I hang up.Set the phone on the counter.Stare at it.
Tuesday.Four days from now.A two-hour flight.One meeting.Maybe two if David introduces me to his partners, which he will, because David doesn’t take meetings that aren’t worth multiplying.I could be there and back in thirty-six hours.Forty-eight if things go well.Forty-eight hours away from this house.
Forty-eight hours where Charles is alone.
I can’t leave him alone.That’s not a moral position—it’s a logistical one.Charles without supervision is Charles working the cuffs, Charles banging on the floor, Charles finding a way to make noise that the acres and the soundproofing and the gag can’t contain.Despite his behavior this morning, he’s beenfairlycooperative lately—movie nights, thank yous, the kind smile—but cooperative Charles is still Charles.I give him forty-eight unsupervised hours and he’ll have the bedframe disassembled and a smoke signal going from the roof.
I need someone in this house.
I need someone who already knows what’s upstairs.
I need someone who won’t call the police.
The list is short.The list is one person.
I hear his boots on the floor above me.Luke.Upstairs.Where he shouldn’t be—the railing is outside, Luke, therailing—but I’ll deal with that later because right now my brain is doing what it does best.It’s finding the angle.It’s seeing the play.
If Luke is in this house while I’m gone, Charles isn’t alone.The cover story holds.Mrs.Mather sees a man—a handyman, a family friend, someone helping out while the wife ties up loose ends in the city.It works.It all works.
I just need a reason to ask him.A reason that isn’tplease babysit the man I kidnapped while I fly to New York to resurrect my career.
I hear Luke move from one side of the room to the other.There’s no reason for him to be up there and we both know it.
But that’s not really my concern at the moment.It isn’t Charles.It isn’t the experiment or the relationship or the reset.
It’s Tuesday.
It’swho watches Charles while I’m in New York.
And how I’m going to get Luke to agree.
37
Luke
Ordinarily I’d reserve judgment about a man a woman has strapped to a bed.But men like Charles rarely make it easy to turn the other cheek.
“You seem like a decent guy,” he says.“Handy.Quiet.Probably good with dogs.”He smiles.It’s the smile of a man who’s never been hit in a way that mattered.“But whatever you think is happening here—whatever she’s told you—all lies.She’s performing.That’s what Marin does.She performs.And when the audience stops clapping, she finds a new one.”
I look at him.Strapped to a bed.Bruised.Fed and medicated by the woman he just described as crazy.A woman who carried him out of a trailer with a busted ankle, dragged a mattress up a flight of stairs at two in the morning, built a cover story for an entire town, and calls me about railings that don’t need fixing because she doesn’t know how to ask for help any other way.
And this man—this man who has all of that aimed at him like a spotlight—can’t find a single reason to be grateful.
“That’s one way to put it,” I say.
He stares at me.Confused.“What?”
“From where I’m standing, you’ve got a woman who would burn the world down for you.And all you’ve done with that is tell her she’s not worth marrying.”I lean against the doorframe.“That’s not honesty.That’s waste.”
He opens his mouth.Closes it.
“You don’t know her,” he says, finally.“You don’t know what she’s like.She suffocates.She controls.She doesn’t give you room to breathe, let alone?—”
“I hear you.She made it too easy and you got bored and found someone who made you work for it.That’s not love.That’s just a man who doesn’t know what he has until someone else reaches for it.”
I let that sit.
“But if I were you, I’d be less worried about telling her she’s crazy— and more worried about what happens when she stops trying.”
