herself to Derry, grabbing her love handles every time she gets undressed, announcing she’s “got muffin top,” like it’s a virus. Why can’t she see how sexy she is? He’s not completely convinced that she doesn’t. She must know she’s gorgeous. Yes, her stomach resembles an enormous croissant, but she’s just had a baby! The last time he said this aloud she burst into tears, and he’s been afraid to compliment her ever since.
“I love you,” he says. It’s the simplest, safest way he can convey his feelings for her. A thousand words are wrapped up in those three. Apologies, promises, wishes, erotic utterances—they’re all present in this simple phrase, a three-runged ladder to his heart.
She lifts her wet eyes to his.
“I love you, too.”
* * *
—
That night she dreams of when the house is completely finished, of sitting by a roaring fire overlooking the sweeping vista of the fjord, the waterfalls, the city in the distance where her grandparents lived. Her mind leaps forward across all the summers that she’ll bring the girls out here. She’ll set up a telescope so they can spot snow geese chevroning the skies and sea eagles pivoting above prey. Gaia will have her own gallery wall for all her sketches and memory boxes of leaves and forest treasure, and perhaps she, too, will have a gallery. A studio, even, filled with new work.
But none of this will ever happen. In just seven weeks’ time Aurelia will be dead, and the house they are building will be a carcass of splintered wood sprawling across the forest.
22
it didn’t add up
NOW
Tom killed his wife. I was sure of it.
I spent the next couple of nights tentatively reading the diary, entry after entry, becoming more afraid with each one. During the day, I’d be counting aloud while the girls put a hundred raisins in a box, made octagons and rhomboids with straws, or transformed twigs into paintbrushes by tying pine needles to the end of them. By night, I’d be reading the poignant last words of their dead mother recounting how their father was beating her to a pulp.
When I finished all the entries I set down the diary with trembling hands. I got up and walked to my suitcase, which was leaning against the wardrobe, and took out my phone. I knew my number had been cut off some time ago—I probably owed the network a fortune in fines—but I was connected to the Wi-Fi, and sometimes I charged the phone just so I could search YouTube tutorials on Montessori activities for Gaia and Coco. And also Gaia liked to watch kids’ programs on Netflix. Only a few programs worked over here, but I was still able to log in to David’s Netflix account, and I’ll admit to getting a little bit of satisfaction out of still being able to watch stuff that he was paying for. Gaia’s TV was limited to weekends, but the cartoons she watched on Netflix were sweet, and often we had a good discussion about the story afterward, so I didn’t see the harm. Anyway, the point was that I could still make calls via Wi-Fi. I could call Meg and ask her advice. So I’ve just found out that my employer was beating his wife before she died. He probably murdered her. What should I do?
I should probably just skip that part. I would ring Meg and calmly explain that I legit needed help. I had no way to get back to civilization, and now my life was in danger.
But then I remembered that Meg had yet to call to see how I was doing. I had no voice mails or missed calls. Nobody cared to see how I was, so even if I stated the trouble I was in, it was unlikely they’d do anything about it.
I pulled up my laptop and did some searching online. I typed “Tom Faraday Architect Murder” into the search bar. Fifty-three thousand links to Tom’s architecture practice appeared. There were articles about buildings he’d designed, an alumni web page set up by Glasgow School of Art, and some photographs of him and Clive at black-tie events, grinning and holding a glass award. A Facebook memorial page had been set up for Aurelia. Photographs showed her at various stages of her life—as a child, wearing brown cord dungarees, her hair in pigtails. School photographs through her teens, travel photographs in San Francisco, Egypt, Peru, image after image of her with Tom and the girls.
It