Page 147 of The Professor's Wife

My knees gave out beneath me.

He caught me before I hit the floor.

“Slowly,” he murmured, as though he hadn’t been the one who left me there.

I leaned against him because my body gave me no choice.

The air hit me first when he opened the door.

Damp. Earthy. Touched with pine.

I blinked against the sudden openness and realized where I had been kept.

Not in a hidden room inside the cabin.

The shed.

The same shed Oliver had been vague about whenever I asked.

The woods pressed close behind it, dark and endless. My clothes and shoes were gone. My bare feet sank into the cold earth, and my legs shook beneath me.

Even if I ran, I wouldn’t make it far.

Oliver’s hand remained firm around my arm.

“Where is Rowe?” I asked.

The words tore at my throat.

“He’s safe.”

“Where?”

“He believes you’re unwell. You’ll see him when you’re ready.”

“I want to see him now.”

“You aren’t ready.”

His voice was gentle.

That frightened me more than if he had shouted.

His grip tightened slightly as he led me toward the cabin.

Was I the first person he had kept inside that shed?

Or only the latest?

My eyes moved toward the woods.

Eyes, eyes, everywhere.

Oliver spoke as though he were giving me a gift. He told me I could bathe. Wash my hair. Change into the nightgown he had laid out.

Then I would cook for the two of us.

His words carried the expectation of ordinary domestic life, as if the shed didn’t exist behind us.