Eleven Night In PIne Haven

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Cora

Richard's thumb stopped over the Photos icon.

I forgot how to breathe.

Then his own phone shrieked against the table. He glanced at the screen, and his face froze over like a pond. He snatched it up.

"Yes," he said into it. "Now? Fine. Twenty minutes."

He hung up. For a long second he stood there with my phone in one hand and his in the other, deciding. Sweat gathered at the back of my neck. My heart hit my ribs so hard I felt it in my teeth.

He dropped my phone onto my plate. It landed in the cold steak juice with a wet smack.

"Aldridge moved the meeting up," he said, pulling on his jacket. "Tonight. Of course."

"Is everything okay?" I asked. My voice came out thin and high.

"Don't change the subject." He crossed the room slowly, and every step he took made the air in the room thinner. He stopped behind my chair. His hand slid around my throat. It wasn't tight. It was only resting there, warm and heavy, over the pulse that jumped under my skin.

"Do you feel that?" he murmured against my ear. "That's your heartbeat, Cora. It's racing. Why is it racing?"

"I'm just... tired," I whispered. A tear slid down my cheek and landed on his wrist. He watched it.

"Tired," he repeated softly His

thumb brushed the tear away, almost tenderly. "You've been tired a lot lately. Keeping secrets is exhausting, isn't it?"

"I don't have any secrets."

"Everyone has secrets." His fingers pressed, just slightly, and my vision sparked at the edges. "When I come home, we're going through that phone.

Every message. Every photo. And if I find even one thing you didn't tell me about..."

He didn't finish. He let go all at once, and I gasped, and the sound seemed to please him.

"Say it, Cora."

"Yes, Richard." I coughed, pressing my hand to my neck. "I understand."

"Good girl."

The front door shut. The elevator chimed. I listened to it hum all the way down, counting. Sixty. Then sixty again.

My legs gave out. I slid off the chair and onto the floor, my back against the table leg, and pressed both hands over my mouth. My lips went numb under my fingers. I wasn't crying. I wanted to. But something hard and bright had settled in my chest, like the stone in a peach.

"Tonight," I whispered to the empty room. "It has to be tonight."

I scraped the steak juice off my screen with my sleeve and stood up. My knees wobbled. I gripped the table until they stopped.

The duffel bag lived at the back of the bedroom closet, behind the winter coats, where I had hidden it eight months ago in case I ever got brave. It smelled of dust and dark. My fingers shook so badly that the zipper kept slipping.

One bag. That was the rule. If I took more, he would notice. If I took anything he had bought me, he would find me.

So I took nothing he had bought me.

A gray sweater from before I met him, worn thin at the elbows. Jeans. Wool socks. A phone charger. Each thing went into the bag like I was burying it.

Then I knelt at the jewelry box. I lifted out the velvet tray with its glittering rows of gifts and slid my fingernail under the false bottom. My grandmother's rosary lay coiled in the dark. I pressed the wooden beads against my cheek. Lavender and old churches. For one second I was seven years old in the snow, my hand lost inside her papery one.

"Nana," I whispered, and my voice broke on the word.

I wrapped the rosary twice around my wrist and pulled my sleeve down over it.

The tampon box under the bathroom sink held four hundred dollars, folded into a tight green square. Eleven months of grocery change. Eleven months of lying about the price of milk. My hands trembled as I counted it, and I counted it twice, because I didn't trust that it was real.

At the bottom of the drawer, face down, lay the postcard. I turned it over. A stone church with a red door, half-buried in snow. On the back, in my grandmother's slanting hand: *Always a door open for you. Nana.*

A tear dropped onto the red door and spread. I wiped it with my thumb, and I hated that I had smudged it.

My phone rang on the bed.

I jumped so hard that I knocked the duffel off the mattress. *Richard.* My thumb hovered. If I didn't answer, he would know. I pressed the screen to my ear and sat down on the edge of the bed, because my knees were no longer holding me.

"Hello?" I said.

"Are you wearing the green dress?"

I looked down at my jeans and sweater. The lie came out smooth, so smooth it frightened me. "Yes. Of course."

"Good." A pause. I could hear traffic behind him. "Meeting ended early. I'll be home sooner than planned. I want you waiting at the table. Understood?"

"Yes, Richard," I whispered. "I'll be waiting."

"I knew you would be."

He hung up. The phone slid out of my sweating hand and bounced on the carpet.

*Sooner than planned.* How soon? Ten minutes? Thirty?

I looked at my left hand. The diamond sparkled under the lamp, cold and enormous. It was worth more than my mother's car. I had tried to pull it off a hundred times and never managed, because taking it off felt like a crime.

I twisted it. It scraped over my knuckle and tore the skin. I didn't feel it. It came free with a small, wet pop, and I held it in my bloody palm.

It was the only thing he had ever given me that I could use against him.

I shoved it deep into my jeans pocket.

At the bedroom door, I looked back one last time. The bed I had cried in for two years. The pillow that smelled of his cologne. I waited for grief to hit me.

It didn't. There was only air. Cold, clean air.

The elevator took forever. I watched the numbers fall with the duffel strap cutting into my shoulder. P3. P2. P1. The doors opened onto the parking garage, a gray cave of concrete and humming lights.

My car sat in the far corner, where Richard never parked. Forty steps. I counted every one. My keys cut into my palm. Thirty. Twenty. My breath clouded in front of my face.

Ten.

Light swept across the concrete wall.

Headlights. Slow and steady, turning in from the street.

I knew that engine.

I knew its low growl.

I dropped behind a concrete pillar and clamped both hands over my mouth. My heart slammed so hard that I felt it in my throat, right where his fingers had been.

A car door opened. A polished shoe clicked on the concrete.

"Cora?" Richard's voice drifted through the garage, calm and warm. It bounced off the walls, so that it seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Sweetheart, I know you're down here."

I didn't breathe. A cold bead of sweat ran down my spine. I pressed my back against the pillar and felt the concrete bite through my sweater.

Click. Click. Click. His footsteps came slowly, in no hurry at all.

"I asked you for one thing," he said pleasantly. "Wait at the table. It's not there, Cora. You're not there. That wasn't very kind.

Click. Click. The duffel bag lay at my feet, and I saw with horror that one strap was sticking out past the edge of the pillar.

I reached for it with trembling fingers.

The footsteps stopped.

"Interesting," Richard said, very softly. He was close now, so close I could hear the leather of his gloves creak. My lungs locked. A whimper rose in my throat, and I bit my lip until I tasted blood to keep it in. "I think I just found your bag."