“We should take a ride to the mainland together,” I said, sidling up to him. “Just you and me.”
He wasn’t unaffected. The quickness in his breathing gave him away.
“Think how much fun we could have,” I pressed. My voice was sticky sweet, and the way I smoothed my palm down his chest was borderline inappropriate.
He grabbed my wrist before I could get anywhere interesting. “If you keep this up, I’m going to have to limit your access to just the house.”
The island already felt small and claustrophobic. I couldn’t survive confined to the house.
Interpreting my frown, he added, “It’s for your safety.”
For your safety. There was that phrase again.
“What exactly did my husband say to you about me?” I asked, my tone close to pleading.
Lou frowned and looked out over the horizon. “I’m afraid I’m not the one to ask.”
There was no question who was the one to ask. When I got back to the house, I stormed into the kitchen where I could hear Tom and Joette singing together while they peeled potatoes.
“What did he tell you?” I demanded. “What did Edward tell you that convinced you that keeping me a prisoner was a matter of my safety?”
Tom looked to her mother. Joette sighed and wiped her hands on her apron. “Why don’t you sit down?”
I didn’t want to sit down.
But it was mid-December. Including the time with Edward, I’d been on the island five weeks, and if I had any hope of leaving, I realized I had to change my tactics.
I sat down.
Joette took my hand in hers, and as much as I wanted to find it patronizing, I didn’t. It felt warm and comforting, even as the terrible words crossed her lips.
“Edward confided in us the truth,” she said, tenderly. “About your mental health. About your delusions. Of course he isn’t keeping you captive here, darling. He’s trying to protect you. We all are. What a wonderful husband you have that he devotes such attention to his sick wife, even from afar.”
I snatched my hand away from hers and tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. My word against yours. That’s what I’d said to him. That’s what my plan had been in trapping him with my game. He’d beat me to it. Whatever credibility I might have had with his staff was taken away by him simply telling them that I was crazy.
I’d said it before, but I hadn’t believed it until right then. Hadn’t truly believed it. I was Edward’s prisoner. The only way I’d leave the island was if he chose to let me go.
Six
The gifts began arriving as soon as I stopped trying to leave.
The first was the clothes. I’d already been quite vocal to everyone who would hear it about my limited wardrobe. I’d come to the island expecting to be there for two weeks. Two weeks that I’d planned to do nothing but seduce my husband, which meant I’d brought lots of short dresses and skimpy swimsuits. Though December in the Caribbean was still fairly temperate, the rainy season was in full swing and more than once I’d wished for a pair of yoga pants. And a sweater. And some jeans. A pantsuit.
More than once I’d thought about the monthly stipend Edward had promised me as his wife. More than once I fantasized spending it. One hundred thousand pounds could go a long way on Fifth Avenue.
In the end, I hadn’t had to spend my money on clothing at all—if I actually had any money. Because when Eliana returned the following week from her grocery run, she’d come back with boxes and boxes of clothes.
“Thank you for finally listening,” I exclaimed as I tore into the first box, noting the designer label on the outside of the package.
“You’re welcome, but it wasn’t me,” she said with a shrug. “This is all thanks to your husband.”
I considered taking a pair of scissors to whatever I found inside, but it was too perfect—a red jersey wrap dress that was just my style. They were all perfect, every item. Every outfit was tailored to me, as though I’d been measured, as though I’d personally selected them.
And there was clothing for a range of occasions, from fancy to casual, all of them designer made. With designer shoes to match.
So he’d found a personal shopper and given her a big check. That wasn’t hard. I was grateful for the clothes, but I wasn’t grateful to him.
Except, then I found the notes, handwritten and tucked inside each item. Simple, brief notes that said things such as Reminds me of the dress you wore to that first dinner at my house on a floral sundress, and A casual Sunday look on a printed jumpsuit, and White, the color that wedding dresses should be on a white pair of linen pants.
He’d had a hand in the selection. Even if he hadn’t done the shopping himself, he’d chosen with thought and then made sure I knew it.
But he was still my captor.
I crumpled all the notes and threw them into my bathroom wastebasket.
Then, after putting away all my clothes, one hundred pieces in all, I pulled the notes back out of the wastebasket and shoved them into the drawer of my nightstand. I wouldn’t read them again; I didn’t care about what they said or what they meant, but neither could I bear to let them go.
The next day Dreya invited me to morning yoga.
“I used to lead classes at the resorts in Nassau. Now I teach it to the kids.” Dreya, I’d learned, was primarily responsible for homeschooling and caring for the fourteen children that lived on the island. She didn’t shoulder the burden completely on her own; the other men and women rotated their duties to assist her, and though the youngest, Marge and Erris’s baby, was only four months old, Mateo and Sanyjah’s eldest two girls, at fourteen and fifteen years of age, were tasked with a fair amount of childcare as well as grandma watching.
And all of them, including Azariah, Joette’s eighty-five-year-old mother, apparently met on the beach near the staff quarters every morning for yoga.
I’d always hated yoga. I hated group exercise in general, but particularly one that had me twisting in silly positions with weird names.
But island life had left me lonely. I had no internet. I had no phone. And most of my interactions with the staff had remained transactional. I ate my meals alone. I took my daily run alone. I spent my time alone.
So I accepted the invitation to yoga. I bent and stretched and laughed when five-year-old Jaden toppled over out of Vrksasana and smiled impressively when Azariah did a full back bend that I was smart enough not to even attempt.
And when the whole sequence was almost done and I lay in Balasana, child’s pose, my forehead on the mat that Dreya had provided, the sound of gentle sighs around me mixing with the crash of ocean waves behind us, I realized I could breathe easier and deeper than I had in a very long time.
“Will you join us tomorrow?” Dreya asked when the mats were all cleared up, and I had nothing to do but leave to go back to the main house.
“I’ll be here any day you let me,” I answered honestly.
“Every weekday then.”
I gave her an answering smile. “I’d like that.”
“Your husband will be pleased to hear.”
I didn’t let that final remark ruin it, letting it fall off me as I turned to go on my way, but I knew without being explicitly told that the invitation hadn’t really come from Dreya at all.