Although that had nothing to do with the shifting.
Shivering, she went over to the sliding door, and as she reached out to put her forefinger on a sensor, she caught sight of herself in the reflective glass. Her hair was longer than it had been for years, the sun-streaked blond ends grown out dark from so much time indoors, the ragged tips down below her shoulders. Her body had always been lean, but now it was scrawny from her having only picked at her food for months. Her face was hollow, her eyes pits of emotion.
She looked like a different person. Then again, she had been transformed.
With a shaking hand, she put her fingertip on the reader, and when there was a click, she opened the slider and stepped back into her bedroom. Their bedroom—
Why in the hell is Daniel smoking? What the fuck is wrong with him. Why in the hell is Daniel smoking—
That refrain had been going through her head since she’d seen him hiding in the woods with a literal coffin nail all lit up, but it wasn’t the only repeater: What the hell does it matter.
The latter was even more devastating.
Closing herself in, she went over to the bed. Standing next to the salad of messy sheets and comforters, she stared through her tears and tried to figure out whether she was heartbroken or mad. Then she segued back into whether her emotions mattered. Which they didn’t. Parsing out the nuances in the shit stew she was in when it came to her feelings was like getting upset if he was smoking: Nothing was going to change the trajectory they were both on.
Wiping her face with her palm, she picked a pillow up off the floor and thought back to the beginning of their relationship—when they’d just been dealing with people at the Wolf Study Project being killed, and bomb threats, and her getting stalked, and, you know, easy-peasy stuff like gunshot wounds, poisoned wolves, and embezzlement. Back then, there would have been good reasons for bedding to be in disarray. Happy reasons.
Erotic reasons.
Closing her lids, she remembered the first time Daniel had kissed her in the kitchen of her little rented house. She could picture him so clearly, leaning into her, their mouths meeting for that electric moment, the contact soft and explosive.
She had known then, deep inside, that he was going to change her life. And she’d been right. It had just not been in the ways she’d expected at the start.
Standing naked over their bed of chaos, she thought back to the way they’d spent the night together. The black satin sheets were in disarray because he’d been sick twice, both of them scrambling for the bathroom each time, him because he was worried he wouldn’t make it, her because she was worried that it was so much more than vomiting.
He’d always had side effects that were worse than the cancer, the symptoms draining and distressing, the unknowns and complications slipping underneath the umbrella of doom to rain on their heads. It was a constant scramble, and so of course their relationship had become all about his health. They were always on the front lines of his body and what was going on inside of it, always monitoring and assessing every twinge and each grand mal issue—and then, on top of that, were all the protocols, the scans, the plans. The failures.
Dear God, always the failures.
Turning away, she went to the pile of clothes that she’d taken off before she’d left. She’d folded them carefully, even though they weren’t worth much, because establishing even a small amount of order seemed important. The layers went back on sequentially: underwear, socks, pants, shirt, sweater, down-filled vest. That last one was probably unnecessary. She had no idea where she thought she was going.
The next thing she knew, she was making the bed as if she expected some agent from the Federal Bureau of Mattress Control to assess the effort and decide if she should be put in jail for felonious sheeting. When everything was smoothed and tucked, and the pillows back at the headboard, and the extra duvet folded at the foot, she stepped away and double-checked that things were even on both sides.
Then she marched into the en suite loo, got her Clorox wipes container out from under the sink, and began yanking the damp white sheets out of the top. As she returned to the bedroom proper, the fresh linen scent blooming in the overheated, stuffy space was fresh air’s poor relation, but it was better than nothing. With Daniel’s neuropathy, he was always cold, so they’d been running the furnace in this part of the house since before Labor Day—something she didn’t like, but was more than willing to put up with for his comfort.
But the fragrance wasn’t the point. She had to disinfect surfaces that were not infected.
Because… reasons.
Moving throughout the black-and-white room, Lydia wiped everything down, from the lacquered chests of drawers, bed stands, and seating area, to the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, to the framed mirror and the jambs around the doors. She left the oil paintings alone, the abstracts that matched the black paneling covered with glass that she was worried the wipes would leave a fog on. And anything that had fabric she also gave a pass to.
After all the effort… she felt little satisfaction and needed something else to do.
Closet. Walk-in closet.
Even if her wipes were fairly useless, surely there had to be something to fold in there. Put in a drawer. Hang up, stuff in the laundry bag, line up shoe-to-shoe.
Emerging into the windowless enclave, she ran out of steam as the motion-activated lights came on. At a good thirty-by-fifteen feet, the closet seemed as big as the house she’d rented in Walters, and the space was kitted out with custom-made black-lacquered cubbies, bureaus, and compartments. There was also a section of shelves to put shoes on, and a center built-in with enough drawers to stash a dozen wardrobes the size of Lydia’s. Overhead, a pair of rock crystal chandeliers provided glowing illumination, and under her feet, the black carpet was plush as a mattress—
And there it was.
All the way in the back, tucked in as if it were a dirty little secret, her single suitcase was a narrow, bright blue panel that reminded her she was a guest in this massive mansion—and that her stay was going to terminate when Daniel… terminated.
“So are you going to put that luggage to use?”
At the sound of his voice, she closed her eyes. And before she could think of anything to say, or even turn around, his harsh breathing registered. Pivoting, she looked at him in alarm. His knit hat was off-kilter, his face bright red, his mouth open, the wheezing so pronounced that she snapped into nurse mode, even though she wasn’t one.
“Sit down,” she said as she lunged for him. “Come here—”
He batted at her hands and took a step away. Lost his balance and dropped his cane. Stumbled and fell into one of the empty compartments where suits should have hung on matched hangers. His body nailed the back panel loud enough to echo, and for a moment, he just went still. Like he was a brittle object, broken.
“I’m okay,” he said in a weak voice.
When she tried to help him out of the nook, he shoved her hand to the side again. And then they just stayed separate, him conforming into the base of the sectional, her sitting back on her ass on the thick, luxurious carpet. The fact that they were surrounded by empty segments where things should have been seemed apt.
God, his breathing sounded so bad.
Lydia pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her cheek on them, her head turned away so she was staring at her suitcase. Why had she bought one that was such a bright color, she wondered numbly. That was not her style.