“Please stop,” she said.
“You showed me your true colors back in the summer. You’re a liar and a thief.”
“William,” said Sam. Her voice wobbled. She forced herself to speak extra calmly. “All I did was go into your study. It was wrong of me. I violated a boundary and I apologize. But we have to be able to work things through—”
“It’s my fault as much as yours,” William said, as if Sam hadn’t spoken. He removed his glasses, folding the stems and setting them on an ottoman, and pulled his striped blanket to his chin. “Fool me once, etcetera. I knew what you were, but I let you back in. I thought if I proposed I could bell the bitch, that you’d stop this mad campaign. I loved you.Love, Simone,” he said, casting Sam a significant look. “But that’s done. You can’t leave now; you’ll never make it to the interstate alive. But as soon as the storm is over and I’ve cleared the road, you’re gone.”
“William. You can’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“But we’re engaged! You just asked me tomarryyou.”
“Leave the ring on the kitchen counter, next to the fruit bowl,” said William.
“William, comeon—”
“This conversation, like this relationship, is over,” William said, and folded himself into his blanket, turning his back on Sam.
Sam stood looking at him, waiting for him to, if not change his mind and hold his arms out to her, then at least roll back over and say something. He didn’t. She was still incredulous that this was happening, that he’d canceled their engagement, that he’d throw their life away, that he believed the awful things he’d said about her, that things had gone this bad this quickly.
Sam considered climbing onto the couch behind him, lifting hershirt and his, pressing her breasts to his back. Healing them with skin. But she feared what William would do, and she wasn’t even sure what she meant by that, so after a few minutes of watching him pretend to sleep—or actually do it, since he could conk out that fast—and listening to the wind shriek and snow sandblast the glass walls and the fire pop and snap in the grate, she went upstairs alone.
Their bed was cold without William. Sam put on every extra blanket she could find and crawled in wearing all her clothes. She plugged in her phone, and nothing happened. Of course. The power was out. Sam had only 21 percent battery, and she’d need to conserve it for however long this storm lasted. Tomorrow, when it was at least light, she’d charge it in her Jeep. In the meantime, she couldn’t scroll social or use the flashlight to read a book, and she was too cold to go find candles, so she switched on low power mode and set the phone aside, then pulled the blankets over her head and made a little cave in which she huddled, miserable.
How had she gotten to this place? Stuck on an island in rural Maine in the middle of a blizzard, with a man who’d dumped her again, this time breaking an engagement. She couldn’t believe it. She really couldn’t believe this was happening. Why had she gone into the study? What if she’d just left well enough alone? What if Sam hadn’t disrespected William’s one ask, hadn’t snooped in his laptop, hadn’t let Zahra get into her head? What if she’d dismissed as preposterous the very idea that her lover had stolen women’s stories? What if she’d laughed it all off and turned back to her own work? What if, in reverse, became if only. Sam yearned to believe it, that in the morning there’d be some fix, that in the light of day over muffins and coffee there would be something, some magic thing she could say that would make William forgive her and they’d come up to this bedroom and make love and everything would be all right again.
But there was also this: She couldn’t get past the things he’d said.
I know what you were doing. Digging digging digging like a little mongrel bitch.
Trying to discredit me. To bring about my ruination.
The dinghy to my ocean liner. A liar and a thief.
I don’t know if you’re even conscious of your deranging envy.
I thought if I proposed I could bell the bitch.
Sam wished to God he hadn’t said them. She’d tried to ignore, to dismiss his earlier assessments of her character—careless,untrustworthy,thief,vampire—as barbs William just shot off when he was angry. But now she could no longer pretend they didn’t exist.
This conversation, like this relationship, is over.
And what about the other women, the ones he might have stolen stories from? Even if William was fast asleep, if Sam could sneak past him without waking him, if the blizzard covered the sound of her creeping into the study, the laptop was locked. Sam had failed completely. She’d really screwed this up.
“God damn it,” she said. She dashed away tears and sat up, throwing the covers back. She reached for her phone to text Drishti—notLOLbutHey D, coming home for a visit, okay to stay with you and Franz for a minute while I figure some things out?
But as Sam swiped the phone open, its screen lit up with a text from an unknown number. She read it and sucked in a breath.
“Holy fuck,” she said.
The Rabbit
The text I send Sam Vetiver saysHIS LAPTOP IS OPEN. COME DOWN NOW.And I’m hiding behind the water heater to see what she does. If she wakes William up and they hunt for me, I’m toast. If she doesn’t, and she comes downstairs, well. She’ll know what I know, and finally all this can end.
I’ve known for years. I figured it out the day the eighteen-wheeler pulled up to my first bookstore in Portland, Maine, almost three years after I left Harrington. Every month at that time there was one book chosen by the world’s most popular TV talk show host for her book club, and there were so many copies printed, it had to be delivered by truck. We had to clear the whole front table for it, the most valuable one facing the door, and all the end caps and merch shelves. It was a big secret too. We never knew in advance what the book was. It was a great guessing game for most of the staff, but I hated it because I was always afraid the book picked would be William’s. Please, please, I prayed every time the truck pulled up with the talk show host selection. Please don’t let it be him. But that June, I sliced open the top box and there he was, smirking at me from the back of his new hardcover. A little older, he had some smile lines now, but same smarmy motherf*cker.
I didn’t read it, of course. Not right away. Even though everybody raved about it, oh how they loved that f*cking novel. The booksellers clutched it to their chests and said they’d devoured it in one sitting and then turned back to the first page to start over right away, it had kept them up all night, it was the best thing they’d ever read. Bob, the GM of my original store, gottears in his eyes when he talked about it. Customers came in demanding not one or two but five, ten, twenty copies for their families and book clubs. We could not keep it in stock.
