An Unwanted Guest(16)
When they reach his room – he’d offered to walk her to hers, but she shook her head – he closes the door behind them with a soft click, and she shivers. She doesn’t move; she waits in the dark.
He reaches behind her neck and unclasps her necklace and removes it and she feels as if he’s undressed her. She breathes in, a little gasp, waiting.
He gently drops the necklace – costume jewellery, but pretty – on the bureau just inside the door. Then he kisses her.
The kiss releases something in her that’s been pent up too long, and she kisses him back, but not frantically – slowly, as if she’s still not sure. And he seems to get that. As if he’s not entirely sure either.
Beverly has a difficult time falling asleep; she always does when she’s away from the kids, and now her world is falling apart. It doesn’t help that she can hear a muffled argument coming from the room next door – Dana and Matthew’s room. Is no one happy?
It annoys her that Henry fell asleep so quickly, as if he didn’t have a care in the world – and now he’s snoring away. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen to them. She resents that she has to do the worrying for both of them. It always falls to her to do all the emotional work.
They’d agreed to stop talking about their marriage before either of them said something they might regret. They agreed to sleep on it and see how they felt in the morning.
Finally, deep into the night, she’s falling asleep at last, when she hears a muffled scream. But sleep has her now, and the scream becomes part of a dream – a nightmare. Someone is trying to suffocate her. In that strange way of dreams, she is screaming loudly even while someone holds a pillow firmly to her face.
Saturday, 1:35 AM
Riley lies in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She wonders when Gwen will come to bed. According to her watch, it’s after one thirty in the morning. She doesn’t think for a minute that Gwen and David have been in the library all this time. She’s gone to his room. She’s gone to bed with him. Maybe she will spend the entire night with him and not come back to their room at all until morning.
It makes her terribly uneasy – the panic is rising inside her like a tide. Not because she’s a prude – far from it. She’s had a lot of lovers. And not because she’s jealous, either. But because she’s certain that there’s some cloud hanging over this David Paley. She just can’t remember what it is. Again she curses the lack of an internet connection.
She fights an irrational urge to get up and knock on David Paley’s door. But she doesn’t even know which room he’s in.
She hates this constant, generalized anxiety she always feels now. She tells herself that nothing can possibly happen to Gwen here, among all these people. Riley knows that Gwen is with him.
Finally, she slips uneasily towards sleep. As she drifts off, she thinks she hears a scream, somewhere far away. She persuades herself it’s not a scream, but a memory; she often hears screams as she’s drifting off to sleep. She’s used to it. They’re a precursor to the nightmares.
Chapter Eight
Saturday, 5:45 AM
MORNING COMES SLOWLY. Overnight, the falling snow, so peaceful, has turned to sleet, coating everything in brittle ice, making the landscape even more dangerous to navigate. It seems everything is about to snap. Inside the inn, there’s a distinct chill in the air.
Lauren rises early, freezing, even with the warmth of Ian pressed up beside her. Her neck is stiff. She gets out of bed, shivering, and hurries to put warm clothes on, wondering why it’s so damn cold. She slips on jeans, a T-shirt, a heavy sweater, warm socks. They hadn’t closed the curtains before they went to bed, and now she glances out of the front window to the landscape below. Even though it’s still quite dark, she can see that the branches of the huge tree in the front yard are bent, weighted down with ice. She sees where one of them has broken off; there’s a large, pale gash where it has been ripped from the trunk. The heavy limb lies broken in three separate pieces on the ground below.
She walks quietly into the bathroom, leaving the door open. She doesn’t want to turn on the light – she doesn’t want to wake Ian. It’s damn cold. She brushes her hair quickly. Her illuminated watch face says it’s just before six. She wonders what time the staff get up and start their day.
She glances back at Ian snoring in their bed, only his head showing above the covers. He won’t be up for a while. She opens the door quietly. It’s dark in the corridor; the lights in the wall sconces are out. She slips out and walks down the second-floor hall to the main stairs in her thick socks. She doesn’t want to wake anyone. She turns towards the staircase to the lobby, wondering how long it will be before she can get a cup of coffee.
Saturday, 6:03 AM
Riley wakes suddenly, sitting up abruptly in bed, eyes wide open. She thinks she’s heard a scream – loud and piercing. Her heart is pounding, and she can feel the familiar adrenaline surging through her body. She glances quickly around the dim hotel room and remembers where she is. She turns to the other bed beside her, throwing aside the bedcovers, and is immediately accosted by the cold. Gwen is awake, too, and alert.
‘What’s going on?’ Gwen says. ‘I thought I heard something.’
‘I don’t know. I heard it, too.’