Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HER — PRESENT DAY

The next morning when I wake up, my entire body is stiff and sore. Since midway through the pregnancy, I haven’t slept well anyway. If I’m not waking up to her kicking me in the ribs or myself gasping for air because I feel like I can’t breathe, I’m waking up to pee for the thirteenth time that night or because I accidentally rolled onto my back and panicked because pregnant women are only supposed to sleep on their sides.

It’s not easy remembering all the rules. In the beginning, Cal charted them for me. He left little reminders everywhere:

On the fridge,

No deli meat!

On my nightstand,

Don’t forget your prenatal vitamin!

On the bathroom mirror,

Keep the temperature in the bath low!

On the coffee pot,

Doctor says just one cup per day!

Finally, I had to tell him his actions were causing me more stress than anything and that I felt like I was constantly being watched and chastised. It wasn’t healthy. The next day, all of the signs were down, and I could tell he was making an effort to spend less time reminding me of all the warnings the doctor had given me.

I want our daughter to be healthy, of course I do, but no one warns you about how hard it will be. Pregnancy is a brutal battle every day to keep this precious life inside of you alive until the moment it’s violently ripped from your body. We don’t talk about that enough.

In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and change clothes as quickly as I possibly can. As I do, I can’t stop the way my eyes scan the mirror, looking for a camera lens or some evidence that these people are not who they say they are. That they might be, as I suspect, monitoring us in some way. That they might mean to harm us.

From the moment we arrived they’ve given me the creeps, and coming into the house last night unannounced, watching us, was the final straw. I want to leave. I don’t care that we aren’t supposed to check out for another day. I want to get our things and get away from this house. My only mission for the day is to get Cal to agree.

When I return to the bedroom, Cal is already gone. I find him in the kitchen, a pot of coffee brewing as he leans back against the counter.

“Good morning, my love,” he says, eyes still sleepy.

“Morning.” I wrap the oversized cardigan I’m wearing around myself tighter, shivering from the cold, drafty house.

“Sleep well?” He pours himself a cup of coffee, then hands me a mug. For a moment, I think it’s coffee, and my heart surges, but quickly I spot the tea bag. Herbal tea is nice, but sometimes I miss the taste of coffee. In the beginning, it was allowed, but after my blood pressure started charting too high, it had to be cut out altogether.

“Not really,” I admit, blowing on my tea as I make my way to the counter, preparing my argument. When I reach it, I set my mug down and sigh. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“Okay.”

“I think we should leave early.”

He waits, like he’s expecting me to say more, and maybe I should, but I really want to gauge his reaction to this. “Early?” he asks gently. “You mean early in the morning?”

“No.” I rotate the mug back and forth for something to do. “I mean now. I want to leave today.”

His face is solemn and still as he processes what I’ve said. Finally, his mouth opens. “You want to end the vacation early.”

It’s not a question, but I nod. “Yes. I do.”

He places his mug down and crosses the space between us cautiously. “May I…ask why?”

I can’t believe I have to spell it out for him. For a man so worried about protecting me, I can’t understand why he doesn’t already have the bags packed and us heading out the door. Truthfully, I don’t understand why we didn’t leave last night. If it were up to me, maybe we would have.

“I don’t feel safe here, Cal,” I admit, my heart picking up speed in my chest. I need him to agree with me, to see what I’m saying. I need him to understand. “Every time we turn around, these creepy neighbors are here, and last night was the final strike for me. Coming into the house unannounced while we were here. Who knows what they could’ve seen or overheard. Who knows if that was the only time they’ve even done it. What if they were here the first night, too? What if they were, like, watching us sleep or something?”

He smirks. “Watching us sleep? I think someone’s been reading too much Twilight .”

My expression is pinched as frustration wells in my gut. “I’m serious. I want to leave, okay? I find myself looking over my shoulders, not saying things because I worry someone’s listening.” I lower my voice. “For all we know, they have cameras in the house, and they’re watching us. I’m getting paranoid, and I can’t stay here any longer.”

He looks as though he might laugh. “Wait. Are you serious? You really want to go home? This trip was your idea. It was important to you.”

“Are you serious? You actually disagree? You think I’m wrong? It doesn’t matter how important it was before if we’re in danger now. Our safety is all that matters to me.”

All the laughter fades from his expression. “No, of course. It’s not that I think you’re wrong, I just…I mean, they seem harmless. Maybe a bit weird or lonely, but harmless. Maybe, somehow, we didn’t shut the door all the way last night, like she said, and the wind blew it open. If it was my house, and I got an alert that it had been standing open for some time, I’d come to check it out too. I think it was probably all an innocent misunderstanding. And I told them last night how inappropriate it was. They were obviously embarrassed. I can’t see them doing it again.”

I stare at him, completely dumbfounded. “You weren’t saying any of this last night. You seemed just as upset as I am.”

“Yeah, but I’ve had time to sleep on it now, and I think I was overreacting a little bit. It had been a long day and we were both tired. They were probably tired, too.” He pauses, running his hands over my arms. “Look, I get that it’s weird, but I really think it’s fine. I don’t think there was anything malicious about what they did. We’ll make sure we triple-check the doors, and we can even put a chair or something in front of it, so we know we’ll hear it if someone opens it. Would that make you feel better?”

“But shouldn’t we have heard it when they opened the door last night, unless they were being quiet on purpose? Wouldn’t she have called out?”

“Well, she did say she knocked, right? But I was in the bathroom, and you’d already fallen asleep. We just missed it.”

“I hadn’t fallen asleep,” I argue.

He sighs. “We only have another day left, and I really want today to be about us after we’ve had so much going on the past two days. I know how important this trip was to you.” Watching me carefully for any sign that I might agree or change my mind, his eyes move across my face. When I don’t budge, when I refuse to give in, he finally drops his hands from my arms, returning to his mug on the counter. “But…if you want to leave, if it’ll make you feel better, we can go. We’ll just check out a day early. It’ll be fine.”

I nod, no need to think about my answer. “Yes. That’s what I want to do. I want to leave today. Right now.” I’m paranoid and exhausted, and I’ve never wanted anything more than I want to get out of this cabin and back home where I’m safe.

“Okay.” I can tell he’s not happy about it, but at least he’s agreeing. He pulls out his phone, but I stop him.

“What are you doing?”

“Uh, I’m going to call George and let him know we’re leaving early.”

“ No, wait. ” The words escape my lips like a runner after the starting gun has sounded.

His eyes jerk up to find mine. “What’s wrong? I need to let them know we’re leaving so they can keep an eye on the place and get it ready for the next guests. We can’t just leave. It’s common courtesy.”

“Of course. I’m just asking you to wait until after we’ve left to tell them we’re gone,” I say firmly. “We’ll pack up and get going, and then you can let them know. Once we’re safely away from here.”

“What do you think they’re going to do? Attack us? Come lock us in here?” At first, he’s teasing, obviously unafraid of what they might be capable of, but it quickly turns to frustration and disbelief. “For heaven’s sake, they walked out of here last night and every other time completely fine. They’re not monsters, woman. They’re just weirdos.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Please just do what I’m asking.”

When I look at him again, his eyes flick to my stomach. He puffs a breath of air between his lips, but eventually he nods. “Yeah. All right. I guess I’ll…start packing our bags, then.”

“Thank you.”

Leaving his coffee on the counter, he moves past me and into the bedroom without another word. I know he’s angry, and I can’t say that I blame him, but I need to trust my gut here, even if it’s probably wrong. They might not have done anything dangerous yet, but something about this couple makes me feel off. They’re watching me, watching us too closely. And the total disregard for our privacy last night was unacceptable. I didn’t expect to see the owners of the house even once during this trip, but we’ve already seen them three times. Actually, four if you count the time I saw them outside the window. And each time has somehow been progressively worse.

While he packs our bags, I set to work cleaning up the house. I put the remaining few dirty dishes in the dishwasher and wipe down the counter and microwave.

Suddenly, a worrying thought occurs to me. My eyes fall on the cabinet in front of the sink, and I bend down, opening the door slowly and peering around at the drain where George was looking last night. It’s ridiculous, of course, but is it possible he put a camera there? I move my hand around in the dark, fingers carefully gliding over the underside of the sink and along the back of the drain, jumping whenever I hit a bump or uneven spot.

Nothing.

Of course there’s nothing.

The theory was irrational. Even if they did know how to work the technology needed for hidden cameras, they wouldn’t have installed it in front of us, surely. We’d know where to look then.

Feeling foolish, I head for the bedroom, where I find Cal putting the last of his toiletries into his suitcase before he zips it up and does a final check of the bathroom.

“I think that’s the last of it,” he says when he returns, wiping a hand along his forehead. “Oh, phone chargers.” He zips past me to grab my phone charger from where it’s plugged into the wall, then collects his from the other side before shoving them both into my suitcase. Then he places his hands into his pockets. “So. Are you still sure about this?”

“Positive,” I tell him. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Okay, then. Everything’s packed, so we still need to clean up and?—”

“I cleaned everything up, so we just need to get the food from the fridge, and we’ll be ready to go.”

“Right.” He pulls his suitcase from the bed and rolls it out of the room. I grab my clothes from mine and change quickly as I do a final sweep of the bedroom before hauling my bag off the bed and into the living room. Within an hour, our things have been cleared out of the house, and it’s as clean as when we arrived. We take out the trash and sweep the floors for good measure, though sweeping wasn’t listed on the required cleaning list stuck to the fridge.

Despite his obvious frustration with me, Cal refuses to let me carry my bag to the car. He leads me there first, holding on to my arm to keep me from slipping. Even when he’s annoyed with me, he wants to protect me. It’s probably the safest and most taken care of I’ve ever felt in a relationship. The kind of love where anger doesn’t surpass your overwhelming need to keep the other safe.

At my request, Cal waits until we’ve driven away from the house to send Norma and George a message about checking out early. Once the message has been sent, he wastes no time manually checking us out in the app.

Not even a minute has passed before his phone rings. My heart leaps into my throat at the thought of talking to them again, of facing them in any way. I can’t explain it other than to say I’m scared of them and what they might do, and they make me uncomfortable in the way they watch me so intently, like I’m something they’ve never seen before. As if I’m a celebrity or a UFO.

I could never explain that to Cal, though. As much as he’d try to understand, he just wouldn’t. Maybe no man ever could. I know we have similar conversations about why I lock doors the second I enter them and why I’m never okay standing outside of cars having a chat when we could just as easily be inside the car in safety.

It’s not paranoia if it’s necessary.

Being a woman means constantly being aware of your vulnerable spots and your weaknesses in any situation. It’s looking for the way out when you enter a room and scanning for safe faces among the crowd. It’s sizing up the other women, wondering if they’d stand with the men should it come to that.

Sometimes I hate it, the fear and nagging worry that seems to plague me at all times, but my mother always called it a gift. It’s years of our ancestors speaking through our gut and intuition, letting us know when something isn’t right. It’s every bit a superpower as far as she was concerned, and right now mine is firing in every direction.

Something is up with these people. We are not safe around them.

He puts the phone to his ear next to me. “Hello?” There’s a pause and then, “Yeah, unfortunately.” Pause. “Well, we cleaned everything up, and it’s all ready for—no, no, of course, we don’t expect any sort of discount for a change of plans on our end. It was a lovely st—” He pauses. “Um, okay, I’ll have to see. Can I call you back in just a minute?” When he ends the call, he looks at me. “They want us to come back.”

“What?” My stomach plummets.

“Apparently they got you some sort of gift for the baby that they were planning to give you before we left.”

Ice sluices through my veins. “Absolutely not. We’re not going back.”

His face wrinkles. “Are you sure? I could just run by and meet them at the door. You don’t have to get out. It was really nice of them to get you something.”

“No.” The word rips from my throat. “It was very nice, but no. I feel like it could be a trap.”

“A trap?” he repeats, clearly growing annoyed with my fear.

“Cal, please.”

To his credit, he finally gives in. “Okay. Sure. I’ll…I’ll handle it.”

“Do not give them our address,” I say firmly.

“Do you know these people or something? What am I missing here?”

“It’s just a feeling,” I admit.

“A feeling.” He releases a breath. “Got it.”

After he calls and lets them know our decision, the remainder of the car ride is made in silence. With exhaustion coursing through me, I doze in and out. When I’m awake, I can tell he’s angry with me—and the change to his well-crafted plans—but I can’t bring myself to care. Being out of that house has filled me with such a feeling of fresh air, like I’ve stepped out of a dusty basement and onto a mountainside.

When we get home, he stops in the parking lot and goes for our bags without a word. This isn’t new to me. Cal isn’t the type of man to get angry and yell. He’s raised his voice to me less than a handful of times in our relationship. Instead, he closes off. He gets quiet. He deals with the problem inside his head, works out the steps to resolve it, and then comes to me with a resolution. It’s not ideal. I’d much rather talk it all out right here and now, even if it comes to screaming, but I’m trying to be more considerate of what he needs. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Cal, he has to do things his way, even if I don’t understand it.

When we make it to the front door and inside, I freeze. Immediately, every hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

“What’s wrong?” Cal asks, coming in behind me and setting our bags down on the ground, but I don’t have to answer. He sees it, too.

The blankets he meticulously folded on the couch have been thrown on the floor. There’s a photo of the two of us missing from the wall. Farther down, a lamp has been knocked off the side table.

I turn back to face him, my eyes wide. “Someone’s been inside our apartment.”