What I hate is how well it works. This is one of the reasons I rarely speak to him on the phone. He’s the only one who can coax my secrets out of me.
“Why did you hire Waylen? All those years ago?” I ask him, attempting to deflect. “I know you wanted a small-time criminal, but there were dozens to choose from. What was it about him?”
He plays along, knowing it’s the only way to get me to talk. I was never good at getting right to the point. “I liked that he was cool as a cucumber. I always thought that he could survive a proper CIA interrogation. He never betrayed anything he was thinking. Normally that’s a good thing in our line of work. But a bad thing when we’re talking about the person who marries my sister.”
“But you thought he was honest, right?” I say. “I mean, there was something you could trust.”
“I don’t trust anyone, Margaux. You know that. Neither do you.”
“But we’re broken,” I say. “That’s why we can’t trust.”That’s why I’m suspecting my own husband of something he could never do.
“Everyone is broken.” He’s losing patience, or maybe he’s just afraid he’s running out of time. “Tell me what this is about.”
“It’s—” I pause. Upstairs, I hear Waylen’s footsteps moving through the kitchen. I hear the beeps as he pushes the buttons on the oven timer. I move farther from the bottom of the staircase, lowering my voice to be sure he won’t hear me. I’d told him that I was going to take a nap, so he thinks I’m in the bedroom. “You don’t think that he would hurt anyone, do you?”
“Tell me what happened.” My brother’s voice is deathly serious. “Did he do something to you? Are you hurt?”
I say the words quickly, because I want to be rid of them. I say them like I’m throwing a hated object down a dark, endless well where I’ll never see them again. I recount the strange events surrounding Bertram, and how many of them line up with times that I can’t confirm Waylen’s whereabouts. I tell him that Waylen was tracking me with an AirTag—which could have been a misguided attempt at him trying to save our ailing marriage, or a hint at something insidious. I confide that I don’t know if I can trust him, and that I don’t trust my own instincts. That things since meeting Bertram Casimir have not added up.
“Margaux, listen to me,” he says. “I want you to take Collette and get out of that house. I’ve got your location on your phone, so keep it with you. I’ll get to you as soon as I can.”
“You’re in the hospital and you’re staying there,” I insist. “I don’t want to overreact. He’s never done anything to make me doubt him before. Maybe it is me—”
“Get out of that house,” he insists, and his tone makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “I have ways of finding out where he’s been and whether it checks out. I’ll contact you when I know. Until then, take Collette to my house. He’ll never find you there. Don’t take your purse or anything he could have placed a tracker in. Just your ID, a credit card, and your phone, do you understand me? I’ll make sure he can’t trace your location.”
“I—”
“Do you understand?” he repeats.
I stare at a spiderweb in the concrete corner, lit up by a scrap of sunlight coming in through the small window. A fly is trapped there, struggling fruitlessly. I feel similarly trapped.
A shrill alarm pierces the silence. One long, loud whining that breaks out into a vibrato.
I know that sound too well. The fire alarm in the kitchen. The memories come back to me immediately, too visceral for me to stave off. I’m only vaguely aware of Mr. X’s voice on the phone, still asking me to confirm that I’ve heard him, that I’ll do as he asks. I don’t remember hanging up, but I must have, because in the next moment my phone is in my pocket, and I’m sprinting up the stairs.
The house is burning down. Everything is turning to ashes.
The smell is so thick that I’m already choking on it. I expect the doorknob to be hot as a coal when I touch it, but it’s still cool against my palm.
I see flames, thick gray smoke, and the charred skeletal beams of the house for a moment, before my eyes register what’s actually in front of me.
It’s golden sunlight—not smoke—that fills the kitchen, the first sunny day we’ve had after weeks of gloomy autumn skies. Things are tidy, the way I left them. Waylen is standing by the stove, waving an oven mitt in front of the smoke detector. “Sorry,” he says, when he hears me walking up behind him. “I left the water boiling too long and scorched the pan.”
Whatever else he was going to say dissolves when he turns and sees the expression on my face. He must see that I’m not the woman he knows, but a scared little girl, screaming for my family as the flames come up around me.
I try to put on the mask I’ve been wearing since I was twelve, but for the first time, it won’t go up. My emotion is laid bare on my face, and I’m exposed.
“Margaux?” Waylen approaches me like I’m a frightened animal in headlights. “Sweetheart, what is it?”
I shake my head, take a step away before he can touch me.It’s nothing. Tell him it’s nothing.But the words won’t come out.
He takes my shoulders. My back is pinned to the wall. “You’re shaking,” he tells me.
“I—I thought the house was on fire,” I manage to croak out. “That’s all. I guess I haven’t been getting enough sleep.”
He wraps an arm around my shoulders, and just like with Bertram, I feel completely thrown off my game. My instincts are firing in a hundred different directions. Is Bertram a master liar? My mind tells me he’s not. But then again, I’m not even sure if I can trust the man I married.
He guides me gently into the living room, sits me on the couch, and places himself before me on the edge of the coffee table. His eyes are big and soft, so much like Collette’s in this moment.
