“So what do you think I should do?”
Eric thought for a moment, rubbing a finger along the patch of hair under his lower lip.
“Tell your husband you know what he did, and that you’re leaving him. And then move in here with me and we’ll wait for the plane together.”
“I’m not … I don’t have feelings for you. If anything … I feel like I was raped by you.”
Eric looked down at the floor. “I know. You should hate me, but I’m telling you that you can also trust me. And it’s also possible that I may be able to protect you for the rest of the time on this island. You can move in with me. It’ll be the two of us, at least, against all of them. Not great odds, but better odds than you had before.”
Abigail thought of Mellie’s words earlier, how she’d told her to just hold on, that the plane would come. What would happen if she actually left Bruce in the middle of their honeymoon and moved into a bunk with another man?
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Then I have another suggestion,” Eric said. “Go to Bruce and just tell him everything, ask him to tell you everything as well. Put it all out there and see what happens. It will be hard, but maybe there is some sort of logical explanation for everything that’s been going on. Maybe he’ll be reasonable.”
Abigail, still thinking, nodded, not in agreement but because she wanted more time to think. The truth was, she wanted to stay here, in this bunk with this man, and wait for the plane to come. This, despite the fact that waves of horror were beginning to wash over her. She really did feel as though she’d been raped. Taken against her will, even though it had felt like willingness at the time. But even though Eric had been the instrument of that rape, Bruce was the architect.
“You okay, Abigail?” Eric said after a while.
“No, not really,” she said, just as there was a knock on the door that made her jump.
Eric stood, said, “Wait there,” to Abigail in a low voice, then opened the door. From where Abigail sat she could only see the shadow of the person standing in the doorframe, but she could hear the voice. It was Bruce saying, “I’m looking for my wife.”
Eric, not hesitating, said, “Well, she’s not here.”
Bruce said, “Then you won’t mind if I take a look around your bunk.”
“Yeah, I do mind.”
Abigail watched Eric begin to shut the door, then he was leaning hard against it. Bruce yelled, “Abigail, I know you’re in there.”
“Fuck off,” Eric said, and leaned harder into the door, gaining a few inches. He turned toward Abigail, his skin red with exertion, his face questioning, then he lowered his shoulder and got the door to slam. He held it shut as Bruce hollered from the outside, repeatedly kicking at the door. Some of what he yelled was muffled, but Abigail caught words, including “liar” and “bitch.”
She got out of her chair and went up close to Eric, whispered, “I’m going out the back.”
“No, stay here,” he whispered back.
“He’s not going to give up. You need to show him the empty bunk.”
“Come back, then. Later.”
Bruce must have rammed into the door from the outside, because Eric bucked back a little, then smiled.
“I’m going,” Abigail said. “I’ll come back.”
“Promise.”
“I don’t know.”
She opened the back door quietly and stepped outside. There was no back deck on this bunk, just a narrow oblong of landscaping and then the woods. As she approached the tree line, she heard Bruce again, his voice hoarse from yelling, shout, “Abigail, you fucking whore. I’m your goddamned husband.”
CHAPTER 23
For a while she walked blindly through the woods, just wanting to put distance between herself and Bruce. Tears filled her eyes, and she kept wiping them away, willing herself not to buckle over and sob, even though that was exactly what she felt like doing.
She had married some kind of psychopath, someone so paranoid and vindictive that he had hired a man to test her fidelity on her bachelorette weekend.
You failed that test, though, didn’t you?
She ignored that particular voice in her head for now. Anger welled up in her. He’d wanted her to fail. He’d hired a handsome man, someone perfectly constructed to appeal to her, and that man had peeled her away from the herd, gotten her drunk, and seduced her. No, it was worse than that. It really was a kind of rape. She was sickened that she’d fallen for it, but even more upset that Bruce had set it up. And that Eric had agreed to it. Worst of all, she was still on this island.
You are still on this island because you failed the test.
But why did he even marry me? Abigail thought. If what had happened in California was a test to find out if she was faithful, she’d failed. Why hadn’t he dumped her then? That was the part she was having a hard time understanding. There were only two possible answers. Either he’d forgiven her and decided to overlook the infidelity, or she was here to be punished. And if Bruce was so jealous that he set up some kind of fidelity test, then he was definitely not going to forgive her for cheating. So that left only one option. She was here to be humiliated and punished. And if she was here to be punished, then he must know that as soon as they got back from their honeymoon they’d have to go through a divorce, or more likely an annulment. It would be messy, whatever it was, so why had Bruce gone through with the marriage? There was a small voice in her head …
He’s going to kill you.
She stopped and put her hands on her knees and filled her lungs with air. A single sob came out of her, one that hurt her ribs.
No, she told herself. I know Bruce well enough to know he isn’t a killer.
But did she? She obviously didn’t know him well enough to think he’d ever pull a stunt like he had in California.
You failed the test, and he’s going to kill you.
No, Abigail thought. There has to be some other possibility. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t Bruce who set up the test in California. Maybe one of his colleagues did it, someone he worked with who was worried that Abigail was a fortune-hunter. Or maybe Eric Newman was making it up and this was all part of his plan to win Abigail away from Bruce. She didn’t think so, though it felt like the truth.
She was walking again, the woods thinning out a little, and she spotted a path, recognized it as the one that led down to the pond. She followed it, trying to slow down her thoughts, trying to concentrate on the fresh air and the colors of the trees around her. If she calmed herself, then maybe she’d be able to think more clearly. The path brought her to the pond, empty except for a single canoe on the west side, its single occupant fishing, casting into an area of the pond shaded by trees. The canoe was too far away for Abigail to see who was in it, but she did know one thing. It was a man. It had to be. What she would give for it to be a woman, some guest she hadn’t met yet, maybe one of the women from Atlanta Chip said were scheduled for a visit.
Yeah, right, a bunch of women are coming to the island today.
She walked down to the edge of the pond, then took the shore path to the right, her eyes on the boathouse on the other side of the pond, and the lodge above it. Maybe it was only to have a destination, but she suddenly decided that she wanted to see the other camp. She knew it hadn’t been occupied for years and that it hadn’t yet been renovated, but she allowed herself a glimmer of hope that maybe it had an old functioning landline, or a CB radio, or anything that might help her communicate with the outside world. She picked up her pace, occasionally jogging, as she worked her way along the narrow gravel path that skirted the shore. She reached the boathouse, built near a tilting pier that jutted out twenty yards into the pond, and peered inside. The wood was rotten and speckled with dark moss. There were no boats inside, just a pile of old life jackets that looked as though they’d been chewed apart and turned into some animal’s nest.
Retreating back to the path, she walked up a short incline toward the lodge. Like its neig
hbor across the pond, it was fronted by a large swath of lawn, this one now choked with weeds. There was a cluster of bunks adjacent to the lodge. They all looked decrepit—half were smothered by vines—but the lodge, maybe because it was primarily built of stone, looked sturdy and habitable. Abigail waded across the lawn. As she neared the lodge, she noticed that some of its windows were boarded up and that the handles on the front doors were entwined with chains and secured by a combination lock. She walked up to the doors anyway, tugged at them, and was able to peer through an inch-wide crack. It was dark inside but not impenetrable, and what she saw at first confused her. She was looking at trees, and she wondered if the back of the lodge had somehow collapsed. But there was enough light for her to see the stone floor of the hall and part of the back wall. She looked longer, and it was clear that the trees were props, their bases crossed pieces of plywood. There were enough of these fake trees to compose a fake forest. And in the dark interior of the lodge, it looked like a forest at night. There was one other object that Abigail could just make out. At first she thought it was some sort of jungle gym, but then she realized it was a cage, constructed of metal bars sculpted to look like twisting branches. She thought of the ring she’d found in Bruce’s bag, the “green man” ring. Its band had been made to look like intertwined branches, just like the bars of the cage. She didn’t know what she was looking at, but it terrified her just the same. Breathing in the air from the lodge, she could detect a faint piney smell and realized the trees were real, just cut down and displayed inside like Christmas trees. There was something theatrical about it, and that thought triggered a realization that came and went, a fleeting certainty that everything here on this island, every person, every tree, was part of a play, and she was the one unwilling participant.
She turned and took in the view. There was the pond, its heart shape no longer evident. The sky was now creased with a few darkening clouds, and a gust of wind rippled the yellowing grass of the sloping lawn. She envisioned them coming for her, men emerging at separate points from the woods, all converging. She walked quickly toward the nearest bunk and found its door open. She stepped inside, the air stale and acrid. Something fluttered in the rafters and Abigail looked up to see the blur of a bird leaving through a hole in the roof. The floor was warped from rain and pocked with bird shit. There were no furnishings left except for the frames of about ten iron cots. She thought about all the girls who’d slept here when the camp had been active, tried to conjure them in her mind, their faces and their voices, but she couldn’t do it any more than she could imagine the boys who used to inhabit her own luxury bunk on the other side of the island.
The air inside the bunk tickled her throat and she stepped back outside, shutting the door behind her just as she saw Bruce coming toward her across the lawn.
She considered running, but there was no point. Instead, she forced herself to smile at him and wave. Pretend that you were never in Eric’s bunk, she told herself. Pretend you didn’t hear his words.
Fucking whore.
Spoiled bitch.
“I knew you’d be here,” he said, when he was close enough to speak. He stopped and put his hands on his hips, as though the hike had exhausted him.
“I went exploring,” Abigail said. “I was curious about this place.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me anymore,” Bruce said. “I know you were in that man’s bunk. Scott or Eric or whatever his real name is. It doesn’t matter. We can talk about that later. I know all about him.”
“What do you know?”
“Come back with me and I’ll tell you,” he said.
“You can tell me now.”
“Okay. Whatever you want. I looked him up when it became clear that the two of you have some sort of relationship. I did some research.”
“How did you look him up from here?” Abigail said.
“Chip did it, actually. Did you know your friend gave a false name when he registered for his stay, not something that’s easy to do? His real name is Eric Newman. He’s a murderer, or do you know that already?”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t convicted because they couldn’t prove it, but it was pretty clear that the investigating officers believed he was guilty.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He killed his wife on their honeymoon. They were at a resort and guests there reported that they’d been fighting. Apparently, he thought his wife was flirting with a male waiter. She drowned when they were snorkeling in shallow water. There were no witnesses, so there was no way to get a conviction. All the autopsy could prove was that she died from drowning.”
“So maybe she did,” Abigail said, not knowing how else to respond.
“I thought you’d probably defend him.”
“I don’t know why you’re so convinced that he and I—”
“Because I know you secretly met the morning you went swimming, and because I know that you were in his bunk today.”
Abigail was tired all of a sudden, sick of Bruce’s accusations. She said, “So, if he’s a murderer, then what you’re saying, Bruce, is that you set me up with a murderer. You hired a murderer to try to fuck me in California.”
Bruce looked genuinely surprised, his brow lowering, his mouth opening then closing. After a moment he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You hired that man to try to seduce me at that vineyard you sent me to. You set me up. Look, it’s over. Our marriage is over. Whatever’s happening here is … I don’t know what this is, but maybe we can be honest with each other. I’m fucking scared, Bruce. Whatever you wanted, I don’t think it was this. At least I hope not.”
“He was with you at the vineyard?” Bruce said.
“Yes,” she shouted, and Bruce flinched. “You sent him there.”
Bruce was shaking his head. “No, no, no, no,” he said, almost to himself. Then he looked up and said, “You actually slept with him? With that guy? In California?”
“None of that matters now. Our marriage is over.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Thanks to you.”
He came for her, moving with sudden speed, his fist cocked back, his jaw clenched. Abigail was frozen, her body tightening in readiness for the blow. But it didn’t come. Bruce had stopped himself a foot away from her. “Don’t you dare blame me for you being a whore.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”
“I’ll tell you everything if you tell me the truth. Did you send him there—did you pay him—to seduce me? To get me drunk and fuck me?”
Bruce was shaking his head again.
“Why are you shaking your head? You either did or you didn’t.”
“My mother ruined my father’s life,” Bruce said quietly. “Do you understand that?”
Abigail decided it was time to leave, and walked purposefully past Bruce, expecting him to grab her. Even so, it shocked her when he did, his hand suddenly around her upper arm, his fingers digging in. “You knew how important fidelity is to me,” he said. “I know you knew that.”
“Let go of me, Bruce,” Abigail said, trying to keep her voice steady.
He did, and she took a step away, wanting to rub her arm but not doing it. A dark, swollen cloud had dimmed the day suddenly, and a patter of rain swept in, then swept out again. “Maybe I did,” she said, “but you set it up. You set me up.”
She started back along the path toward the pond, expecting him to follow her. Instead, he shouted, “Don’t worry. You’re about to get what you want. That’s why I came to find you.”
Abigail stopped and turned. “What do you mean?” she said.
“I came to tell you that the plane is on the way. We’re leaving this afternoon.”
“Really?” Abigail said. Even hearing those words had made her heart start to race with the possibility they might be true.
“Any minute now, apparently,” Bruce s
aid, looking up at the sky. “We’ve got to go get ready.”
She finalized her packing as fast as possible, feeling that any hesitation might mean the plane wouldn’t come.
Bruce waited quietly on the couch, fiddling with the zipper of his own suitcase. The walk back from the girls’ camp felt like it had taken forever. Bruce had been quiet, walking a step or two behind her.
She had wanted to ask him more questions, to get him to admit to setting up the situation at the vineyard, but she didn’t want to upset him any further. The plane was coming. And getting on that plane was the most important thing right now.
After doing one last scan of the bunk, she heard the sound of the Land Rover coming down the row of bunks. “Chip’s here,” Bruce said.
She sat in the back with Bruce up front. Chip had grinned at her as he stowed their bags in the back of the vehicle, but he seemed agitated and jumpy. Periodic bursts of rain peppered the vehicle.
They drove out through the wooden gates of the resort and along the dirt road to the airfield. The rain had picked up, wind whipping it in several directions. It was later in the day than Abigail thought, dusk approaching. She worried that if they didn’t get to the airfield in time the plane wouldn’t be able to fly back in the nighttime. Did small planes fly at night? What about the wind and the rain? Would they fly in bad weather? She thought they probably did, but she was worried anyway. She’d be worried until she was far away from here.
There was no plane at the airfield when they got there, and Chip got out of the Land Rover to go into the hangar and check on its status.
The two of them alone in the car, Bruce turned around and faced Abigail. “You happy now? You’re getting what you wanted.” His voice had the same hushed tone she’d heard earlier when he’d called her a “spoiled bitch.”
“I’m not happy, actually, Bruce, but I am relieved to be leaving here.”
Every Vow You Break Page 17
