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Prologue
2014
Christmas Eve
She knows he’s there even before he speaks. She feels the weight and warmth of him as he sits down beside her, the firm press of his hip against the small of her back. His fingers curl gently over her shoulder as he leans in, and she smells his breath, warm and sweet, tickling her ear and sending a delicious chill down her spine.
“Miriam,” he says. “Are you awake, my love?”
“Yes,” she whispers. For him, she is always awake. She always has been. Ready to rise at the touch of his hand, ready to offer her mouth to be kissed. She rolls toward him, reaching out, and feels him catch her by the wrist. He has strong hands. A workingman’s hands. It has been a long time since he was up at dawn to labor at the docks, a long, long time, but the calluses, those relics of labor long since abandoned, never went away. Her own mother once shuddered over those hands—“Your beautiful skin, Miriam! How can you bear it?”—but Miriam would only smile and shrug, because the truth was, she loved the feel of his fingertips, the light scrape against her skin. When hetouched her, it felt the way she imagined it would to be embraced by an animal, something big and powerful like a bear, holding her gently between its huge rough paws. He could have torn her to pieces.
But he didn’t. He wouldn’t.
“Will you come to bed? Isn’t it very late?” she asks, squinting at the place where she thought her bedside clock should be, but isn’t, which is strange. The room is dark, all shadows, with only the barest glimmers of moonlight shimmering outside a window that is beginning to feather with frost. Her husband is somewhere among the shadows, but she cannot see his face, only the back-and-forth movement of his head as he shakes it,No. He is wearing his hat, she can see the curve of it, and she hears the light crunch of canvas as he shifts beside her.His coat,she thinks. He’s wearing his coat. But why? She shivers again, this time with confusion, her skin suddenly crawling. Why is he awake in the middle of the night? Why can’t she see his face?
But then he laughs, and after a moment, she laughs, too, and the creeping sensation of dread disappears.
“Did you forget?” he asks gently. The hand holding her wrist unclasps, winding its fingers through hers.
“Forget?” she repeats, feeling stupid. “I don’t—but I’ve only just woken up. What is it?”
“It’s our night. Our special night. The reach has frozen over.”
“It has?”
“Darling,” he chides, “you did forget.”
Her whisper is indignant. “I did not.”
“No?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Then let’s go.” The shadow shifts off the bed with a creak, and she hears him moving across the floor. She slips her legs out from beneath the covers, setting her feet carefully side by side, curling her toes into the braided rug. The air is cold against her bare legs, startlingly so, but her mind still feels clouded and half-asleep. She blinks, trying to clear the cobwebs, trying to make the hulking shadows resolve intofamiliar shapes. An armoire there, the bedpost here. Her things. Her room. Why does it feel so unfamiliar? A person shouldn’t feel so lost, so confused, sitting on the edge of her own bed.
One of the shadows moves.
“Theo?” she says, and sees the bob of his head, the peaked brim of his cap as he passes in front of the window to kneel beside her.
“Here, let me help you,” he whispers, and she lifts her feet obediently at his touch, one at a time, feeling them disappear into the warm depths of a pair of fur-lined boots. She feels his breath again as he tightens and ties the laces, this time against her bare legs below the hem of her nightgown, and the heat rises in her face. Not with embarrassment, but with anticipation. Their special night.
Of course she hadn’t forgotten. Not now, not after so many midnight trysts that she knew the way by heart, stealing out in the black and bracing cold, down to the water’s edge. She would hug the wall along the staircase, treading carefully to avoid the creaky spots, waiting at the bottom to be sure that the coast was clear—only no, she thinks, shaking her head, that was before. She’d been only a girl then, breaking her father’s rules, giddy and defiant. But it’s her house now. Her own, and her husband’s. She could make as much noise as she likes. Except—
“The children,” she exclaims suddenly, her voice loud in the dark, and he puts a hand to her cheek.
“Shh. They’re asleep. They’ll be fine.”
She blinks again and loses time. One moment, she was rising to her feet, shuffling in the heavy boots toward the bedroom door. The next, she is outside, the wind whipping at the hem of her nightgown, the flagstone path through the garden at her feet.
A fog has crept in, blanketing everything, blotting out the dark sky and the glittering stars. Only the moon is still visible, casting its bleak light as if through a veil. There is a blanket over her shoulders, and she pulls it around her, gazing uncertainly into the night—but there, there he is. A lamplight bobs in the distance, a soft whistle summonsher from where she stands. She begins to walk. She knows the way, whether he’s beside her or not.
The house looms behind her, huge and dark, as she descends the first set of steps. Down the hill, through the formal gardens where she once played hide-and-seek as a girl. Past the massive topiaries, now bare and overgrown, that would be trimmed come springtime into perfect spheres. Past the long, high wall where you could pick up a path that led into the woods, or descend another, longer set of steps to reach the long pier that stretches into the bay.
This is where she used to walk out to meet him, in the shadow of the hedges, where a hulking juniper and the sheer stone wall kept her hidden from prying eyes. Not that anyone is awake in the house now, nor could anyone have seen them through the thick and drifting fog. When she looks back, the house is hardly there at all. It would be nothing but a looming shadow, if not for the single light shining from a window on the top floor.
She frowns. Something darts through her mind, a flicker of memory that is gone as quickly as it came, leaving behind a sense of unease. Something about the light. Something not quite right. She hesitates... but he appears again beside her, and the flicker chases itself away.
“Scared of the dark?” he says, and she giggles. A silly question. He knows better.
