicacy I could indulge in for dinner that night. Maybe lentil soup or smoked salmon. I rarely thought about making dinner at home, but given no other option, my mind cycled on the nutrient content or every morsel that passed my lips.

  I emptied the box, closing the flaps and for the first time noticing who the package was addressed to: The Sunday Wife.

  What did that mean? Had there been a wife before me? Was there a Monday and a Tuesday Wife too?

  I’ll be watching.

  Don’t disappoint me.

  The note felt more ominous on the second reading.

  I had to know who was watching and from where. Was it the man that had delivered the box? Was he my neighbor in the valley with the puff of chimney smoke that was always watching?

  I ran for the binoculars again, holding them to my eyes as I searched the landscape through the wintery window. The idea of trekking out into the snow for answers felt like a poor waste of energy resources, but the idea of sitting and waiting at the top of this mountain while someone else was watching felt even more horrifying.

  I gulped down my fear, anxious for the sun to fully rise and light the landscape, maybe then I could investigate the footprints and make out which direction they’d come from. I tapped the smart house screen, ensuring the doors were both physically locked and the alarm system was still intact. While it brought a sense of safety upon our arrival at the chalet, now it felt more like a prison security system meant to keep me locked in.

  When the sun fully crested the mountain peaks to the east, I shoved a pair of sneakers on my feet and then headed for the basement, determined to find the rifle that I'd found a few days earlier.

  For protection, I told myself.

  Or maybe curiosity.

  Was the gun one of the surprises?

  With only a few bare bulbs lighting my way, I dug through the closet where I’d first found the rifle and the ice melt. The ice melt was in the spot I’d left it, but after twenty minutes of searching the dark corners, there was no gun. I slumped against the door jamb, mind running wild with me as I wondered where it’d gone.

  Had Tav taken it with him for protection? I hadn’t seen it on him when he’d left early that morning, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t found a way to dismantle it and stow the pieces in his rucksack. Terror looped through my bloodstream as I considered for the first time that maybe I’d been sleeping right here with the enemy all along. Maybe Tav wasn’t who I’d thought, but how could that be? We had two years of history together, never had he indicated any sort of psychotic split from reality.

  Or had I been too busy looking the other way?

  I became obsessed then, determined to find the weapon. Determined to prove the innocence of my future husband. The man I loved. The man that’d swept me away to a winter paradise.

  I stumbled away from the closet and into the main basement, darkness shrouding the corners just like it had when Tav had hurt his ankle down here. I felt along the walls in the darkness, fearful of what I might find and just as fearful about what I might not. My fingers landed on a switch then, and I flipped all of the knobs in an effort to find another light. They were all burned out, or attached to other electrical items in the house that I couldn’t see. The electrical guts of the smart house were familiar, but the actions conveyed consequences I wasn’t yet sure of. Everything about this place left me off kilter, the sense of reality and the outside world dampening as I grew accustomed to my own shallow breaths.

  I reached another dark corner, prepared to give up and search instead for a flashlight or candle to light my way, when my fingers wrapped around the trim of a door jamb. I found the door knob, twisting it easily. The door swung open, the smell of old dust and dirt invading my nostrils in a plume.

  I searched along the wall for a light switch, thankful when I landed on something hard and plastic. I flipped the switch, relieved when a dim yellow light lit the old room.

  And then I nearly stumbled.

  I was looking back at myself.

  Wall-to-wall.

  Everywhere.

  Eighteen

  A picture of me around three-years-old in matching braids and a yellow dress stared back at me. The polaroid had long been sepia-toned, but my smile was bright and cheery. Another of my mother as she pushed me on a swing at the park. A school photo from third grade, another from sixth. Someone had categorized my entire life into snapshots. Each one hung on the wall haphazardly with thumbtacks, and many looked like they’d been there for years. In fact, this room looked barely used judging by the layer of dust on every surface.

  But why was I here?

  Was this the room Tav had been searching when he twisted his ankle? I immediately dropped to the floor and looked under an old wooden desk for any sign of the rifle. If someone really was watching and using the smart house system to do it, they would know I’d found this room.

  Or was that one of the surprises?

  “I have to get out of here,” I said to myself as I flung a small closet door open. More boxes were stacked to my waist, no indication that any had been moved recently.

  “What is going on at this chalet?”

  “Dialing emergency services.” The voice of the house echoed through the surround speakers and down into this basement cave.

  “What? No, wait—what emergency services?” I tore the nearest polaroid off of the wall, a copy similar to the one I’d found in Tav’s wallet upstairs, but this one from a different angle.

  I slipped it in my back pocket and cut the lights in the event one of the security cameras was watching me.

  I didn’t bother with the other lights, only ran up the stairs, determined to get to the bottom of the emergency services the house apparently had access to. By the time I reached the front door smart screen, the border of the normally black screen was blinking red, the word emergency lit along the top.

  I punched the screen a few times, but it was unresponsive to my touch.

  “What emergency services? A snow plow? A helicopter? I need a helicopter to get off of this stupid rock.”

  “Emergency averted.”

  The screen stopped blinking and faded to its usual black.

  “Wait, no! Help me! I need a helicopter.”

  The screen remained black.

  “Emergency! Call emergency services!” I spoke clearly, and then resorted to yelling.

  “Emergency averted. Emergency averted.”

  I tapped the screen again, wondering if the wiring was going haywire or if one of the switches downstairs had triggered this.

  “Emergency not averted. Come back,” I begged.

  “Emergency system deactivated.”

  Two deafening beeps sounded through the house and then the screen turned off completely. No more blinking red dots, no more tiny recorder symbols in the corner.

  “Hello?”

  The house was silent.

  “Hey! Draw me a bath!”

  My voice echoing off of the rafters was my only reply.

  “Why do I feel more alone than ever all of a sudden?” The sense that I was no longer protected by modern civilization was deafening. A chill bubbled through me as I realized I was my only hope. I was my own last resort. I couldn’t wait for Tav or a helicopter or another mountain man to deliver rations, if I wanted to make it off this mountain, I’d have to conquer it myself.

  Even if it killed me.

  Nineteen

  Sweat pricked and beaded at my skin.

  I blinked into the darkness, delirious from exhaustion and poor nutrition and the uneven balance of chemicals in my brain. I blinked again, hands clutching at the leather couch cushions as I realized where I was. Asleep on the couch, stacks of my childhood photos piled on my chest and the cof
fee table at my side.

  The chalet. The room. Hell.

  I pressed a hand to my head, realizing the full moon had pulled me from my sleep with its kaleidoscope of light patterning my eyelids.

  I sighed, wiping the beads of dampness from my forehead and then crammed my eyes closed and wished for a time before the chalet. Before Tav.

  Bradley’s warm eyes caught mine across the dance floor. His familiar arms circling my waist as we swayed, our bodies pressed in a sea of hundreds of others as old nineties music charged through the sound system. Steph was supposed to meet us at the bar, but she’d never shown up, Bradley and I alone and somehow it felt so right.

  I wasn’t sure why that memory had entered my mind at that time, but I missed Bradley and Steph too. They’d both been such a mainstay in my life for so long, when Bradley had left for his tour of duty his absence left me feeling like a ship without a port on rough seas, riding the waves of strangers as I silently sank inside of myself. Bradley was the only one that’d known how to draw me out through all of high school, his teasing charm and ability to read me left me weak in the knees. His dark eyes, my only soft place to fall.

  Bradley had been on my mind more than ever these last months because he’d only shown up again in the few months before mom passed. Just as I’d found an old friend, I’d lost something else. Being with Bradley felt as natural as breathing air, but had the reality been anything but? Was Bradley’s return to my life orchestrated more concisely than he’d let on? My favorite distraction was sent just when life was about to pull me under its waves like we were fated.

  My chest ached as I thought of Bradley now, he must be worried sick...or was he? I hated that I couldn’t trust anyone or anything. The fact remained that someone was watching, I had the note to prove it. But who? And how would I ever find out without leaving?

  I imagined a scenario where I at least had access to the internet, surely I could then deduce who was holding me captive here by process of elimination. I chuckled to myself, imaging the kind of message I would send to Bradley if I could:

  Help: I’m trapped! Send the police!

  Bradley’s wide, friendly grin beamed out from one of the polaroids taken at church one Sunday when I was a kid. He stood at the pond behind the church skipping stones, and I sat on a rock watching, both of our laughs visible even through the grainy image.

  Bradley was the sibling I’d never had but always craved. He’d tried to kiss me twice back then, once after school when I was thirteen for a dare, and the last time on the night of my eighteenth birthday when he told me he was joining the military. I cried as he kissed my lips and told me he’d stay if I promised to marry him.

  I wouldn’t say it.

  Not because I didn’t want to, but because it scared me so much at the thought of his leaving, that I’d shut down.

  Just like I always did.

  I couldn’t see the forest for the trees when it came to life decisions. Mom had been there for that, and then Tav. And now all I had was me.

  Should I stay or should I go?

  I’d taken to moving around the house quietly and keeping my thoughts to myself just in case the house was listening.

  Correction: it was listening, I just didn’t know who was behind it.

  I fingered the polaroid of Bradley and I, wondering what it meant that this house contained so much of my childhood.

  Some of the photos were some I’d never seen before.

  I wondered how long this house had been here, and if its solitary presence meant to do just that: stoke the fear that went so well with isolation.

  I’d never felt so connected and so disconnected at the same time.

  Like a split from reality, only I was the portion cleaved off and discarded.

  There were no others.

  I was alone up here.

  I pushed myself off of the couch then, letting the photos fall in a spray at my feet.

  More memories of the last time I’d seen Bradley charged through me. His bare shoulders glistened in the sunshine as he worked at the clay with a shovel in my back garden. His lips whispering thank you at my neck as I delivered ice tea and he swayed us back and forth in the backyard, begging me to go out to dinner with him. He wasn’t Tav, but how could he feel so right? I remembered thinking.

  I refused to answer Tav’s phone call that night.

  I felt like a teenager again, the hit of the drug Bradley was offering was too irresistible to pass up, but visions of Tav had lingered in my mind.

  I loved him. Tav and I would be married someday.

  But then why was I dancing with Bradley under the sunshine in the backyard?

  Because we’re friends, I’d told myself.

  Tav had questioned Bradley’s return to my life from the beginning. Steph had said a high school fling was just what I needed.

  I’d laughed her off because Bradley and I had never been a fling. Friends, best friends, for a long time, but nothing more.

  Until that night on the dance floor when she failed to show up and his lips had grazed mine, his fingertips sending a rush of adrenaline through me.

  I wanted him that night, but I wanted Tav forever.

  Even when Tav and I were under the same roof, he was often a million miles away in his own digital universe.

  I still remembered the unfamiliar weight of Bradley’s palm resting at my back. Always the gentleman, even now it struck me.

  When a slow song from our teenage years started, Bradley had guided me tenderly to a quieter corner of the bar. His hips vibrated against mine, our breaths mingling as he ran his lips along my jawline. “I never could get over you.”

  Before I could answer Bradley, a dark shadow caught my eye in the corner.

  Tousled blond hair, cheekbones carved in granite. A rogue grin and just the right breadth in the stretch of the shoulders.

  Tav?

  I blinked at the visions, even as I sat at the chalet and thought back on that night before the baby, before losing mom, before the pain. I wondered if it was real.

  If it was Tav who’d been watching me as I danced with Bradley on the dance floor.

  Tav was supposed to be in Charleston that night. Meetings with a naval contractor, he’d said over the phone.

  But had he really been in Lancaster? Following me?

  Before I could decide whether to cross the dance floor and confirm his identity or cower in Bradley’s shadow and assume that my eyes were playing tricks, Bradley had snagged my hand and guided me off the dance floor and to the front doors. He’d bundled me in his car and driven me home, chatting the entire way about a new job his landscaping firm had landed that would double his yearly income. And with this new job, he would be never more than five minutes away from me all day long.

  He’d meant it as a reassurance of his steadfast presence, but did it mean more now?

  I twisted my fingers together, eyes tracking the full moon over the chalet as it fell across the night sky. Fragments of mist and milky way swirled at the edges, much like my memories of that night. Had Tav been real, or just another mirage conjured by my imagination? Had he come to me that night, or were my thoughts merely just tiny fragmented bits of memory bouncing around my mind, neither fiction nor reality?

  Tav’s late night declaration rang in my mind again.

  I know the baby isn’t mine.

  Was he right?

  For the life of me, I couldn’t remember.

  Twenty

  She rarely moved.

  I’d watched her all damn day. It was as if she was hobbled by her mere survival.

  I wasn’t really sure how much she knew about his side of things, but I could only hope she was innocent. So far, she seemed totally in the dark.

  I wondered if he had any inkling that the house of cards he’d created was about to be unveiled? Handcuffs or body bag, the outcome was a pendulum in motion at this stage. I asked no questions, only took orders.

  The intel I’d managed to dig up on him equaled mor
e than a mountain’s worth of paperwork. The stacks of files, the photos, a petty criminal record expunged by the judge at one point. His secrets weren’t buried as deep as he’d hoped.

  I watched her toss and turn in bed before I turned away. I could only imagine him in his own haze of guilt as she fought sleep, none the wiser. I wished not for the first time that she’d never met him, no doubt in my mind that she wouldn’t have found herself in my sights otherwise.

  Poor Freya, so vulnerable to the darkest sides of herself.

  I hoped when his head hit the pillow each night, he thought of the pain he would soon be putting her through.

  And I hoped it wouldn’t break her when she found out the truth.

  “Welcome to my shit list, motherfucker.”

  I’d watched her searching for the clues frantically, trying to piece together the facts in her own fogged mind. She was smart, but she only had half of the facts, just one side of the story.

  I had the other piece of vital information that connected the entire intricate web. It’d been hard to find, taken me days of digging, but then one irrefutable piece of evidence had shown itself. One whisper thin piece of paper that had been buried for decades and brought the entire game into focus. I just wasn’t sure what would destroy her more, him or the secret.

  Twenty-One

  Whoever had lured me to the chalet did so with a purpose.

  I was meant to find the photos. By the next morning, I’d become convinced of that much. As the moonlight shifted to the dull misty gray of morning, I hunted through the house like my life depended on it.

  I covered the rooms and closets upstairs. I pulled the fuses on every electrical box I found as a means of privacy—I hoped the house was no longer watching, but I still couldn't be sure. Had someone from a remote location triggered the alarm yesterday as I drew nearer to finding something I wasn’t meant to? Or had it been a random glitch? I had the sense nothing was random anymore, despite my desperation to wish it so.

  I huffed, realizing why they called this area Deception Gorge. The extreme elevation and isolation surrounded by jagged cliffs and embankments played tricks of the mind and shifted my perception.