Chapter 2

I was twenty-two when Dylan came on the hiking trip Tessa had organized after graduation.

She called him a friend. He carried my bag without asking, brushed against me whenever the path narrowed, and laughed when I moved away.

I told Roman he was making me uncomfortable.

“Stay near the guide,” he said. He was kneeling to retie Tessa's boot.

Once, when we were younger, he'd marched me into the principal's office after a school employee touched me. He'd stayed while I made the report. I'd loved him partly because he never asked me to pretend something hadn't happened.

On that trip, he didn't even look up.

I woke in my tent with Dylan pulling at my shirt.

I screamed. The guide came running. Roman pulled me out and held me while I tried to breathe.

“I want the police.”

“Think for a second,” he said. “There'll be interviews. Pictures. My father's enemies will get hold of it. You'll never be left alone.”

I was frightened and disoriented. He made the prospect of asking for help sound more dangerous than the man who'd hurt me.

“I'll take care of you,” he promised.

A week later he proposed. We married quietly. I mistook secrecy for safety because the person I trusted most told me they were the same.

Now Tessa's message glowed in my hand.

I brought Dylan because I knew you wouldn't go near him otherwise. Roman found out afterward. He married you so you'd stop asking questions. He didn't want Mom finding out what I'd done.

I read it three times.

There was no reason to believe everything Tessa said. But there was a photograph of the two of them together long after Roman had told me he'd never seen Dylan again.

Another file arrived. Audio this time.

Roman's voice: Audrey's pregnant. Don't worry. I'll deal with it.

Two years earlier I'd been pregnant. He'd been delighted. He'd rested his face against my stomach and asked whether the baby could hear him.

The next morning he drove me to an appointment. The brakes failed on a bend outside the city.

After the impact I pulled him from the car through a broken window. I remember glass in my hand, the smell of smoke, the terrible effort of making him move.

I lost the pregnancy.

He cried beside my bed. I spent half my recovery comforting him.

Now I sat on the floor with Tessa's recording playing again and again.

In my coat pocket was a new ultrasound report. I was pregnant again. I'd planned to tell him after dinner.

I folded it until it fit inside my hand.