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I push the box aside, reaching for another. When I open this one, my fingers touch something stiff, and I freeze.
Inside, there’s more clothing. A pair of slim women’s trousers in a cream color, and a light blue blouse—both of them bloodstained. I jerk my hand back, staring down at the clothes, and I swallow hard as I try to resist the urge to vomit.
This isn’t the smaller stain that was on the sleeve of the other shirt. There’s a spray of blood across this blouse, spattered over the fabric of the trousers, long since stained. Enough to stiffen the fabric, and I look at the clothing uncomprehendingly, wondering why anyone would keep this. Why it’s in this closet, tucked away for god knows how long.
Gingerly, I move the fabric aside—and I feel a sharp nick of pain in my finger as something sharp presses against it.
“Shit!” I yank my hand back, peering down into the box, hoping that I haven’t just stabbed myself with a needle. I haven’t—but what I see underneath the clothing is nearly as bad. There’s a knife, the blade still crusted with more blood, and I wince, clutching my hand into a fist and trying not to panic about the fact that I just cut my finger on a dirty knife.
A dirty, bloodied knife—tucked into a closet under bloodied clothes, in a locked room in my husband’s house. I feel the sharp pang of a migraine coming on, my head aching with confusion and fear and stress, and I swallow hard, looking down at the box as if it might give me some answers.
And then, at the very bottom, I see something that might.
There’s a leather-bound book. I reach for it, knowing before I even touch it that I’m almost certainly intruding on something private—but just as I couldn’t stop myself from breaking into the room, I can’t stop myself from slipping the book out of the box. I open it, and see that the pages are full of prim, slanted handwriting, the tops of some of the pages dated.
It’s a diary—and the name on the inside of the first page makes it obvious who it belongs to.
Bria Carravella.
I close the box, pulse racing in my throat as I do my best to put the room back together the way it was before I broke in, still holding the diary. There’s no re-locking the room, but from the state of the dust when I came in, no one has entered it in a very, very long time. I just have to hope that David won’t decide to check and see if the door is still locked anytime soon.
There’s no sign of David when I come out of the room, no sounds to suggest that he’s home. It’s nearly dinnertime, but I can’t imagine trying to eat right now. My stomach is in knots, the nausea barely held at bay, and I try to think of where I could go to read the diary where he might not surprise me and see what I’m doing.
I end up retreating to the bath with a half a glass of wine, the little bit that I know I’d be allowed while pregnant. I’m sure David would have something to say about it if he knew, but I can’t bring myself to care—I don’t know how I’m meant to get through this otherwise. I lock the bathroom door behind me, stripping off my clothes and leaving them in a pile next to the tub as I slip underneath the steaming water. The diary sits on the edge of the tub, mocking me with what might be inside, and I reach for it gingerly, as afraid to find out the truth as I am to keep not knowing.
The script inside is elegant and pretty at first, looping with a steady hand. It’s dated a little over two years ago, and I lean back in the tub, my breath catching as I start to read.
Today is my wedding day.My second wedding day, which isn’t something that any woman in my position hopes for. Much less that the second wedding will be to the brother of the first. I always knew families like ours were fucked up—this whole world feels like some kind of waking nightmare sometimes—but this feels even worse than the usual. I don’t know how I’m meant to go to bed with him in that house, the same one I shared with Lucio. If I’m lucky, we’ll go to a hotel. But I still don’t know how I’m going to ever touch him.
Sometimes, when I look down at my hands, I think I’ll still see blood.
I stare at the page.Why would she have blood on her hands?Another disjointed piece of the puzzle, something else that doesn’t make sense. I feel that throb of a headache again, the feeling that all of this is beyond me. With that feeling comes anger—because if David would justtellme what happened, I wouldn’t have to do all of this. I wouldn’t have to snoop and sleuth. I wouldknowif I’m in danger, if my child is. I would know what happened.
I can’t stand him.I can’t stand this place. I feel like I want to scream every moment of every day. He acts as if I’m the one in the wrong, as if my coldness is hurting him somehow. Why couldn’t they just let me go? I know the answer, of course—it’s Marcus. My child. He’ll inherit all of this one day after David. If I hadn’t had a child with Lucio, I’d be free now.
I bite my lip,scanning the entry again. It almost sounds as if Bria resented her child, and the thought makes my chest ache as I wonder if I might feel the same eventually. Will I wish that David and I hadn’t been so reckless in Ibiza eventually? Will I see our child as just another shackle holding me to a marriage that’s making me miserable?
It’s not as if I wouldn’t have ended up with a child eventually, one way or another. From the moment I saidI do, it was always a ticking clock until I would provide the Carravella family with their next heir. But Bria’s first husband’s death meant she might have had a way out. Her child shackled her even more thoroughly to something she didn’t want.
I’ve convincedDavid to let us have separate bedrooms. It wasn’t that hard; he says he hates sleeping next to me anyway, that I behave as if he’s going to violate me at any moment? How am I supposed to feel, when he says Marcus isn’t enough? That his father demands that I have a child with David, too? He acts as if it’s hurting him to have to fuck me when he knows I don’t want it. As if all men don’t want a woman at their beck and call. Like he doesn’t enjoy the power he has over me.
I stare at the page,feeling my breath catch. The hatred flowing off the page feels almost palpable. I think of David in bed with the pretty brunette woman from the photo and feel a hot flush of jealousy—but I also think of something else. I remember him pinning me to the dinner table, his face taut with need, the half-broken way he asked me to say that I wanted him. As if it mattered to him that I wanted it, too. That I was as helpless in the face of my desire as he was.
It’s the first time that some of this has really felt like it makes sense. I don’t know for sure that I’m right, but as I look over that last entry, I have the dawning idea that David’s obsession with my desire has something to do with this—with the fact that the first woman he married made him feel as if he were forcing her in bed.
So, is he a monster? Is he responsible for her death? Or is there something else going on here?
I don’t know. And nothing has told me for certain what the truth is. I reach for the diary again, flipping to the next page.
David is moreand more frustrated with me. He can’t get me pregnant unless we sleep together, and he refuses to keep doing it like this, the way things are. I suggested a doctor’s intervention, but that just made him angrier—he said it would be humiliating if it got out. If anyone knew. I wonder sometimes when he looks at Marcus if he resents him. There’s no closeness between them. He’s David’s nephew, not his son. I wonder if that makes David hate him.
A chill ripplesdown my spine, and I turn the pages faster, thinking of the graveyard. The child’s tombstone next to Bria’s, smaller, a reminder of a life cut much too short.
Marcus is sick. The doctor says it’s RSV, a particularly bad case, that it’s bad luck. That we have the best of care and they’ll do everything for him. But it’s my fault. I know it must be. I wished him away. I wished to be free of all of this. And now my baby is sick.
David is angry with me.He says I’m being ridiculous, paranoid, that none of this is my fault. He’s worried, I can tell—but I don’t think it’s because he cares about Marcus. He’s worried about his precious family line. I heard him on the phone with his father earlier tonight. I heard him saying that he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Marcus dies. That he doesn’t know how he can have another child with me. That’s what he’s thinking about right now.
I won’t dothis anymore. I won’t, I won’t—
