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"No, you won't," he said confidently. "You would if you married Miguel, I bet. He would want you to have an abortion. Why would he want our baby? He would want his own baby."
"Hannah is not our baby, Linden. She is my baby, Mine."
"You don't have to say that anymore. Willow. It's all right now. It doesn't matter. Everyone can know about us."
"What are you talking about. Linden? The baby can't be yours too. We're brother and sister."
He laughed.
"No, we're not. Willow. That was just a story Grace and you created. She told me. After my boating accident, she told me the truth so I wouldn't be upset. That's why I knew Thatcher and you wouldn't last. So you see, it's all happening as it is supposed to happen. Rest. We'll all be together again and happy."
What he was saying was so upsetting. I couldn't reply for a moment.
"Mother would never have told you such a thing. Linden," I said when I gathered my wits, "You're imagining that conversation. I'll prove it to you after you let me out."
"No, you are the one who is confused. Willow. I'll prove it to you instead. I'll ask Grace to tell you."
"Mother is dead. Linden. She died. You were at the hospital. You saw her. Think, remember."
"No," he said, still speaking in that hoarse whisper. "We did all that just to keep those busybodies away from us, and it worked. No one has come here. No one will come. either." He laughed. "Your professor called to confirm his dinner date. and I told him you were gone. You had decided to visit your relatives and you were gone. I told him we had decided to move after all. He was very disappointed, but he won't be bothering us again. It will just be you and I. Willow, just as I've always planned for it to be, And Hannah, of course. Our Hannah. Rest," he said. "Linden!"
He walked away. I could hear him descending the stairway, and then a deep and hollow silence fell over the big house.
I wasn't just a prisoner in my suite. I was a prisoner in Linden's very disturbed mind.
.
When it was a little after seven o'clock and Miguel had not arrived. I began to believe that Linden had told the truth concerning the phone call. Would Miguel have believed him? If he did. I could be in here for days, maybe weeks before anyone realized it. In his madness. Linden could sound logical and intelligent to anyone who called and asked for me, even my attorney. Manon and the girls wouldn't challenge anything he said. I even wished Thatcher would come by for some reason, any reason, no matter how selfish it was.
With little to do except think and be irritable. I paced the suite. Vexed to the point of wanting to tear every piece of furniture apart or beat holes in the very walls that contained me. I fixed my eyes on the painting Linden had done for Thatcher and me as a wedding present. How it had annoyed Thatcher. I thought. I shouldn't have tolerated it above our bed like this. In a surge of rage. I reached up and pulled it from its hooks, tossing it to the floor. For a moment I stood over it, breathing hard, and then my eyes went to the wall where Linden himself had hung it For a moment it seemed as if all the air had left my lungs and been replaced with hot, steamy vapor. I thought I would explode.
There in the wall was a distinct hole. I stood on the bed and peered through it. I could see clearly into the suite Linden had once occupied before he decided to move out and permit it to be used as our nursery. What good was a hole in the wall if a portrait in a frame was hung over it? I thought, and then got down and examined the picture. Very clearly, exactly where the hole was located behind the painting, the picture had an area so thin and sheer it was diaphanous. Anyone could easily see through it. From the angle the portrait had been hung above our bed. Linden could easily look down at us and, most likely, was now periodically looking down at me.
So this was how he knew when to come into the room to put down a new tray of food. How eerie and terrifying cleverness and logic could be when they were housed within the walls of madness. I thought.
I struggled to get the picture back on the wall. Surely he would be returning to spy on me. What I had to do now was convince him I was asleep. Then he would unlock that door. I crawled under the blanket, closed my eyes, and waited. Actually. I nearly really fell asleep waiting. Finally, close to seven-thirty, I could hear him in the hallway. I heard him tinkering with the lock and hasp, doing it as quietly and as gently as he could, and then, with my eyes barely open. I saw the door nudged, saw him peer in to study me. I closed my eyes tightly and held my breath.
Practically tiptoeing across the room, he carried a new tray of food to the serving table. He put it down and lifted the old tray away, bending down to put it aside so he could place the new tray on the table. When he did that. I pushed him forward and he went spilling over the tray to the floor. I didn't wait. With the top sheet wrapped around myself. I leaped from the bed and charged at the door.
"Willow, No!" he screamed after me. I didn't hesitate a moment. I was out of the door and down the hallway, but at the top of the stairway. I stopped and stared down in utter shock. Every window before me had been painted over in black. The sight of it took my breath away. I had no doubt that every single window in the grand house had been so covered in black. Linden in his madness was shutting the outside world away, shutting us up in his own little world. The gates and the high walls around our property were not enough to satisfy his paranoia.
I heard him scrambling behind me and hurried frantically down the steps, but in my haste, I stepped on the train of the sheet I had wrapped hastily around myself and lost my footing. I spilled forward, desperately trying to break my fall with my extended arms. but I spun too far to the right, smacking my head against the balustrade and tumbling down the stairway, falling like the Humpty-Dumpty I had considered myself to be after I discovered Thatcher's betrayals. My last conscious thought was. They will never put me together again.
.
I awoke in Linden's arms. He was carrying me back up the stairway. I groaned. My lower back ached where I had wrenched it. and I could feel the bruise on my forehead swelling into a bump. He walked mechanically, his eyes forward.
"Let me go," I whispered through a throat sore from shouting and crying.
He did not respond. I tried to struggle free, but his grip on me was iron firm. I was no better than a goldfish in a plastic bag. We were heading up the stairs, heading right back to my suite, where he would lock me in again.
"No," I moaned.
"You shouldn't have done that. Willow. You could have hurt Hannah. You could have hurt our baby. You have to listen to me. I know what's best for us now." he recited. He spoke like someone in a dream and reminded me of what he was like when I had first returned and he had gone sleepwalking on the beach. He couldn't hear anything I was saying. He was last in his own dream.
Just as we reached the landing. I heard the sound of breaking glass. He did, too, and he paused. There was more of it, and then I heard the most beautiful sound of all. I heard Miguel call out my name.
Linden's face filled with panic. He turned me as if to start dawn the stairs again, then spun to continue upward.
