The train ride out to Montauk is endless.
Adam offered to pick me up and drive me there, but I couldn’t in good conscience make him drive six hours round-trip, and then another six hours to drive me home. If he drove twelve hours for me, I would feel obligated to take this job. Like when you go on a date with a guy and he buys you a lobster dinner, and then you feel like you owe him something.
Not that I date anymore. I’m done with that for at least the rest of this decade.
So I’m on the Long Island Railroad, and Adam has promised to reimburse me for my round trip ticket. I’ve snagged a window seat by myself, which wasn’t that difficult considering I’m going against traffic, and I’m pretty sure nobody is commuting all the way out here on a daily basis anyway. I’ve got my earbuds in, but I’ve tuned out the music as I watch the scenery fly by. At first, there are lots of houses and buildings. Then fewer houses and fewer buildings. Then just houses. Now it’s mostly green.
And I’ve still got another hour to go.
I get out my phone to try to find something to entertain me the rest of the journey. There’s a text message from Freddy on the lock screen. I changed my number, but somehow he keeps getting it. One of our mutual friends must be giving it to him. He hasn’t changed his number though, so I recognize the digits even without his name on the screen:
Please give me another chance. Please Sylvie.
I snort at the phone. By now, Freddy should know better than to think I’ll ever give him another chance. It’s because of him that I’m trekking out to Montauk to keep from living out on the street. This is his fault. My whole life is his fault. I start to block his number but before I can, another message pops up:
Please. I love you. I’ll do anything you say.
And then he is officially blocked. But knowing Freddy, he’ll figure out a way around it.
Adam told me he’d be waiting at the train station to pick me up. By the time the train pulls into its final stop, my neck feels stiff as a board. I take a moment to stretch myself out and gather my courage. That awful sensation has gotten worse and worse during the long train ride out to the tip of the island, but I do my best to push it away. I’m just feeling antsy because I’ve lived in the city for so long—that’s all it is.
I brought a light jacket, but it’s colder than I would’ve expected out here. And windy. The moment I dismount the train, a gust of wind goes through my jacket like it’s made of paper. I have no padding on my body anymore, so I’m cold most of the time even in warmer weather. I should’ve worn another sweater.
“Sylvia!”
I hear the familiar voice calling my name. I swivel my head to look down the platform—Adam is waving frantically at me. He’s dressed more appropriately than I am in a warm looking blue jacket with a scarf and a black hat on his head. Clearly, he’s very familiar with the weather out here.
He jogs over to me, a crooked grin on his face. In the last week, I had somehow forgotten how good-looking he is. Even in that bulky black wool hat, he’s more than a little cute.
But he’s also more than just a pretty face. When I went home and googled Adam Barnett after first meeting him, I discovered he had been overly modest when he called himself a writer. This guy has had three books that hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list. There are articles online that say he’s one of the best modern writers of our time. The next Stephen King. This guy is a big shot. And apparently, a bit of a recluse.
Then I googled Victoria Barnett. I found nothing. And believe me, I looked.
“You get in okay?” he asks anxiously. “How was the ride?”
“Long.” I hug my chest and shiver. “You know, it’s like ten degrees colder out here than it was in the city.”
He laughs. “Yeah. Today is cold. Do you want my scarf?”
Before I can say yes, he unwinds his dark green scarf from around his neck. I accept it graciously because I really am cold. It’s such a gallant gesture. Also, it smells nice. Like expensive aftershave.
Okay, I should probably quit smelling his scarf.
Adam leads me out to the parking lot. I got a little spark of excitement when he hits his key fob and the BMW lights up. The guy drives a BMW. I’ve never known anyone who drove a BMW before. I haven’t ever even owned a vehicle. Freddy drove a piece of junk car—a used Ford Fiesta with scratches all over it because he couldn’t afford to get it repainted. Half the time, he had to ask me to come downstairs and give him a push to get it started. To his credit, Adam looks mildly embarrassed when he sees the way I’m looking at his car.
“Don’t say it,” he says. “I know.” “Know what?”
“I’ve got a rich asshole car.” He slides into the leather driver’s seat and I climb into the car next to him. Wow, leather. I run my hand over the material. “But it handles really well in the snow. And Victoria loved it.”
I can’t help but notice he referred to his wife in the past tense. We’ve talked on the phone a couple of times since our initial meeting and he’s been very vague about his wife’s illness. I’m not sure why he doesn’t want to tell me.
I mean, I’m the one who’s going to be taking care of her. I need to know what’s wrong with her. Does she have arthritis? Lupus? Really bad food allergies? I can’t even imagine.
Adam must sense what I’m thinking, because as he pulls onto the main road, he blurts out, “She had a head injury.”
“Oh…”
“She fell down the stairs about nine months ago.” He winces. “In our house. We have this crazy winding staircase and… I was in the city all day with my publisher, so I didn’t find her till later. If I had been there…”
His voice breaks on those last words. I get an ache in my chest for him. It’s bad enough to have to deal with your wife being ill, but worse to blame yourself. I wonder if Victoria blames him too.
After about twenty minutes of driving mostly in silence, we come across an iron gate extending the length of a city block. When Adam hits the button in his car and the gates open, I realize this must be where he lives. He lives in a gigantic house surrounded by a freaking gate. At least there isn’t a moat and a dragon, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Adam must notice the way my mouth is hanging open. “Real estate is cheap out here,” he explains. “You can get a huge house for next to nothing.
That’s why we wanted to move out here. Even though it’s obviously not the most convenient.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, although I’m secretly thinking to myself that if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never be able to afford a house that looks like this.
Given how magnificent the house is, it’s surprising to see the grounds are so unkempt. The lawn is badly overgrown. There are leaves all over the place and branches hanging in the path to the garage. It gives the entire property a bit of an abandoned look to it. If somebody told me nobody lives here, I would believe it. Especially since there are no lights on inside the two-story house, even though Adam’s wife is supposedly inside.
“We used to have a gardener,” he explains. “But she… she’s no longer with us…”
He gets a sad expression on his face. Despite how attractive and wildly successful he is, Adam looks like a man who has had a hard life. At least, he’s had a rough go of things lately. It makes me like him even better.
The inside of the house is even more magnificent than the outside. I feel like I’m walking into an opera house or something. The living room is so large, I feel like it could swallow me up. I could fit five of my studio apartments in this room alone. There’s an enormous sectional sofa abutting a real working fireplace and a widescreen television. Everything in this house is shiny new and painfully expensive-looking.
Adam is watching me, so I feel like I need to say something. But all I can manage is, “Wow. This place is…”
“Big, right?” His face lights up at my expression—it’s clear he loves this house. “That’s why we wanted it. We used to live in this apartment in the city and it was so tiny. When Victoria first walked in here, she spun around in circles with her hands out.”
I can relate to Victoria because I kind of want to do the same thing. This house is made for spinning around in circles with your hands stretched out.
My eyes rest on a photograph on the mantle above the fireplace. It’s a picture of Adam with his arm around a young woman with blond hair. “Is… is that her?” I ask.
He nods. “Yes…”
I take a step closer to get a better look, hoping he won’t think me rude. Victoria is… well, she’s beautiful. She has long golden hair worn loose
around her face and she’s wearing a stunning black dress that she fills out perfectly.
But the thing I can’t stop looking at is Victoria’s face. She’s pretty, but it’s more than that. Her face is so open and honest and fresh and her smile is so friendly. I’ve always worn too much makeup, but Victoria is wearing hardly any, and it suits her. She looks like the sort of person that you meet and instantly like. She looks so happy in the photo.
She has no idea what’s about to happen to her. “She’s beautiful,” I finally say.
“Yes.” His eyes drop. “She is.”
He looks so sad, I wish I hadn’t said anything.
He clears his throat. “She’s upstairs. Do you want to meet her?”
I look at the flight of steps to get to the second floor. He wasn’t kidding when he said it was a long and twisted staircase. The steps are almost painfully steep, with barely enough room for a foot on each landing. If somebody took a spill down that entire flight, they wouldn’t walk away so easily. I look at the foot of the stairs, imagining the blond woman from the photograph lying there with her limbs twisted around her.
I shiver again. Is there a draft in this house?
I follow Adam up the flight of stairs, clinging to the banister for dear life. If I fall down the stairs and have a brain injury, I don’t have a husband to hire people to take care of me twenty-four hours a day, so I better be damn careful on these steps.
“I don’t leave her alone,” Adam explains to me as we mount the steps. “Her nurse, Eva, is with her right now. That’s where I’m hoping you’ll come in. So Eva can have a break. And… me too.”
He’s embarrassed to admit he needs a break from his wife. But I get it. “No problem.”
I follow Adam down a long hallway. This house is so big, there must be at least five or six bedrooms up here. He takes me to a room at the very end of the hallway on the right. “This is Victoria’s room.”
“You don’t share a bedroom?” I blurt out.
Adam’s green eyes widen. Why did I say that? Why do I keep saying such stupid things? Who am I to judge his sleeping arrangements?
“No,” he finally answers. “She needs a lot of equipment and… We just… No, we don’t anymore. No.”
“Of course,” I say quickly. “I get it.”
Adam raps his fist once against the closed door. Then we wait as I hold my breath.
“Come in!” an accented voice calls out.
I release the breath as Adam opens the door to the room. The first thing I see is an extremely large woman. She has close-cropped black hair and a light brown skin color. Her arms are easily the width of my upper thighs, and she looks like she could toss me onto her shoulder and jog around the house with me on her back. I try to guess her age, but she could be anywhere between thirty and sixty.
“Mr. Adam,” she says in an unidentifiable accent. “You are back.”
“Yes.” He flashes a very forced-looking smile. “Eva, I’d like you to meet Sylvia. She’s going to be helping out with Victoria. Hopefully.” He winks at me. “Sylvia, this is Eva.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Hello.”
I get the sense that Eva and I are not going to end up being the best of friends. I clear my throat. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’m very much looking forward to meeting Victoria.”
Eva swivels her head and I follow her gaze to the window. And that’s when I see the wheelchair set up to face the rear window. The chair has a headrest, but I can see golden locks flowing around the black material.
“Is that her?” I ask, even though it’s ridiculously obvious that it is.
Who else would it be?
“Yes.” Adam smiles crookedly. “Come over and say hello.”
I walk around the hospital bed, careful not to trip on what appears to be a mechanical lift for getting in and out of the bed. Adam steps aside to let me get close to the wheelchair. The chair is tilted just enough that I can see Victoria’s face.
And before I can help myself, I let out a strangled gasp.
