The Watcher Girl(56)
I swallow the burn of bile in the back of my throat, stare at the ceiling, and wait.
Though for what, I can’t be certain.
CHAPTER 33
It’s impossible to know how much time has passed since Campbell was last in here, but the way the sunlight peers into the room, glaring yet indirect, I can only surmise it’s close to noon. It’s been hours, easily. My bladder is growing uncomfortably full, though I can’t imagine she’ll do more than give me a bedpan if I’m lucky.
I’ve called her a handful of times, only to be ignored.
She’s waiting for something.
Or maybe for someone.
Last night she mentioned her “friends” were going to pick them up today and drive them to Denver. But it doesn’t make sense. If she’s leaving her husband, what does she gain by doing something to me? Is it revenge? Is she wanting to ensure I don’t swoop in and steal him while she’s gone? And if he’s so horrible to her, why would she want to keep him?
People do worse things for lesser reasons.
“Campbell!” I yell for her again.
Light, quick footsteps come to an abrupt stop outside the door, which flings open a second later. The handle smacks the wall, leaving a noticeable indentation. The unexpected thwack elicits a startled gasp from each of us.
“Quiet,” she says, hushed but not quite whispering, narrowed gaze pointing as if it were my fault. “I just laid Gigi down for a nap so you and I can have a civilized discussion.”
“There’ll be nothing civilized about this discussion as long as I’m tied up like an animal.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“I imagine I’ve already missed my flight, but if you let me go, I’ll leave here, book the next one home, and you’ll never see me again.”
She sniffs, glancing at the closed window. For a moment, I assume she’s as hungry for fresh air as I am, but she remains planted.
“You don’t get it,” she says. “It’s not enough that you’re gone. As long as you’re still out there, living, breathing, existing . . . that man has hope. Even if he looks me in the eyes and tells me he hates you—which he’s done—the fact that you’re out there somewhere . . . it’s going to haunt our marriage the rest of our lives.”
“If he’s so awful to you, why does it matter? I thought you were going to leave him?”
She cocks her head my way, a condescending smile slipping over her lips. “Don’t be so dense. Do you really think I’d go to all this trouble if I had no intentions of saving my marriage? He’s the only person that matters to me, and this marriage, my family . . . they’re the only things I have.”
“If your marriage is broken, that’s between the two of you. You can’t put that on me.”
“It’s absolutely on you, Grace,” she says. “You’ve been a cloud over our relationship since the day it began. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, and I can’t get out from under you.”
“Maybe you should try counseling?”
“What makes you think we haven’t?” She snorts. “All that did was open up an entirely different can of worms. You put Sutton in a safe space, and he makes all kinds of confessions. Did you know he imagined I was you on our wedding day?”
She paces at the foot of the bed.
“He also confessed that he hated you. That he wished he’d never met you. That if he could erase you from his memory, he’d do it in a heartbeat,” she says.
I’ve always known I hurt him, but the idea of him hating me has never crossed my mind.
Sutton was never a hateful person. He was a walking, talking, turn-the-other-cheek, forgive-and-forget cliché of a man, and I loved that about him. He was so much better than me in those ways.
But people change.
They evolve.
They do what they have to do to survive, to chase that ever-elusive concept of happiness.
“We were in a good place after that. He was finally accepting that you two were over. That his life was with me. That you weren’t coming back—and then you came back.” Red blotches cover her neck, and she stops pacing to take a few breaths. “As soon as I told him you were in town, that you’d been coming around our house, that we’d been talking—he lost it. I’d never seen him so angry, Grace. And I knew then that he meant what he said when he told me he hated you.”
His face that day in the parking lot of his work—so tight, so indignant. I thought he was protecting his secret. I thought he hated that I’d uncovered it. Turns out I’d barely scratched the surface of what that man was going through when his steeled gaze bored into mine.
“He told you to stay away,” she says. “Several times. But you refused. You wouldn’t listen. I have to believe, Grace, that we wouldn’t be here right now had you just stayed the hell away like he told you to.”
“I was trying to protect you.” I try to sit up, forgetting that I can’t. “You said he was hurting you. You said he was controlling. I was worried about you!”
Campbell clucks her tongue. “Do you honestly, truly, in your heart of hearts believe that man is capable of hurting someone? Especially the mother of his child?”
No.
I don’t.