The Twilight Wife

by A. J. Banner

  “911, where’s your emergency?”

  “I’m on Mystic Island, at Douglas Ingram’s house on Windswept Bluff. I need help. My husband is coming after me. I mean, Jacob Winthrop. He’s after me. My name is Kyra Munin-Finlay.”

  “Stay on the phone. I’m sending help.”

  Through the trees, I see Jacob staggering to the top of the steps, holding the side of his head. “I have to go. I have to hang up. He’s coming. I can’t stay on the phone.” He’ll easily break a window or a door and find me cringing in a closet.

  “Help is on the way, ma’am.”

  “You know where I am?”

  “I do have your location.”

  I hang up, dash out of the house, and sprint up the driveway toward the main road. Help will not come fast enough, not out here. I don’t know how long I’ve been running before Jacob catches up.

  “Kyra, stop!” He’s almost upon me now. He grabs at my backpack and pulls so hard he nearly knocks me over backward. I wriggle out of the straps and dash away. He’s slower than usual, blood still seeping from the wound on his head, and his face is pale and glistening with sweat.

  “Kyra, stop,” he says, breathless. “Wait.”

  “Leave me alone!” He grabs my jacket, but I shrug out of it, sending him reeling backward. I keep running, my lungs screaming.

  “I just want to talk to you.”

  “Go away!” I shout.

  “Stop.” Jacob catches up and grabs my arm, spins me around to face him. His face is distorted into a grimace. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  He yanks my arm, nearly dislocating my shoulder, and throws me on the ground with such force the wind is knocked from my lungs. Then he picks me up and throws me again.

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I stagger toward the driveway. He shoves me down.

  “I’ve given you everything, and it’s not enough for you?” His face turns a deep shade of red. His mouth is set in a thin line. He strides toward me, grabs my shoulders so tightly his fingers dig into the bone. I cry out in pain. “Let go of me!”

  “Turn around. We are going home.”

  I struggle to escape from his grip, but he doesn’t let go. “You’re crazy!” I shout between sobs.

  He shakes me by my shoulders, so hard I’m afraid my brain will fall out of my skull. “Stop, stop!” I say, but my knees weaken. Stars dance in front of my eyes, tiny pinpoints of light. He’s shaking me; he swings a fist at me, the blow so hard on my cheek he must have cracked the bone. The forest blurs. I feel my body falling in slow motion.

  There’s a rumbling sound in the woods, approaching along the driveway. I’m on the ground, curled into the fetal position. My head hurts. I can’t move. Jacob is kicking me, yelling at me from far away. “Get up, you bitch! How dare you leave me?” But I can’t get up.

  The truck pulls up behind us. Through my half-closed eyelids I see him, Doug Ingram. The boat is hooked to the back of his truck. He gets out and strides toward Jacob. “Hey, what’s going on here? Get away from her!”

  “Doug, be careful!” I shout.

  Through a haze, I see him dash up to Jacob. The two grab each other, tussling, swinging around and around. Doug Ingram is strong for his age, but not strong enough. I want to warn him, tell him to run, but my tongue thickens, and the words won’t come. He swipes at Jacob, catching him square in the jaw. Jacob takes a step back, rights himself, and with one blow he knocks Doug to the ground. Oh, Doug. Please be okay.

  I muster all my strength, stagger to my feet. My ribs are throbbing. “Leave him alone!” I shout. Jacob stands in the driveway, towering over Doug. I can’t get past him. I turn and stumble toward the house, through the forest to the wooden steps. If I can get back down to the beach—

  Jacob is upon me again, grasping my shoulders. “Come home now,” he spits at me. His face is red, flushed. Blood seeps from his swollen lip, where Doug punched him.

  “Get off me!” I back down the rickety steps. Behind me, the sea roars in a fury. The wind whips my hair into my face.

  He lunges for me, and I step to the side. He trips down the stairs and grabs the railing, but the rotten wood gives way. In an instant, he’s plunging down the cliff, yelling, flailing, reaching for something to hold on to, but he finds nothing. He seems to fall forever in slow motion, unable to gain a foothold. When he reaches the bottom, he’s motionless, his body lying at an odd angle on the rocks.

  With a deafening groan, the stairs below me start to give way, sliding down the cliff. I climb to the top and collapse onto flat ground. Someone’s calling my name. Kyra, where are you? Kyra?

  Aiden and I ride the ferry into Friday Harbor. We’re huddled together in a booth by the window, watching the turquoise ocean race past the boat. He is holding my hand, his grip not yet as firm as I remember. He was in a coma for months, and his body is still recovering. But he’s the man I married, the man in the wool sweater with the scent of soap and pine.

  My cheek is still sore where Jacob hit me, but the swelling is gone now, leaving only a faint yellow bruise after all these days. He cracked a rib when he kicked me, and I still can’t sneeze or laugh without a stab of pain, but otherwise, I’m remarkably well. Physically, at least. Mentally, that’s another story. A new nightmare plagues me now. Instead of a suffocating diver rising below me, I see Jacob coming for me, punching me, pulling my hair . . . I wake up gasping, and Aiden holds me close.

  As soon as he woke from the coma, he asked for me, insisted on seeing me, but I had checked out of rehab. Jacob brought him the letter, which devastated him. It was easy for Jacob to check me out of the rehab center as my uncle. I was tabula rasa, unable to remember anything new for more than five minutes. Over and over again, he reminded me that he would take care of me. He whisked me away to the new life he had already created on the island, the life he planned to share with me after Aiden’s death at sea.

  “He expected me to want to stay with him,” I say.

  “I know,” Aiden says regretfully. He doesn’t ask, Would you have wanted to move to Mystic Island with him? For good? If you had remembered our fights, our separation?

  “I would never have wanted to be with him,” I say. “The affair was long over.”

  “You weren’t cheating on me,” Aiden says. “We were separated.”

  “But it never felt right to me . . . being with him.”

  “I drove you into his arms,” Aiden says, taking my hands in his. “I never should’ve introduced you to him.” The first time I met Jacob, I was visiting Aiden at his office. Jacob stared at me as if struck by lightning. You remind me of someone, he said.

  “Nobody’s to blame,” I say, looking out the window again. The ghosts of our reflections stare back from the glass.

  We’re quiet for a time.

  “I hope you like the house,” Aiden says finally. He squeezes my hand.

  “If I loved it when we bought it, I’ll love it now, too,” I say, smiling at him. Snippets of our marriage come back to me, but there are still gaps. I hope someday to fill them in, and until then, Aiden tells me what I need to know.

  “You said you dreamed of the house,” he says.

  “I was in a bright yellow Victorian.” I touch the stubble on his cheek. The wool of his sweater smells familiar, comforting. “It was a memory, but Jacob wanted me to believe it wasn’t.”

  “The extent of his charade is what floors me,” Aiden says, wrapping my hand in both of his hands, bringing my hand to his chest. “Nobody could ever believe . . . It’s too bizarre. He created such a complete world.”

  A little time has made me angrier, at Jacob, at myself. But I also learned enough about Jacob to know that he wasn’t a monster. “It wasn’t complete. He made mistakes. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. He thought he could create this perfect life with everything I loved.”

  “He held you hostage.”

  �
��My lost memory kept me hostage.”

  Aiden looks at me, and I see a range of colors in his dark eyes. “He fooled everyone, but most of all me. I put you in harm’s way. I was starting to suspect something was wrong. Something about the way you replied to me. The wording. Then after you agreed to meet me, you stood me up.”

  “I didn’t even know about your messages.” The authorities confirmed my suspicion: Jacob used an Ethernet cable to route the Internet through his computer in the cottage before any information reached my computer in the house. I was still in shock that such a deception was not difficult for a programmer to orchestrate.

  The ferry slows as we approach the harbor, a density of buildings crowded along the shore. When the boat docks, Aiden drives us up the hill and along the winding roads of downtown Friday Harbor. Even though San Juan Island is similar to Mystic Island in its terrain, this house is closer to civilization, with reliable Internet and cell phone service, more frequent ferry runs, and a thriving community in Friday Harbor, including a network of writers and artists, two grocery stores, a few bookstores, a couple of theaters, and medical clinics.

  Aiden drives along the east coast of the island, through balmy air and forest until we reach a narrow road leading down to the shoreline. There, facing the water, drinking in the light through a plethora of windows, is the house from my dream—an old yellow Victorian sitting on a bluff overlooking the strait.

  I cherish mornings, when the day is still new. What I love now are the things I always loved. Morning tea, decaffeinated again, walks on the beach with Aiden before he leaves for the new software company he started here on the island. He stopped working for Jacob some time ago.

  I’m starting up my research again. I found the Tompkins anemone where I never expected to find it, attached to the underside of a dock in Friday Harbor, in plain view. A rare, elongated, luminous sea creature right in front of my nose.

  I’m volunteering at the Whale Museum, and occasionally I go out on a research vessel with two marine biologists studying a pod of resident orcas. I may consider teaching again at San Juan Island College. One step at a time. Like our marriage.

  We love each other, that much is clear. But for all our faults—Aiden’s impulsiveness, my uncertainty—our decision to marry was sacred and I will never forgive myself for thinking otherwise. And I don’t think he will forgive himself, either.

  A soft, salty breeze flows in, warmed by the sunlight of spring. Robins and chickadees flit between the trees. The rhododendrons blossom in splashes of bright pink, red, and purple. After the nighttime rain, the sparrows and nuthatches drink droplets of water off the softly rustling leaves.

  A familiar truck appears through the trees, creeping down the winding driveway. When I open the door for Douglas Ingram, I’m taken aback. If it weren’t for his beaten-up truck, I wouldn’t recognize him. He’s cut his hair short, and he cleaned up, shaved off his beard and mustache. He looks ten years younger now, and he’s in a new plaid flannel coat, pressed jeans, new boots. “Morning, Kyra.”

  I hug him, although I can’t pull him close. My growing belly is in the way. “I’m so glad you made it.” He even smells clean.

  “Congratulations,” he says, looking down at my billowing maternity shirt.

  “Thanks. We’re lucky.” I rest my hand on the curve of my abdomen.

  “Nobody deserves it more.” He follows me out to sit in the cedar recliners on the deck.

  “What brings you here?” I say.

  “I’m on my way to Bellevue.”

  “Bellevue! I thought you weren’t going to—”

  “I’m not going into any old folks’ home. No way, no how, but I figured it’s time to do a little traveling. Before I can’t anymore.”

  “You’re going to visit your daughter.”

  He nods and smiles. I can see the excitement in his eyes, and trepidation, worry, fear. But mostly excitement. “Can’t let too much more time pass. My memory’s not so good.”

  “Neither is mine,” I say, and we laugh.

  I shield my eyes against the sun. I rest my hand on his arm. “I never got a chance to properly thank you. With everything that’s happened. I ended up leaving the island so quickly, and there were the interviews with the authorities, and then Aiden showed up—”

  “Hey, no worries.”

  We’re both silent for a minute, and then I say, “How are Van and Nancy?”

  “They’re . . . Van and Nancy,” he says, chuckling softly. “They were shocked to learn about Jacob. Nancy, especially. She knew Jacob as a kid, and he was good to her. She said in hindsight, she should have seen the signs. His terrible father. How Jacob always wanted his way, created elaborate fantasy worlds for himself, never really cared if anyone else went along.”

  “But how could anyone have predicted?” I say. “It’s not like, when you’re a kid, you point at a friend and say, He’s going to grow up weird and kidnap someone and make her believe she’s his wife.”

  “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” Douglas says. “I know that myself.”

  “We can’t change the past,” I say.

  “But we can shape the future.”

  “Touché,” I say. We smile at each other, an unbreakable connection between us now. We will always share those frightening moments at the top of the cliff on Mystic Island.

  He follows my gaze toward the figure of a man walking along the beach, a broad-shouldered silhouette heading back this way from his long walk. Every time I see Aiden, my heart still leaps with anticipation. I wave to him, and he waves back.

  “That your husband?” Douglas says. “The real one?”

  “That’s him,” I say. “I would love for you to meet him before you go.”

  * * *

  I’m in the newly painted room on the second floor. Aiden comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. His lips touch the nape of my neck, and he settles against me. Our bodies fit so well together. “I like the color,” he says. “Saffron?”

  “More like straw.” I lean against him. I can feel the softness of his flannel sleeves on my arms.

  “Golden glow,” he says.

  “Goldfinch.”

  “Sun shower. We could call her that. Sunflower.”

  “Heck no.”

  “How about Daffodil?” He rests his hands gently on my belly.

  “We’re not naming her after the color of her nursery.”

  “Whatever you say. I still like the name Daffodil,” he says. “Daff for short.”

  “No way,” I say, laughing at his silliness.

  “You have a better idea?”

  “I’ll think about it. I’m sure I will.”

  He takes my hand. I can feel the tremor in his fingers. He’s still in physical therapy. “When’s our next appointment with the doc?”

  “In two weeks.” I’m saturated in happiness, although the shadows still follow me. They may never completely disappear, but I’ve learned to hold them at bay. I’m five months along, past the point of danger. Smooth sailing from here, we hope. We don’t talk about the timing, about what we will do if we see Jacob’s eyes in our child’s face.

  Instead, I keep focusing on the light, on possibilities, on what is good and true. None of us is bound by the past. We can make our own future as a family. Our child will embody the best of her parents. She will become a decent, caring person, guided by love. This, I have to believe.

  I’m grateful to my amazing agent, Paige Wheeler; my fabulous editor, Tara Parsons; and the brilliant people on the Touchstone team, including but not limited to Susan Moldow, David Falk, Meredith Vilarello, Kelsey Manning, Jessica Roth, Charlotte O’Donnell, Etinosa Agbonlahor, Isabella Betita, and Joshua Cohen. Thank you for believing in this book.

  Where would I be without my intrepid writing and brainstorming buddies? Thank you to Susan Wiggs, Sheila Roberts, Kate Breslin, Elsa Watson, Lois Dyer, Michael Donnelly, Elizabeth Wrenn, Sherill Leonardi, Randall Platt, Patricia Stricklin, Dianne Gardner, Anita LaRae, an
d Christa LaRae. Rich Penner, our lengthy “what if” discussions helped me imagine the possibilities. Huge thanks to Marilyn Lundberg for advice regarding the therapy scenes. Stephen Messer, your computer expertise kept me from falling wildly off track. A note of gratitude to Paige Wheeler’s interns and her office manager, Ana-Maria Bonner, for valuable feedback on the manuscript. Thank you to my family, Joseph, and my friends for your support and encouragement. To my appreciative readers, who’ve posted such wonderful reviews of my first novel of psychological suspense, The Good Neighbor, and who have contacted me to say how much they love my work—thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  TOUCHSTONE READING GROUP GUIDE

  This reading group guide for The Twilight Wife includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author A. J. Banner. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

  Kyra Winthrop is recovering from a harrowing diving accident, but her memory still isn’t perfect. Luckily, her doting husband, Jacob, patiently recounts her past to her, filling in the gaps left by an unusual form of memory loss. So when Kyra begins to remember details that don’t align with what she knows to be true, she must fight through her murky memory, her isolation, and her own intuition to discover what—and whom—she can trust.

  1. Why do you think A. J. Banner chose to make Kyra a marine biologist? How does Kyra’s intellectualism help ground her to reality? If you were to lose your memory, what are the parts of you that would stay, the way Kyra’s memories of marine life stayed? In other words: What about you do you think is indelible?

  2. Kyra pieces together, almost completely under her own direction, what happened on the fateful dive on which she lost her memory. At what point did you start to suspect that what happened wasn’t quite what she had previously believed?