Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(46)

I sink into the chair without feeling it, without thinking, because I’m looking through the cloudy plastic barrier at Melvin Royal. My ex-husband. The father of my children. A man who swept me off my feet with charm and grace, who proposed to me in a swinging bucket on top of a Ferris wheel at the state fairgrounds—and it doesn’t escape me now that he’d waited until I was stranded and isolated to do it. I’d thought it wildly romantic at the time. I can guess he found it fun to imagine me plummeting to the ground, or arousing to have me completely at his mercy.

Everything he’s done is tainted now to me. Every smile was just mechanics. Every laugh was manufactured. Every public sign of affection was just that: for the public.

And always, always, the monster lay just under the surface of it all.

Not a large man, Mel. Deceptively strong, but we learned at the trial that he still relied on tricks and guile to lure women in close, and stun guns and zip ties to keep them under control once he had them. He’s put on weight, a soft, shivering layer of fat over those long muscles, and it’s blurred the once-sharp line of his jaw. He was vain about his looks. And about mine. He always wanted me to be trim and neat and reflect well on him.

There’s not much else I can recognize easily about him right now, because he’s been beaten to shit. I let myself gaze at the destruction, the ripening bruises, the cuts, his right eye completely closed, his left just barely cracked open. There are ugly red bruises around his throat, and I can see the clear outlines of fingers. His left ear is heavily bandaged. When he reaches for the phone, I see that several of his fingers are broken and taped together for healing.

I can’t tell you how happy all this makes me.

I pick up the phone and hold it to my ear, and Mel’s voice comes out raspy, but controlled as ever. “Hello, Gina. It took you long enough.”

“You look great,” I tell him, and to my surprise, my voice sounds entirely normal. I’m shaking inside, and I don’t even know if it’s from visceral fear or savage joy at seeing him hurt. He says nothing. “No, seriously. That’s really a good look on you, Mel.”

“Thanks for coming,” he says, as if he fucking invited me. As if it’s a dinner party. “I see you got my letter.”

“I see you got my answer,” I tell him, and I lean forward to make sure he can clearly see my eyes. The coldness burning in them like dry ice. He makes me afraid, constantly afraid, but at the same time, I am completely unwilling to let him see that. “This was a warning, Mel. Next time you play with me, you fucking die. Is that clear enough? Do we need to have another round of bullshit threats?”

He doesn’t seem afraid. He has the same indifference that I remember from the arrest, the trial, the sentencing—though there’s that one particular picture of him looking over his shoulder in the courtroom that betrays the monster in his eyes. It’s chilling precisely because it’s true.

He hardly seems to be listening to me. The noise in his head, the fantasy, must be very strong right now. I wonder if he’s imagining taking me apart as I scream. Taking our kids apart, too. I think he probably is, because the pupil that I can see has contracted to a greedy little pinpoint. He’s like a black hole: not even light can escape. “You must have bought yourself some friends in here,” he says. “That’s good. Everybody needs friends, don’t they? But you surprise me, Gina. You were never good at making friends.”

“I’m not fucking playing with you, asshole. I came to make sure you understand that you need to forget about me and leave us alone. We are not connected. Not in any way. Say it.” My palms are sweating—one grips the phone, the other is pressed on the stained counter. I can’t see his eyes very well. I need to see his eyes to see what’s looking out of them.

“I know you didn’t mean for me to be hurt like this, Gina. You’re not a cruel woman. You never were.” His voice. God. It’s exactly like the one in my head, still. A perfectly calm, reasonable sort of voice, with a hint of compassion. He’s practiced it, I’m certain of that. Listened to himself. Adjusted it to hit just the right notes. Predator camouflage. I think about all those nights we sat side by side, his arm around my shoulders as we watched movies or talked. About the nights I curled up to his warmth in our bed, and he said something in that same, soothing tone.

You fucking liar.

“I meant it,” I tell him. “Every bruise. Every cut. Get it through your head, Mel, it doesn’t work on me anymore.”

“What doesn’t?”

“This . . . charade.”

He’s silent for a while. I could almost believe I’d hurt his feelings, if I legitimately thought he had any. He doesn’t, none that I’d recognize in any way, and if I managed to bruise them as much as his flesh, I wouldn’t care at all.

When he does speak again, his voice is quite different. Same voice, I suppose, but the tone, the timbre . . . very different. He’s dropped the disguise, the way he drops it every third letter he sends. “You shouldn’t make me angry, Gina.”

I hate hearing my old name in his mouth. I hate the way he almost purrs it.

I don’t respond, because I know not responding throws him off. I just watch him, sitting quietly in my chair, and suddenly he leans forward. The guard stationed on his side of the barrier focuses on him like a laser beam, and his hand hovers near the stun gun he’s carrying. I guess they don’t want to shoot prisoners in front of their family members.