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He strides past me, slamming the door behind him, and I resist the urge to pick up the nearest thing to hand and fling it at the door.He’ll really think I’m being a child then,I tell myself, and instead go to the bathroom to run a brush angrily through my hair, flinging it up onto my head in a loose bun.Now I can really look like I don’t give a shit.
The thought of what I found in the attic today is still lingering with me. I don’t want to go downstairs—in his already creepy house that’s now been made even more so by those discoveries—and pretend that everything is alright. It’s not—and I don’t know that it ever will be.
I can’t just ask him about what I found, either. At best, he won’t give me a straight answer. At worst, he’ll be furious with me, and we’ll have a repeat of the fight this morning—or worse.
David is already in the half-renovatedinformal dining room when I go down, two of the windows cracked to let in the warm, salty evening breeze as he takes containers of takeout out of paper bags and arranges them on the table. “Have your pick,” he says, setting out two plates as well, and a glass of water for me. He sets down a glass of wine by his own plate. “There’s ricotta in the lasagna, I think—you probably shouldn’t eat that.”
I frown at him as I sit down, wondering how he knows so much about what pregnant women should and shouldn’t eat. I think of the boxes I found in the attic again, the children’s clothes and toys that were packed away. That same unsettled feeling knots in my stomach again as I put a couple of small forkfuls of fettuccine alfredo on my plate. Everything smells incredible, but I don’t trust my stomach.
David puts a little of everything on a plate and sits down across from me, reaching for his glass of wine. He doesn’t say anything else, and I bite my lip, feeling the oppressive silence wrap around us both.
“You can’t just push it around your plate,” he says suddenly, the snap of his words shattering the quiet. “For fuck’s sake, Amalie, I’m not keeping you prisoner.”
I look up at him sharply. “I explored the house a little more while you were gone,” I tell him, suddenly unable to keep quiet about what I’d found a moment longer. “I found some interesting things in the attic.”
There’s a flicker of an expression that crosses his face, but I can’t quite read what it is, even though I make a point to watch him carefully as I say it. He takes another bite of his food, letting the moment stretch out, and I feel that knot of apprehension in my stomach tighten. “What sort of “interesting” things?” he asks finally, a hint of sarcasm in his voice, and I grit my teeth. It always feels like he’s toying with me, and it just makes me angrier with him.
“I did.” I stab a bit of pasta, swirling it around my fork. “There was a whole stack of boxes that I spent some time going through. Not what I would have expected to find up there.” I’m being purposefully vague, hoping he’ll incriminate himself with a look, a reaction, something that will tell me that my feeling was right. That there is something ominous about what I found, and that I’m not just being paranoid.
“Oh?” There’s still no recognition in his tone, and that pisses me off even more.
“A woman’s things. Jewelry, a mirror, stuff like that. Andchildren’sclothes. Toys. They all looked new—I recognized a cartoon from ads I’ve seen that hasn’t been out all that long.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Didn’t you say this was your family’s home? They didn’t look old enough to have been yours, or—” I start to say,or your brother’s, but the sudden flash of irritation in David’s eyes stops me. Even I know better than to pick at a wound.
“That’s none of your business.” He stabs his fork into a piece of veal parmesan, and I wince.
“I live here now.” I press my lips together, sucking in a breath. I know I’m pushing him, but it’s so fucking difficult not to. He makes it so difficult. “We’re married now, David, or did you forget? This house is mine now, too. What happened here is my business. Especially if I’m going to raise your heir here—”
David looks up, silencing me with a glare that sends a chill down to his toes. His jaw clenches, and I go very quiet.
“Whether or not you’re carrying ‘my heir’ remains to be seen,” he says tightly, his voice carefully quiet. Far be it from me to tell you where to go wandering and poking around. But don’t expect me to entertain you with stories about whatever it is that you find.”
I bite my lip, and I’m startled to feel tears suddenly burning at the back of my eyes. I don’t know how to reconcile this cold, emotionless man with the man that I spent a week in Ibiza with—a man who enjoyed playing games with me, true, but who was passionate and full of life. This man feels as implacable and unyielding as a statue.
The dining room goes silent, quiet enough that I can almost imagine that I can hear my own heartbeat thudding in my chest. “Have you thought about a honeymoon?” I ask tentatively, trying to change the subject to something more pleasant.Maybe it’s this house, maybe it’s being home, being near his family again,I think desperately, still twirling my fork around pasta that I haven’t yet taken a bite of. All I can think is that maybe, somehow, if we go far enough away to some place that will remind him of Ibiza, I’ll get a glimpse of the other side of him. Maybe I could find some way to connect with him that will make life together less miserable.
David makes a noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, and any hope of that possibility vanishes.
“Wasn’t the vacation we just had enough?” he asks, his voice heavy with sarcasm, and the way he looks at me as he says it tells me that he’s trying to make me snap. He’s trying to push and push, so that I’ll lose my temper, and then he doesn’t have to feel like he’s the bad guy in this situation.
“Of course it was.” I press my lips together, dropping my fork. Suddenly, even the sight of the food is making me nauseated. “Is thereanywherein this house that has a working bathtub?” I desperately want to slide into hot water and soak, and the fact that there’s no tub in the master bathroom yet feels like adding insult to injury.
David shrugs. “Maybe in one of the guest bathrooms,” he says flatly, and then goes back to the sliver of lasagna on his plate.
I shove my chair back, leaving my untouched dinner there as I stalk away. The house smells of dust, raw wood, and wallpaper glue, and I wrinkle my nose. I hate this place more and more with every passing moment that I’m here, and the fact that I have tohuntfor a bathtub makes it feel worse. David’s way of treating me like that makes me spoiled is just the awful cherry on top.
The guest bathrooms haven’t been touched in the “renovations” yet, and one of them is clean and nice enough that I hide in there, closing the door firmly while I run a hot bath. I don’t find any bubbles or bath oils to add to it, but the hot water is enough, and I sink into it with a sigh, closing my eyes. All of my muscles are sore from how tense I’ve been, and I let some of it seep away, hoping that if I stay in the bath long enough, David will be asleep by the time I go up to bed.
I refill the tub twice when the water cools off, prolonging it until I’m wrinkly and pink and I feel waterlogged. I dry off and wrap a robe around myself, scooping my clothes off of the floor and tiptoeing up to the master bedroom. To my relief, when I nudge the door open, I see that the lights are off, and David is on his side of the bed, unmoving.
Slowly, I find a pair of sleep shorts and a tank top, slipping into them, and sliding as silently as I can into my side of the bed. I can feel the heavy weight of him lying next to me, and I lay there stiffly, wondering how I’m going to endure this for the rest of my life.
We can’t avoid each other forever. And I’m very afraid of how much worse this might get before he gets tired of me and we simply drift apart.
I’ve never felt so alone. And now I’m frightened, too.
17
DAVID
