The Stillwater Girls(16)

“Go to sleep now, girls,” he says. “Morning’ll be here soon.”

Slipping my hand into my sister’s, I lead her to Evie’s bed, the one farthest from this stranger, and we climb in. I let her go first, hoping she’ll feel safer if she’s sleeping between the wall and myself, and I tuck the covers around us.

Turning on my side, I keep a squinted eye on the man, because my gut tells me not to let him out of my sight for more than a second.

I’ll watch him all night long if it means keeping us safe.

And alive.

Besides, I couldn’t sleep if I tried.

Not with him here.

Not when I don’t know who he is or what he wants with us.

Or what he’s planning to do to us tomorrow.





CHAPTER 12

NICOLETTE

“When does your flight leave?” My husband runs his fingertip along a row of book spines at the bookshop on Hancock Drive—Stillwater Hills’ gentrified version of Main Street, where every shop and storefront has been fashioned from an old Victorian or Tudor-style manse leftover from Stillwater’s coal mining heyday.

This is what we do on Saturdays. We grab brunch at a sleepy café by the side of the road where they know us by name, and then we head to Raven Books to pick up the latest bestsellers before returning home for an afternoon of going our own ways—which for Brant means holing up in his office and for me means laundry, cleaning, and phone calls with friends and family. Sometimes I’ll take a bubble bath if I’m bored. Maybe do some online shopping from some of my favorite NYC boutiques that knew me by name a lifetime ago.

It never used to be this way, though.

Our Saturdays used to be spent between the sheets, peppered with breaks for things like showering and wine refills. We called them Naked Saturdays, which was beyond cheesy at the time, but now that they’re gone, I can’t remember when I stopped missing them or when he stopped wanting them, and that says something.

“Didn’t I tell you?” I ask. Brant turns to me, one sandy-blond brow lifted. “I’m not going this year.”

His hand falls from the spine of The Alchemist, and he angles his body toward me. “Not going? As in, not going at all?”

I understand where he’s coming from. For the entirety of our marriage, I’ve spent the coldest months in Miami with my best friend, Cate. The sunshine and extra vitamin D has always helped stave off the winter blues, plus Cate is a riot. My friendship with her is one that I’ll cherish always, and while I could use a good distraction right now, I can’t go.

Not with all these unanswered questions lingering.

“Nic . . .” Brant’s voice softens, and I know he’s going to try to reason with me. “You sure about this?”

I nod, turning my attention to the book selection before me. Plucking a copy of Atlas Shrugged from the shelf, I begin to page through it as I’ve done a thousand times before, hoping this time it might capture my interest the way these kinds of books have always captured Brant’s, but alas, my tastes are still as commercial as ever.

“But,” he says, coming close, “you know how you get this time of year . . .”

Flipping the pages, I sigh. “I do.”

“And your bad dreams,” he says, as if I need reminding, as if I could possibly forget the reoccurring dreams about the empty, abandoned baby stroller that always seem to plague me in the colder months. They’re not pleasant by any means, but I’m used to them now. I’ve chalked them up as a metaphor that represents my inability to have a child, and the winter months with their barren trees and quiet skies serve as my yearly reminder.

“I’m not going to let my nightmares dictate whether or not I go to Florida.”

“How does Cate feel about this?” he asks.

“She was disappointed of course, but she was supportive. Says she’ll come up here and spend a few weeks with me if I want,” I say. And it’s true. She could sense in my voice that something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t tell her then. This is the kind of thing you don’t gab about with your best friend over the phone. These are the things you talk about in person—and only when you have enough proof that you don’t seem like a bored and lonely housewife manufacturing drama because you’re feeling insecure.

“Maybe you could still go, but for only a few weeks?” he suggests. “A month. Tops.”

I smirk, trying to brush him off as casually as possible. “You worry too much.”

“I guess . . . I guess I just don’t understand,” he says. The fact that he won’t let this go is concerning, but it isn’t a surprise. If anything, it simply confirms what I already thought—he wants me to go.

Maybe even needs me to go.

Turning to Brant, I say with a smile, “Is there something wrong with wanting to spend more time with my husband?”

“Of course not. I’m just worried your . . . blues . . . will come back with a vengeance.”

There was that one winter—the year I had the hysterectomy after a bout of profuse bleeding that left me lying unconscious on the floor. Brant rushed me to the local ER. Everything else happened so quickly, almost as if in a vacuum of bad memories better forgotten.

I vaguely recall spending 80 percent of my day sleeping during my recovery, wasting away to bones and using what little energy I had left listening to Brant talking to my doctor on the phone in the next room over. He was worried about me then, worried I wouldn’t bounce back and be the girl he married, worried I’d never laugh or smile again. He kept using the word “traumatic,” but I think there are worse things people could go through.