I copied the message containing my name before I read anything else.<\/p>\n
The flash drive suddenly felt absurdly small for the weight I was asking it to carry.<\/p>\n
I saved the client communications.<\/p>\n
Then the dosage files.<\/p>\n
Then the photographs that showed Dererick\u2019s gloved hands.<\/p>\n
I copied samples of Jennifer\u2019s, Patricia\u2019s and Michelle\u2019s folders too, choosing files with dates and notes attached.<\/p>\n
Every few seconds I looked toward the doorway.<\/p>\n
The house remained silent.<\/p>\n
Dererick had said Chicago.<\/p>\n
Three days.<\/p>\n
I repeated that to myself.<\/p>\n
Three days.<\/p>\n
Yet nothing he had told me felt reliable anymore.<\/p>\n
He could have been sitting in his car two streets away.<\/p>\n
He could have been watching the house through a camera I did not know existed.<\/p>\n
I disconnected the laptop from Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n
Only after doing it did I realize how instinctive the choice had been.<\/p>\n
If the computer synchronized activity somewhere, perhaps he could see that it had been opened.<\/p>\n
I had no idea.<\/p>\n
I was a designer, not a forensic investigator.<\/p>\n
So I stopped exploring anything that was not essential.<\/p>\n
Documents first.<\/p>\n
Evidence.<\/p>\n
Then get out.<\/p>\n
The flash drive filled rapidly.<\/p>\n
I found a second one inside the briefcase and hesitated before using it.<\/p>\n
If Dererick noticed it missing, he would know someone had opened the case.<\/p>\n
I left it where it was.<\/p>\n
Instead, I copied additional files to cloud storage through my phone, taking photographs of the screen when transfers were too large.<\/p>\n
It was clumsy.<\/p>\n
But I needed the evidence to exist somewhere he could not destroy simply by taking my computer.<\/p>\n
The more I documented, the uglier the structure became.<\/p>\n
Dererick had categories.<\/p>\n
Dates.<\/p>\n
Payments.<\/p>\n
Customer aliases.<\/p>\n
Women\u2019s names.<\/p>\n
Observations about how long substances seemed to affect them.<\/p>\n
My own entries began months before the symptoms I had noticed.<\/p>\n
Early notes described small amounts.<\/p>\n
Later ones recorded changes.<\/p>\n
The quantities had increased gradually.<\/p>\n
That explained why I had not realized immediately.<\/p>\n
He had not begun by knocking me unconscious.<\/p>\n
He had taught my body\u2014and my expectations\u2014to accept increasingly unnatural nights as normal.<\/p>\n
A memory surfaced.<\/p>\n
Six months earlier, I had awakened on a Saturday morning and joked that I had slept like the dead.<\/p>\n
Dererick had laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuess my tea works.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pressed both hands over my face.<\/p>\n
How many warnings had sounded harmless because I loved the person saying them?<\/p>\n
I returned to the search results for my name.<\/p>\n
Near the bottom was a directory titled CURRENT.<\/p>\n
Inside it were several notes created within the last two weeks.<\/p>\n
The first contained measurements.<\/p>\n
Weight.<\/p>\n
Sleep duration.<\/p>\n
Reaction time.<\/p>\n
Physical observations.<\/p>\n
My husband had been studying me.<\/p>\n
One line mentioned confusion episodes.<\/p>\n
Another noted increasing suspicion.<\/p>\n
I leaned closer.<\/p>\n
Increasing suspicion.<\/p>\n
He knew.<\/p>\n
Maybe not that I had discovered the truth, but he had noticed the questions.<\/p>\n
My refusals of tea.<\/p>\n
The evening I went to bed early.<\/p>\n
Changes in my routine.<\/p>\n
Dererick had been monitoring me while I monitored him.<\/p>\n
The next entry made my chest tighten.<\/p>\n
Subject becoming inconsistent with ingestion.<\/p>\n
I read it again.<\/p>\n
He had realized I was sometimes avoiding the tea.<\/p>\n
Below that:<\/p>\n
May need accelerated schedule.<\/p>\n
A date appeared beside the note.<\/p>\n
Yesterday.<\/p>\n
I stood so abruptly that the laptop nearly slid from my knees.<\/p>\n
Accelerated.<\/p>\n
The client message had said final phase.<\/p>\n
Whatever Dererick intended was not weeks or months away.<\/p>\n
He had already decided to move faster because I was suspicious.<\/p>\n
I checked the front windows.<\/p>\n
The street outside was empty.<\/p>\n
Mr. Peterson\u2019s porch across the road was dark.<\/p>\n
A delivery van sat three houses down where someone had left it overnight.<\/p>\n
Nothing moved.<\/p>\n
I locked the front door.<\/p>\n
Then the back.<\/p>\n
Then I returned upstairs.<\/p>\n
The briefcase remained open on the carpet.<\/p>\n
I considered taking everything.<\/p>\n
Laptop.<\/p>\n
External hard drive.<\/p>\n
Papers.<\/p>\n
But that would announce what I had done.<\/p>\n
If Dererick came home before police acted, he would immediately know.<\/p>\n
The thought forced me to confront the question I had been avoiding.<\/p>\n
Why was I still here?<\/p>\n
I had proof now.<\/p>\n
Enough to take to someone.<\/p>\n
I should leave.<\/p>\n
Clare\u2019s apartment was twenty minutes away.<\/p>\n
A police station was closer.<\/p>\n
I could put the laptop back, take my flash drive, walk to the car and never enter this house alone again.<\/p>\n
I closed the computer.<\/p>\n
Then stopped.<\/p>\n
The notebook.<\/p>\n
Dererick had taken it with him.<\/p>\n
Or so I had assumed.<\/p>\n
I pictured him packing the black bag.<\/p>\n
Camera.<\/p>\n
Samples.<\/p>\n
Notebook.<\/p>\n
I remembered him carrying the bag downstairs.<\/p>\n
But later, when his car left, had I actually seen the bag?<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
Only the headlights.<\/p>\n
If he had gone directly to the airport or a client, he would probably have taken everything.<\/p>\n
Still, a line from the bedroom scene kept returning to me.<\/p>\n
He had written in the notebook after the session.<\/p>\n
Then he had closed it and placed it near the bag.<\/p>\n
I could not remember seeing it go inside.<\/p>\n
Maybe fear had blurred the detail.<\/p>\n
Maybe not.<\/p>\n
I searched his bedside table.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Dresser drawers.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Bathroom cabinet.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Then I opened the sock drawer.<\/p>\n
The notebook was underneath a row of neatly folded black dress socks.<\/p>\n
I froze.<\/p>\n
He had left it.<\/p>\n
Perhaps deliberately.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he maintained several notebooks.<\/p>\n
This one was dark blue, about the size of my palm.<\/p>\n
I recognized a faint scratch on the cover from the bedroom.<\/p>\n
Same one.<\/p>\n
My fingers trembled as I opened it.<\/p>\n
The first pages contained dates and initials.<\/p>\n
Numbers filled the margins.<\/p>\n
Later pages were clearer.<\/p>\n
My name appeared repeatedly.<\/p>\n
Tea.<\/p>\n
Time.<\/p>\n
Amount.<\/p>\n
Response.<\/p>\n
The clinical neatness of the entries made my skin crawl.<\/p>\n
He had recorded how quickly I became drowsy.<\/p>\n
How long I remained unresponsive.<\/p>\n
Whether I remembered events the next morning.<\/p>\n
One note mentioned the call to Clare.<\/p>\n
He knew about it.<\/p>\n
He had apparently seen me use my phone while impaired.<\/p>\n
Another note recorded bruising.<\/p>\n
Minor visible marking. Explain as nocturnal movement.<\/p>\n
I stopped breathing for a moment.<\/p>\n
He had not merely suggested sleepwalking because it occurred to him later.<\/p>\n
He had written the explanation in advance.<\/p>\n
My husband had created symptoms and prepared stories to explain them.<\/p>\n
I photographed the page.<\/p>\n
Then another.<\/p>\n
And another.<\/p>\n
Farther into the notebook, names matched the laptop folders.<\/p>\n
Jennifer.<\/p>\n
Patricia.<\/p>\n
Michelle.<\/p>\n
Codes appeared beside each one.<\/p>\n
Some were crossed out.<\/p>\n
I did not know what the marks meant.<\/p>\n
The later pages focused increasingly on me.<\/p>\n
One entry said customers were asking about extended availability.<\/p>\n
Another mentioned permanent arrangements.<\/p>\n
A third used the phrase Graduation candidate.<\/p>\n
I felt my stomach turn.<\/p>\n
There was no definition.<\/p>\n
No explicit description of what happened at graduation.<\/p>\n
But I had seen Jennifer\u2019s final photographs.<\/p>\n
I had seen how ill she looked.<\/p>\n
And then her folder simply stopped.<\/p>\n
The final note about me had been written before tonight.<\/p>\n
Suspicion increasing. Accelerate timeline if necessary.<\/p>\n
Beneath it Dererick had added another sentence.<\/p>\n
Do not allow unsupervised departure.<\/p>\n
I stared at those words until they blurred.<\/p>\n
Unsupervised departure.<\/p>\n
He was considering the possibility that I might leave.<\/p>\n
And apparently he intended to prevent it.<\/p>\n
My phone was still beside me.<\/p>\n
I picked it up.<\/p>\n
For a moment I thought about calling Clare.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered her schedule.<\/p>\n
She was working overnight at the hospital.<\/p>\n
That meant she might not answer immediately.<\/p>\n
Police.<\/p>\n
I should call the police.<\/p>\n
But before I could dial, something outside caught my attention.<\/p>\n
A light.<\/p>\n
I went to the bedroom window and moved one curtain aside by less than an inch.<\/p>\n
Across the street, Mr. Peterson\u2019s kitchen was illuminated.<\/p>\n
He was awake.<\/p>\n
Our elderly neighbor kept strange hours. Since his wife died, he sometimes sat on the porch before dawn drinking coffee no matter the weather.<\/p>\n
And he watched everything.<\/p>\n
Dererick used to joke about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a squirrel sneezes on this block, Peterson files a report.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suddenly the joke seemed useful.<\/p>\n
If Dererick had been leaving our house at two or three in the morning for months, Mr. Peterson might have seen him.<\/p>\n
He might have noticed cars.<\/p>\n
Visitors.<\/p>\n
Anything.<\/p>\n
I photographed every remaining page that mentioned me or the other women.<\/p>\n
Then I carefully returned the notebook beneath the socks.<\/p>\n
I shut the drawer.<\/p>\n
The laptop went back into the briefcase exactly as I had found it.<\/p>\n
I wiped the outside with the hem of an old shirt, though I had no idea whether fingerprints mattered when I lived in the same house.<\/p>\n
The combination locks clicked shut.<\/p>\n
I pushed the case back beneath the bed until it disappeared into shadow.<\/p>\n
My flash drive went into the waistband pocket of my pajama pants.<\/p>\n
I changed my top because the missing piece at the hem suddenly felt like a flag announcing that I knew.<\/p>\n
Jeans.<\/p>\n
Sweater.<\/p>\n
Shoes.<\/p>\n
Phone.<\/p>\n
Keys.<\/p>\n
I stood at the top of the stairs listening.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Downstairs, the tea mug still sat near the sink.<\/p>\n
I looked at it.<\/p>\n
A few hours ago, that cup had represented my suspicion.<\/p>\n
Now it looked like evidence.<\/p>\n
I put it inside a clean food-storage bag without washing it again and placed it in my purse.<\/p>\n
Then I stopped myself.<\/p>\n
Taking the mug would be noticeable.<\/p>\n
I returned it to the counter.<\/p>\n
Photographed it instead.<\/p>\n
My thoughts were finally becoming clearer.<\/p>\n
Leave the house looking normal.<\/p>\n
Take what could not be replaced: copies, photographs, the truth.<\/p>\n
I unlocked the front door.<\/p>\n
Cool predawn air touched my face.<\/p>\n
The street was quiet enough that I could hear a sprinkler running somewhere behind the neighboring houses.<\/p>\n
Mr. Peterson\u2019s kitchen light remained on.<\/p>\n
I stepped outside.<\/p>\n
Then my phone vibrated.<\/p>\n
I nearly screamed.<\/p>\n
A message appeared on the screen.<\/p>\n
Dererick.<\/p>\n
Hope you\u2019re sleeping well. Flight got moved around. Plans may change. I\u2019ll call you soon.<\/p>\n
I read it twice.<\/p>\n
Plans may change.<\/p>\n
Three days in Chicago suddenly meant nothing.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the empty street, then back at our house.<\/p>\n
If Dererick returned unexpectedly and found me gone, I did not know what he would do.<\/p>\n
But after reading the notebook, I knew what would happen if I stayed alone.<\/p>\n
I crossed the street toward Mr. Peterson\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
For the first time that night, I was going to tell another person what my husband had done.<\/p>\n
And I was going to find out whether Dererick\u2019s secret life had been visible from outside our home all along.<\/p>\n
I copied the message containing my name before I read anything else. The flash drive suddenly felt absurdly small for the weight I was asking it to carry. I saved … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13668,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13644\/revisions\/13668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}