The Night Mark(60)

The urge to run was powerful, but in the dream Faye walked, counting her steps along with her breaths. Seven to the door. Seven to freedom.

One. Two. Three. Halfway there.

Every step hurt because her body was injured, outside and in. In her head echoed the furious voice of a furious man.

Did you honestly think I married you for love? Did you honestly think I would have married a stupid little girl like you for anything other than this? You have one purpose in this marriage, and it isn’t spending my money.

And Faye felt hands on her thighs, wrenching them apart, and a mouth on her neck, and then pain cutting her up the middle like the blade of a burning knife.

Four. Five. Six.

Seven. She’d made it. She opened the door slowly, cracking it and then opening it wide enough to slip out the servants’ entrance. Behind a stone bench, she picked up a faded carpetbag one of the maids had left behind when she’d gotten married. In it were old clothes she’d pretended to donate to the Lady’s Aid Society months ago. Even the widow’s weeds she wore were borrowed, taken from her mother’s closet after her funeral. Her mother wouldn’t be needing them anymore, and it was good she wasn’t alive to suffer her daughter’s disappearance. She had a choice—she could disappear of her own volition or wait for her husband to make her disappear. So she would vanish into thin air. She didn’t want anyone thinking she’d run away. A runaway could be found, but a girl who vanished, simply vanished, couldn’t be followed. No woman would run away from home in broad daylight on a Thursday afternoon while everyone was in the house, including her husband in his office with the door wide-open, would she? But she would.

Once outside she walked straight to the street and turned a corner, then another. Old-fashioned cars drove past—Touring cars and Model Ts and even horse carts. In the dream Faye turned and waved her hand. A black four-door Oldsmobile with white doors pulled up alongside.

“Where to?” the driver said.

“The train station, please.”

She got into the backseat of the cab, and the driver drove.

“You a widow?” the man said, looking back at her, eyeing her veil, which she’d pulled all the way down over her face so that she viewed the entire world through a spiderweb of black silk.

“I am,” she said, smiling behind the veil.

“Sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

The smile widened.

“I’m not.”

Faye awoke in a panic, pressed her palm to her sweating forehead. Her other hand she pressed over her thundering heart.

“Oh, God,” Faye said, rolling into a ball. “Faith...”

She’d dreamed of Faith. Or maybe it was Faith’s dream she’d had. No wonder that girl had run from her husband. He’d beaten her because she’d refused to have sex with him. He’d not only beaten her but raped her. Faye pushed the blanket off her and looked at her legs. Finger bruises almost faded, but in the morning light she could still make them out. Faith had fled a wealthy and dangerous man and had drowned a week and a half later. And Marshall, whoever he was, had gotten away with his crimes against his young wife. The unfairness brought tears to Faye’s eyes. Faith had made it all the way here, made it to this sanctuary far, far away from her monster of a husband. And Carrick could have loved her, could have cared for her and given her a new life with a new love. But she’d died a senseless, stupid death before that new life could begin.

And someone out there had decided to bring Faye back here to take Faith’s place. For what purpose? Faye didn’t know, but she knew this much on her second morning when she awoke in 1921—she would find out. For Faith’s sake and for hers.

When Faye’s heart finally calmed, she sat up and looked out the window. The sky over the ocean was gray and pink, and the very first long yellow seams of dawn were starting to peek through the cracks in the clouds. Faye sat, mesmerized, as she watched the sun rise slowly over the horizon, changing the colors of the Atlantic Ocean from its nighttime black to a blazing red and morning blue. Faye wished more than anything she had her camera. She’d never seen such a sunrise. Was Carrick up in the lighthouse, watching the same sunrise? She saw the lighthouse flash once more before going dark again and staying dark this time. Carrick’s workday was over. Hers was beginning.

Faye rose from bed and went to the dresser to find clothes for the day. She opened a drawer and saw the clothes Dolly had so neatly pressed, folded and put away were now in mad disarray. Faye opened the second drawer and found those clothes were also tossed about all over the place. By the light of morning Faye saw things she hadn’t seen the night before in the near dark. The rug under the bed was wrinkled like it had been pushed a few inches away from the wall. She opened the drawer in the nightstand and found it, too, had been rifled through.

Faye ran and found Carrick leaving the lighthouse.

“Someone was in my room last night,” she said.

Carrick’s eyes went wide. He looked at her, pushed past her and went straight up the stairs to her room.

“They went through all the dresser drawers. And the bed’s been moved.” She pointed at the rug.

“Stand back,” he said. “I’ll check under the bed.”

Faye pulled the nightstand away.

“Can I help—”

Carrick hefted the bed up by the base of the footboard and shifted it three feet over before Faye could say another word.