Chapter 7
966 Words
December 24th was cold, grey, and quiet when it rolled in.
Autumn was up before Gabriel. She'd been awake most of the night anyway, so when the light started coming through the curtains she just got up, pulled on a sweater, and went upstairs.
She kept looking at the bathroom window as she stood in front of it for almost twenty minutes. Outside was the snow-covered backyard, and beyond it was the tree line, looking bare and dark. Past that, somewhere she couldn't quite see, was the grey light of something that looked flat and open. The lake, she guessed.
Autumn didn't know yet what the lake meant. She just knew that looking at it made her feel cold in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature.
She put her fingers on the window latch. It moved.
Her heart started beating fast in her chest. She stood still for a second, listening. When she didn’t hear anything from downstairs, she tried the window itself, pushing it up carefully.
But it didn't move. Something was holding it from outside, maybe a pin or a bolt she couldn't see or reach. But the latch moved. That was something.
She placed the latch back exactly the way she'd found it and went downstairs.
Gabriel was already in the kitchen, making eggs. The coffee was done, and he handed her a mug before she even asked. Same as always. The easy, domestic version of him that she'd spent weeks finding comforting was now the version she found hardest to sit with, because she knew now that it was just a facade.
"Morning," he said. "Sleep okay?"
"Pretty good," she replied.
She sat at the counter and watched his hands while he worked. He had good hands. They were steady and sure, with no wasted movement. She watched him pick up the spatula, move the pan, and pour coffee into his own cup. She was looking for the keys, but they weren't on the counter.
She looked for them again as they ate. They weren't on the hook by the door either. He must have moved them somewhere else. Or he had them in his pocket. She couldn't ask. She just noted it.
After breakfast, he pushed a small package across the table toward her.
"Merry Christmas Eve," he said.
It was wrapped in brown paper with a ribbon tied around it. She looked at it for a second before picking it up, making herself smile brightly.
"You didn't have to do that."
"I wanted to."
She pulled the ribbon off the package and unwrapped it. It was a book. A first edition, she could tell just from the way it felt old, expensive, and carefully preserved. She turned it over, looked at the cover, and opened it. Inside the front cover, he'd written something in his loopy, cursive handwriting: ‘For you. Always.’
She read it twice. Then she looked up at him.
"It's beautiful," she said. "Thank you." She let herself sound a little touched, because it cost her nothing and it kept him calm. "I didn't get you anything. I'm sorry."
"You don't have to," he said. "Just having you here is enough."
And he meant it. That was the part that got her. The genuineness of it. She could hear it in his voice, see it in his face, and it turned her stomach.
"That means a lot," she said as she held the book carefully, repressing the urge to throw it across the room.
They spent the afternoon in the living room with the fire going, music on, and snow coming down outside the window steadily.
As Gabriel read and Autumn pretended to, there were stretches of time where she sat with her legs curled under her on the couch and almost felt okay. Almost felt like this was just a house and he was just a man and none of this was actually what it was.
Then he'd look up and she'd catch that look behind his eyes that didn't match the warm room or the soft music or the way he said her name. And a wave of chills would come rushing back and she'd have to sit very still and breathe through it.
After dinner, he opened a bottle of wine, and they sat by the fire and talked for a long time. He was good at this—having real conversations, the kind where someone actually listened, remembered the relevant details, and asked the right questions.
Under other circumstances, she would have loved it. Tonight she was just tracking his words, looking for cracks or for anything she could use.
He went to bed around eleven, but she waited behind.
She waited for a full forty minutes after she heard him go upstairs before she moved. Then she got up, went to the kitchen, and looked at the counter where his keys usually were.
Only this time, they weren't there. She checked again. Looked at the hook by the door and the side table in the hallway. But there was nothing. She even looked in the bowl near the entrance. Still nothing.
Autumn stood in the middle of the dark kitchen with her hands at her sides as the realization finally dawned on her. Gabriel had moved the keys, not because he'd forgotten, but because he'd noticed her looking. Or he'd suspected. Or he was just that careful.
She thought about the women before her, her mind lingering on the fact that there had been at least three. Then she thought about the fact that he'd gotten this far three times, without a single thing going wrong that couldn't be controlled.
He'd done all of this before.
And those women were not here to tell her what they'd missed.
- Writer
