“Of course, this is rudimentary. I expect you to make it your own. We’ll go to Augusta later this week, and you can pick out whatever your creative heart desires.”
“That would be lovely,” Sam said. She would wait to tell him this wouldn’t work for her, that she’d rather write in a guest bedroom upstairs or even a big walk-in closet. She’d just gotten here an hour ago. It was a little early to be lodging complaints. In a few weeks, if all went well, please God, and they were more established, she’d suggest it.
“Would you like the rest of the tour now? Or shall we...” William slid his hands over Sam’s breasts beneath his shirt. “I don’t think this room has ever been properly christened.”
“Maybe tour first?” Sam asked. “I want to see whereyouwrite.”
“Ah. Milady wants to see the dungeon. As you wish.”
William pulled away from Sam to look down at her. “There’s just one house rule, Simone. I want you to feel this is your home, too, all right? But you are not to go into my study. Ever. Under any circumstances. Do we have an understanding, Simone? I will not have my sanctuary invaded. Any violation, and you’ll be on the road.”
Okay, Bluebeard, thought Sam. William was taking his new facial hair a little too seriously. She nodded. “I hear you.”
“Do you?”
“William, come on. If anyone gets the need for creative privacy, it’s another writer.”
“Your track record has proven otherwise, Simone.”
Sam sighed. “That was different. It was anidea. And I’m not working on that book anymore.”
“Swear it.”
Sam drew her finger over her breastbone. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
William smiled. “I doubt it’ll come to that. Deal. And I’ll consider this space inviolate as well. I’ll never come in without permission. Although I can’t promise I won’t stand outside and press this up against the window,” and he placed Sam’s hand on his erection.
“That’s so nice,” she said. “Not at all distracting.”
“Lead on, Macduff,” William said, shuffling forward with Sam still clutching him. She laughed and led him from her new writing room, but as they walked past the floor-to-ceiling windows in the den, the hallway, the great room, her flesh crawled. She could not get over the feeling she was being watched.
The Rabbit
It’s 3:00 a.m. and I’m creeping up the causeway, trying to make no sound in my secondhand snowshoes and carrying the final supplies on my back. I’ve humped a lot of equipment to this place over the years, preparing for just this scenario. It occurred to me one afternoon at my bookstore how I could do this when I had to, if William ever hooked up with a really persistent woman. I was working the register and chewing it over when a customer brought me the memoir everyone was reading that year, the one with a boot on the cover, about how a writer I loved had hiked the whole Pacific Crest Trail even though she was basically an imbecile about wilderness survival, and I thought: Aha.
After that I started doing my research and buying things in cash from the Camping section on Craigslist, bringing them here one at a time. Freeze-dried food rations. Mattress pad and insulated sleeping bag. My Luggable Loo, a 3.5-pound portable toilet that is the only item I did not buy used. Solar chargers for my phone, headlamp, and, most importantly, space heater. It’s really amazing how ingenious and eco-friendly camping can be.
Tonight my backpack contains duct tape. A balaclava. Gloves. My trusty box cutter, which I got at my first bookstore and am never ever without.
I’ve made it around the gates and onto the island, fitting my feet into William and Sam Vetiver’s snowshoe prints. There’s no moon—I checked theFarmer’s Almanacto make sure—and I don’t dare risk my headlamp, so I’m sort of feeling my way along. It’s so cold the snow is noisy underfoot,creak creak creak, and I hope if William and Sam Vetiver wake they’ll think I’mone of the critters who lives here, the coyotes I hear howling and cracking branches, or maybe it’s wolves.
I cross the yard to the front door, noting that Sam Vetiver’s Jeep is still in the driveway. It looks like a dead mastodon, buried under snow. Yup, that b*tch is here for the duration. My mission is necessary and well-timed. I jump into the bushes from the doormat so I won’t leave tracks and crawl through them to my basement window. I’ve oiled it every few weeks with WD-40, so it makes no noise as I ease it open. I take off my backpack and drop it inside, then hold my breath. This is always the tricky part, when I fear I’ll get stuck half in and half out of the window like Pooh Bear. But somehow I don’t. I push myself through with only a little rip in the butt of my snowpants, and land on the dirt floor.
I get up, brush myself off, switch on my headlamp, and look around. My new home is a stone-walled root cellar off the storage room across from William’s study, its tiny door hidden behind a bookshelf like something in a fairy tale. I bet he’s forgotten this room is here, if he ever even knew. This, the Rabbit Hole, is about eight feet by ten feet, so I can extend my arms, and the ceiling is high enough I can almost stand to my full height, which is five foot five. This isn’t so bad. It’s much bigger than the closet under the stairs my mother used to lock me in when she went out, sometimes forgetting that I was there.
I’ll be cozy enough here. The only sad thing is that I had to take a leave of absence from my job.We’ll miss you, Sparky, Tim said, when I told him my mom was terminally ill. I wish. Who knows what the woman is actually up to. She’s too mean to die, and she drinks so much her insides are probably preserved like snakes in formaldehyde.I’m coming back, I said.As soon as... as soon as it’s over.Tim arranged his big blunt features into an appropriately sad expression.Please do, he said.You’ll always have a place here.
I pray to Whoever’s listening that he wasn’t lying. I love my job. I love my store. I’d hate to lose either of them. Maybe this will be quick. Maybe I’ll be able to drive Sam Vetiver out in a week. Maybe I won’t have to resort to stronger measures, the ones I used on the other women. I don’t know, because I’ve never done it this way before. I’ve never lived in William’s housewith him and one of his b*tches. Because none of them has ever stayed here. It’s totally unprecedented.
And it’s so much more dangerous. Living so close to them, it’ll be so much easier for them to catch me.
But it must be done. Finishing the job here will rely on luck and timing. For now, I’ve done as much planning as I can. I stand on tiptoes to fasten the basement window, taking a last look at the moonless night, and say “Goodbye, outside world.” Then I shut myself into the Rabbit Hole.
Chapter 30
Valentines
It was Valentine’s Day, just before midnight, and Sam was happier than she’d ever been. She normally loathed this holiday—so many people did, grumbling about consumerism when really it was the way the date pressed the bruise of already almost untenable loneliness. Last year on February 14, Sam had watchedThe Shining. The year before that, she’d also been alone because Hank was in rehab. Prior Valentines he’d been on the psych ward, on a bender, or incarcerated. This year, Sam and William had rung it in as God intended: doggie-style, a candle throwing puppet-show shadows on the walls and the only sounds their animal noises and the movement of creatures outside.Who cooks for you, a barred owl called to its mate. “Good night, Valentine,” said William when they were done, and he clamped his heavy legs and arms around Sam and went instantly to sleep.
