Read Online The Doctor's Wife by Elizabeth Brundage - Free Book Online Page A

realizes, hearing the snap and click and spinning of a lock.
     
     
    “There’s a rat,” he mutters at length, unable to address the chain just now.
     
     
    “No,” she answers matter-of-factly. “There are no rats. There are no rats in this house.”
     
     
    “Why are you doing this?” he hears himself say.
     
     
    “Why am I doing this?” She laughs a little.
     
     
    “What do you want?”
     
     
    “I want you to rest. You’ve been badly hurt.” Her tone is curt, void of emotion.
     
     
    “Is that—is it a chain?”
     
     
    “Yes, it’s a chain. But it’s long. You’ll be able to get to the toilet. There’s a sink, too.”
     
     
    “No.” He struggles to speak, overwhelmed suddenly. “Please! Let me out of here.”
     
     
    “Rest now.” She starts up the steps. “You’re hurt, Michael. You need to rest.”
     
     
    “You won’t get away with this,” he blurts. “I have friends. My wife.”
     
     
    “Your wife. I’d forget about your wife if I were you.”
     
     
    “They’ll be looking for me.”
     
     
    “They’ll never find you here.”
     
     
    They’ll never find you here.
     
     
    “What is this place?”
     
     
    “This is my childhood home,” she says dryly. “This is where it all began.”
     
     
    “What? What are you talking about?”
     
     
    “This is Papa’s house.”
     
     
    “How long have I been here?”
     
     
    “Two days. No more questions, Michael.” But she stands there waiting. “I have to go now. I’ll be back in the morning.”
     
     
    Her footsteps echo dully as she climbs the stairs. Overhead, the squeaking floors. Then the distant sound of a car door, an engine turning over. And then nothing. Nothing at all.
     
     
    Two days.
     
     
    He lies very still, listening feverishly, attempting to identify the sounds around him. There are the rats, scampering across the floors overhead. Although he sees no windows, he can hear the wind wafting against the windowpanes and it is an empty sound that depresses him. A shutter slams against the side of the house, reminding him of the beating he took from those people, their relentless cruelty. He can hardly breathe, his broken ribs sharp as knives. Wind rumbles over the metal cellar doors like the feet of children, a small boy, perhaps, the age of his own son. It comes to him that his face is drenched with tears. He cannot remember the last time he cried.
     

 
    9
     
     
    THINKING BACK on it now, Annie understands that there is no escape. They had tried and failed. Like people running from a blazing circus tent, they had left the suburbs of Albany behind, the manicured cul-de-sacs, the trim, paved driveways, the benign, redundant perfection, hoping to find a new kind of freedom in the country, where they would be left alone, removed from the scrutiny and judgment of well-meaning neighbors. “Land of the free and the brave” Michael used to call it, but it was true in a way, and everyone who lived there knew it. In High Meadow, they’d met people like themselves who lived in crumbling old houses full of eclectic antiques purchased at local auctions and displayed like props on a stage. Cracked plaster walls were adorned with paintings of strangers from earlier centuries who gazed out from their crooked gold frames during dinner parties as the guests dined on roast lamb and potatoes and conversed about books and movies and the awful state of politics and the next school function, for which they would all doubtlessly volunteer. High Meadow was a strange little town, known for its abundance of pristine homes and horse farms. Just twenty miles from the city of Albany, it had miraculously staved off developers. The village consisted of a single paved road, Main Street, which was flanked with charming little shops that appealed to the weekenders from Manhattan and Annie’s students from St. Catherine’s. There was a bank, a post office, and the famous Black Sheep Café, with its cast of droll