At 2:17 in the morning, I heard latex snap against skin three feet from my bed.
The sound was so slight that on any other night I might have slept through it. A dry little tug, followed by the faint rasp of a zipper. But I had been awake for nearly four hours, lying on my left side with my face angled toward the edge of the mattress, controlling every breath.
Dererick believed I was unconscious.
That was the only advantage I had.
Through the narrowest opening between my eyelids, I saw his shape move across the bedroom. No lamp was on. The hallway light had been extinguished. The only illumination came from the digital clock on his nightstand, its blue numbers casting a low stain across the room.
2:17.
Dererick stood near the dresser wearing pale disposable gloves.
In one hand he carried a compact black bag I had never seen before.
My pulse struck so hard against my ribs that I became certain he would notice the mattress trembling beneath me. I forced my fingers to remain loose where they rested beside my cheek.
Three hours earlier, he had handed me a cup of chamomile tea.
“Made it the way you like it,” he had said.
He had smiled when he placed it beside my laptop, then leaned over my chair and kissed the crown of my head.
It had once been the sort of gesture I loved about him.
Dererick remembered things. He replaced the windshield fluid before I realized it was low. He kept my favorite crackers in the pantry. If I complained about cold feet, he appeared ten minutes later with the thick gray socks I always misplaced.
And for the past month, almost every night he was home, he made my tea.
That evening I had wrapped both hands around the mug and watched steam rise between us.
“You’re staring at it like I poisoned you,” he had joked.
The words had landed differently than he intended.
I had smiled.
“Long day.”
“You’ve had too many of those.”
He squeezed my shoulder and went upstairs to brush his teeth.
I waited until I heard the bathroom faucet.
Then I carried the mug to the kitchen.
My hands shook so badly that the teaspoon rattled against the ceramic. I tipped the tea into the sink and watched the pale amber liquid disappear around the drain. There was nothing visibly wrong with it. No residue. No strange smell beneath the chamomile and honey.
I rinsed the mug, left a wet tea-colored line inside it, and returned it to the side table.
Then I went to bed and pretended to lose consciousness.
Now my husband was putting on gloves.
The suspicion had begun with mornings I could not explain.
At first there had been nothing dramatic. I woke late. My head felt packed with wool. My tongue was dry, and the muscles in my shoulders ached as if I had slept twisted into some unnatural position.
Stress, I told myself.
I ran a small graphic-design business from a converted bedroom downstairs, and I was finishing the visual package for a client whose launch date had already moved twice. I had been living on deadlines and reheated coffee.
Dererick was traveling more often for his medical-equipment sales job. Some weeks he was gone two nights. Other weeks, four.
Whenever he was away, I slept normally.
Whenever he was home, the fog returned.
That pattern should have frightened me sooner.
Instead, I invented explanations on his behalf.
Maybe I slept more deeply because I felt safer with him beside me. Maybe I worked later when he was away. Maybe the chamomile actually relaxed me and I simply wasn't accustomed to uninterrupted sleep.
Then Clare called.
My sister had a talent for getting to the point before I was ready for it.
“Were you drinking last night?”
I was sitting at my desk with half a bagel in one hand.
“What?”
“When you called me.”
“I didn’t call you.”
There was silence.
Then Clare said, “Anna.”
The tone made me put the bagel down.
“You called around eleven-thirty. We talked for maybe six minutes.”
I tried to remember.
The previous night came back in disconnected pieces: Dererick cooking pasta, both of us watching the end of some forgettable crime show, the warm cup between my palms.
After that, nothing.
“What did I say?”
“Mostly nonsense. You sounded half asleep. I asked if you’d taken something.”
“I hadn’t.”
“You sounded drunk.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I know. That’s why I’m asking.”
I opened the call history on my phone.
There it was.
Outgoing call to Clare. Six minutes, twelve seconds.
I had stared at those numbers until the screen dimmed.
That evening, I mentioned the conversation to Dererick.
He looked genuinely concerned.
“You must have been sleepwalking.”
“I called Clare.”
“Sleepwalkers do complicated things.”
“I don’t sleepwalk.”
“How would you know?”
He had smiled when he said it, softening the question.
A week later I found two bruises along the inside of my upper arm.
They were small, yellowing at the edges.
Dererick noticed me examining them after a shower.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
He stepped closer, gently turned my arm toward the light and frowned.
“That’s weird.”
“Very.”
“You could be getting out of bed at night.”
“I think I’d remember running into something hard enough to bruise me.”
“Not if you were asleep.”
He offered to schedule an appointment with a doctor.
His concern was so convincing that I spent the next two days feeling ashamed of the suspicion beginning to form in me.
So I tested it.
The first time, I told him dinner had upset my stomach and I did not want tea.
The next morning I woke clearheaded at six forty.
The second time, I carried the tea upstairs but left most of it in the bathroom sink.
Again, I slept normally.
A few nights later I drank the entire cup because I needed to know whether the pattern was real.
The following morning, I woke at almost ten.
My phone was beneath the bed.
My pajama top was partly untucked.
There was a sore spot behind my right knee.
I sat on the edge of the mattress for nearly twenty minutes, trying to remember anything after bedtime.
Nothing came.
That was when fear stopped being an idea and became something physical.
I started watching Dererick without allowing him to know I was watching.
The tea was always prepared by him.
He never forgot it.
Even when I told him I was not tired, he would leave it near me.
“Drink it whenever you’re ready.”
If he traveled, he never suggested I make tea for myself.
One Thursday, I told him I had a migraine and went upstairs before he could prepare anything.
He came into the bedroom twice.
The first time he asked if I needed medicine.
The second time he stood in the doorway longer than necessary.
“You sure you don’t want something warm?”
“No.”
He went downstairs.
For more than an hour, I heard cabinets opening and closing.
When he finally came to bed, his jaw was tight.
He did not touch me.
By then I knew.
Or at least I knew enough.
Something about that nightly drink mattered to my husband.
Tonight, for the first time, I had taken away whatever control it gave him.
And he had no idea.
Dererick moved toward the dresser.
I watched him place the black bag on top of it.
He paused.
My lungs stopped.
He turned and looked directly at the bed.
For several terrible seconds, he did nothing.
I concentrated on the rhythm I had practiced before he came upstairs: slow inhale, slight pause, longer exhale.
His footsteps approached.
The mattress dipped near my hip.
Dererick leaned over me.
His face was close enough that I could smell mint toothpaste.
One gloved finger touched the inside of my wrist.
He held it there.
Checking my pulse.
I had not planned for that.
My heartbeat was too fast. Surely he would feel it.
His thumb shifted slightly.
I thought about opening my eyes. I thought about shoving him away and running. I imagined reaching the bedroom door, the stairs, the front entrance.
Then another thought stopped me.
If I ran now, I would still have no idea what he had been doing.
No proof.
No explanation for the lost hours.
Dererick released my wrist.
He stood.
I nearly sobbed from relief.
He returned to the black bag and opened it fully.
Something metallic caught the weak blue light.
Then he reached inside and withdrew a small camera.
Not a phone.
Not one of our cameras.
A compact digital camera mounted on a miniature folding tripod.
He carried it to the dresser opposite the bed and adjusted its angle carefully.
Toward me.
A tiny red light appeared.
Dererick stepped backward, studied the frame, and made a minor adjustment.
My husband was recording our bed.
He moved back to the black bag.
This time he removed a notebook.
He turned several pages with gloved fingers and studied a list I could not read from where I lay.
His expression changed.
Not excitement.
Not nervousness.
Concentration.
The same expression I had seen when he assembled furniture or checked a work proposal before sending it to a client.
Whatever he was about to do had procedure behind it.
That realization frightened me more than the camera.
Dererick looked at the notebook once more.
Then he put it down.
He reached into the bag.
And pulled out a pair of scissors.
Click here to continue reading: PART 2: I Stayed Motionless While Dererick Followed a Notebook of Instructions Beside the Bed We Had Shared for Years
The Night I Poured Out My Husband’s Tea and Waited to Learn What He Expected Me Never to See
Part 1 of 24
