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I can’t bring myself to care. I’ve never seen a more erotic show in my entire life. I get up at the same time she does, to clean myself up, but I still can’t get her out of my head. And I realize, as I step into the shower, that I’m missing my wife.
Not just the pleasure of being buried inside of her, or the exquisite sensation when she makes me come. I have the strange urge to curl up beside her and fall asleep, a sort of aching disappointment that when I walk out of the shower, she won’t be in bed waiting for me. I’ve always preferred sleeping alone, but just now, the idea of an empty bed feels cold and lonely.
The thought makes my heart race with a sudden panic.
I’m not going to fall for her.I shove the thought out of my head, forcing myself to stop thinking about it entirely. I said I would keep my distance from any woman I married, and that includes Amalie.Especially Amalie. What I feel for her is too strong already, too volatile.
I’m not going to repeat my brother’s mistakes. There’s a time and a place for passion, and it’s not here, not in my marriage. What Amalie and I have is a shaky foundation for what I need to build our family’s new legacy on, and I won’t allow anything to risk it crumbling.
She’s already pregnant. If she has a son, and it’s mine, I intend to touch her as little as possible after that. If my father really does want to send me to Sicily, far away from Amalie and these feelings, so much the better.
I don’t want to be in love. Not with her.
Not with anyone.
20
AMALIE
When I wake up the next morning, the first thing I think of is that I want to sneak out again. I’d like to explore more of Newport, feel a little bit of that sense of freedom again, but I know better than to press my luck twice.
Which is how, after breakfast, I end up back upstairs in the attic.
I took the key with me after I left, the last time. I wondered if David would look for it—maybe with the idea of taking it himself and preventing me from going back in—but if he did try to find it, he didn’t let me know about it. I hid it in one of my toiletry bags in the bathroom, and evidently, that was not a place he thought to look.
The attic is just as dusty and dirty as before, and I start to sneeze the moment I walk in. Maybe this was a bad idea, I think as I walk around the edge of it, looking for anything I might have missed. It doesn’t feel quite as ominous as it did before, and I wonder if all my apprehension was just the difficulty of settling into a new place—especially one as isolated and lonely as this is. I feel a little foolish for being so worried, and I bite my lip, wondering if I should say something to David about that when I see him next. Maybe it could even be a little bit of an olive branch between us—me admitting that I overreacted.
There’s a wooden writing desk by one wall, surrounded by framed artwork that’s covered in dust, with a half-open box in front of it full of tangled Christmas lights. I step around the box, nudging it out of the way as I start to open the drawers.
The first two that I open are empty, with a layer of dust inside. I shut them, half-wondering if I’m wasting my time—but it’s not as if there’s something better for me to be doing downstairs. I open a third, finding a book that looks like it’s just a ledger, with scattered notes about various businesses—and then in the fourth, I finally find something interesting.
There’s a thin manila envelope tucked inside. I know I shouldn’t open it—it’s undoubtedly something personal, but my curiosity quickly gets the best of me. When I open it, I find a few glossy photos, slipped inside in a neat stack.
They’re recent, that’s for sure. Maybe a couple of years old, judging by the clothes that the woman in the picture is wearing. She’s very beautiful in a neat, elegant sort of way, with shoulder-length brown hair and a pleasant smile on her face. In each of the photos, she’s with a dark-haired man that I don’t recognize—in one, leaning across a table at a restaurant, in another, standing at a front door. It’s clear that the pictures were taken by someone watching her from afar—probably photos taken without her knowledge.
Something about one of the photos catches my eye, and I look at it three or four times before I realize what it is. The necklace that she has on—a long, lariat style with a teardrop ruby, hanging down over a chic sweater—is familiar.
It’s familiar because I saw it in the box on the other side of the attic, just a few days ago.
I can feel my pulse beating hard against the side of my throat. I push the drawer shut, still holding the photos and envelope in one hand, as I walk across the room to the stack of boxes that I’d found on my first visit up here.I’m imagining things,I tell myself as I sink down in front of the boxes, tucking the photos back into the envelope as I set it down on the floor.I saw something else. It can’t be the same necklace.
But when I open the box, I see it there, in the tangle of jewelry nestled atop the silk blouse. A white gold lariat necklace, the ruby at the bottom of it glinting in the dim light, the exact match to the one that the woman in the photo is wearing.
For a moment, I have the horrible urge to take it and put it on, to be wearing it when David gets back.He wouldn’t be able to hide his reaction then,I think darkly, reaching down to touch the ruby. Surely,thatwould shock him enough for me to catch a glimpse of what his real feelings are, if there’s something really wrong with all of this, or if I’m being paranoid.It would almost be worth his anger, I think, tangling my fingers through the necklace.
And then the blouse underneath shifts, and I catch a glimpse of rusty red on the fabric.
For a brief second, I feel my heart stop, chills rippling through me.It’s not that. It’s not what I think.I sit back hard on the floor, dropping the box, my fingers feeling numb. I stare at the dislodged sleeve, the stain on the edge of it around the gold button, and tell myself that it’s not blood.
But I know what blood looks like. It’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to mistake.
There’s an explanation.There are a number of reasons why a bloodstain could be on a woman’s blouse. It’s not a huge stain—something from a cut, maybe. An accidental injury. I nearly cut my finger just this morning, slicing strawberries in the kitchen.
There could be an explanation for it. Just as there could be an explanation for the photos of the brunette woman—the woman I feel certain this blouse belongs to—taken without her knowledge. An explanation for the necklace being packed away up here, along with the bloodstained blouse.
An explanation that doesn’t point to my husband, the man that I’ve married and followed out to this isolated old house, a man with the power and wealth of the mafia at his back, being somehow involved in that bloodstain and those photos.
With shaking hands, I close the box, sliding it back where it was before. I want to take the necklace, but I don’t. I leave it there, and I tuck the photos back where they were before, in the desk drawer where I found them. Until I have a better idea of what’s going on, I don’t dare risk David finding any of this in my possession—or coming up here and finding any of it gone.
