He pulled her close. Her body collapsed into his, but he held her up and allowed her to wail. She wondered how she could live with so much death, when safety was just an illusion and there was no hope for anything better. No hope of sunshine or green grass. No hope for spring to remove all that black, blood-stained snow outside. No hope for a life where betrayal and lies didn’t put people into the ground.
She dreamed of a better world and prayed for God to end the one she was in now.
ELISE WOKE IN a cold sweat. Under an array of sleeping bags and thick blankets, she should have been roasting, but her skin was cold and clammy. The walls and the ceiling seemed to move in toward her. She took in a stuttering breath.
She rarely left the living room or the kitchen. The air never changed, always smoky and hazy. When she opened her eyes, she swore she could feel every millimeter of her eyeball pulsating. She rolled over.
Her head throbbed so badly that even the dim light made it feel like lit gasoline was being poured into the curves and valleys of her brain. She closed her eyelids and tried to ignore the pain, but it didn’t yield even for a moment. She couldn’t get her brother and sister-in-law off her mind. She missed the conversations she and Kelly had been having. Some days, she would hear a man’s voice and her heart would leap, thinking it was Michael. But it wasn’t. She’d never hear that voice again.
Sometimes, she would follow the voice and find Sean playing with their son. He would look up at her and smile, but something in his eyes didn’t fit into place. Every day she watched him. He had great sincerity in those eyes, but there were moments, fleeting moments, where there was something else—a flash of calculation like a mathematical formula was running through his head. It was the worst when they ate dinner. For the first minute, he would watch her and Aidan eat. No words. Just watching. As if they were chewing what little he had left.
The headache persisted, so she got up and went toward the stairs. There were a lot of medicines closer in the reserves, but that was off-limits. God forbid Sean catch her there.
She snatched a flashlight off the coffee table and tiptoed toward the stairs when something behind her hissed. Her chest tightened, Elise spinning around and pointing the flashlight at Sean, sitting with his upper body sticking out of the sleeping bag. He put his hand up to block the light, and she diverted it away. Sean never left her alone for more than a few minutes. He was always asking where she was going, what she was doing, and why. Always hovering.
“Where’re you going?” he whispered.
“I have a headache.”
“There are pills downstairs.”
“I don’t want to search for them.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, I don’t want Aidan to wake up and find nobody here.”
“I can get them.”
That was it. He was trying to be nice, to help. “I’ll be back in less than five minutes. Don’t worry.”
He nodded and slipped back into his sleeping bag. Though the conversation was over, she felt his eyes on her back.
Always watching.
With her hand against the wall and the flashlight like a spotlight in the dark hallway, she rounded the top of the stairs and entered the bathroom. She planted her hands on the sink. Every few seconds the pain flooded into her temples and receded. She shifted over to the wooden cabinet and opened its small doors. When she brought the light up into it, she had to recoil at the sudden brightness.
She set the flashlight on the sink pointed toward the wall, grabbed at the bottle of extra strength pain killers, popped off the top, and put a few into her hand. She looked down at them and poured out a few more. One by one, she popped them into her mouth and swallowed them with her spit. Then she put the bottle back.
Movement. She sensed the flashlight tipping off the side of the sink. The light flashed across the wall as it started to fall. She took in a sharp breath, reaching out and bumping the cabinet, and grabbed the handle with her fingertips just as it was about to crack against the ground. She exhaled and heard the rattling of a pill bottle falling onto the floor. “Crap,” she said, expecting there to be pills everywhere.
Instead, just one bottle lay on the floor, unopened. She sighed with relief and bent down to pick it up. A prescription bottle. She had expected it to be Sean’s sleeping pills, which they kept in the cabinet, but it wasn’t.
She flashed the light on it, peering into the clear bottle from the back. Aidan’s seizure medication. She said a silent prayer that he would not need to use them again and paused. Her heart leaped, and her stomach dropped. Six pills. There couldn’t be just six left. She opened the cap as quietly as she could and looked into it.
Six.
She thought hard to Aidan’s last seizure. She was sure there were seven left. Seven. She was misremembering. Had to be. She forgot numbers sometimes. But she remembered talking with Sean in the basement afterwards. He said there were seven.
Seven.
Her head pounded even harder. Her legs wobbled like she was standing during an earthquake. Wincing, she turned the label over. Read it. She sealed her inner elbow against her mouth so she wouldn’t scream. Her eyes widened, and a tear rolled down her cheek.
The label explained what the doctor had told them: Don’t take a pill unless Aidan’s had a seizure. Side effects if taken at any time other than during a seizure: major organ failure and swelling of the throat.
Suffocation.
Chapter 36
ELISE WAS BUYING it. It was important that she did. Life would be a lot harder if she didn’t. They needed stability, firm ground on which they could navigate into the future.
Sean wanted her to see his dedication—his willingness to do what was necessary to keep his family alive, his love for her and Aidan. He took great pains to spend more time with them, which he enjoyed, but kept him from doing other vital tasks. She needed to see that they were his priorities. Sure, he needed to quantify the food supply and chop more wood and do repairs around the home and sort seeds and start projects, but she needed to know he was focused on them. Focused on keeping his wife on his side.
Not that he fully trusted her. The key to the gun safe always stayed in his pocket and the shells for the shotgun were all empty. He was no fool. The security camera for the rifle in Aidan’s room still ran every moment he was outside. She was on his side, believing his dedication to her. But there was no point in taking careless risks.
He spent the afternoon shoveling away snow from his raised garden beds and planting mason jars filled with water into the soil—a technique that might allow them to grow food even with winter weather. If the sun ever came out to warm the ground. He came inside to a quiet home. Eerily quiet. Reached around his waistband for his gun. Edged closer to the living room. The fire crackled and the smell of steak, a familiar but almost forgotten scent, grew stronger.
He leaned his head into the living room to find his wife bent over the fire with a cast iron skillet set atop the smoldering coals. The rich scent of butter and pepper wafted toward him and filled his nostrils. It was steak.
“What is this?” he asked, his jaw dropped.
“What does it look like?” she said, straightening up.
Her clothes were nicer than usual. While she had matching under-layers and no exposed skin except her hands and head, she wore a red cotton dress that cut off just above her knees. She had on two sparkling earrings, and a gold necklace hung from her neck. With the fire backlighting her hair, she looked dazzling. “Wow,” he said.