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And what could Mariah say?My husband would rather kill me than divorce me, actually. I think he snuck into my new apartment and doctored my food so this would happen.Even if the impatient doctor hadn’t already been scowling at her, she wouldn’t have risked it.
David’s family had a wing named after them in this hospital. The last thing she wanted to do was find herself remanded to the psych ward where he could kill her at his leisure.
“I’ll be more careful,” she murmured.
But inside she thought there was no longer any choice. If she wanted to live, she needed to run.
The only question was how to do it.
She had to assume she had no friends or allies in Atlanta. There was no one she’d met here who didn’t have ties to David in some way. That meant none of them were safe. And she hadn’t been back to her hometown in years, but it stood to reason that she might try to run back there—because people did that in a crisis, she was pretty sure—which meant she couldn’t. Especially because she wanted nothing more than to slam through the old screen door into the farmhouse kitchen, let the dogs bark at her, and sit at the table with a slice of her great aunt’s sweet potato pie until she felt like herself again.
Whoeverthatwas.
Mariah blew out a shaky breath. She could always just... go on the run and plan to live that way, she supposed. But that seemed inefficient at best. She would have to take such care in covering her tracks, always knowing that one tiny slip could be the end of her. Every book she’d ever read or movie she’d ever seen about someone going on the run ended the same way, after all. They slipped up and were found or they were caught by whoever was after them or they couldn’t handle the isolation and outed themselves.
Whatever the reason, thelife on the runpart never seemed to work all that well.
Panic kicked at her, and for a minute she couldn’t tell if it was another episode. Mariah lay her hand against her throat and reminded herself that she was fine. That she was alive and could breathe. She told herself that a few times, then a few more, until her heart slowed down again.
She decided it was nervous energy, and she decided todeal with it the only way she could. Bydoingsomething. She pulled one of her bags from under the bed, settling for the one she knew she could pick up and run with, if she had to. And then Mariah took her time packing, letting her mind wander from the task at hand to all those videos she’d watched online about how to pack a carry-on bag for a monthlong trip. Or three months. Or an indefinite amount of time. It had been one more way she’d tried her best to fit in with the effortlessly languid set of people with whom David socialized. Women who seemed to be able to trot off to Europe for a month with either the contents of their entire house or nothing more than a handbag, a single black dress, and a few scarves.
David had mocked her, of course, though she’d thought it was good-natured teasing at the time. She’d told herself that’s what she thought it was, anyway.
Maybe you can watch a video on how to make a baby,he had said once, smiling at her across the bedroom as if he’d been whispering sweet nothings in her ear.
The cruelty of it took her breath away now, the same as it had then. This time, however, she didn’t have to hide it. She blinked away the moisture in her eyes, then threw the shirt she’d been folding to the side because her hand was shaking.
Had she really tried to tell herself he hadn’t meant that? She knew better now. But she’d spent years excusing everything and anything David did.
Because she’d been the one who was broken.
David had kept up his end of the bargain. He’d swept Mariah away from that abandoned backwoods town and he’d showered her with everything his life had to offer. He’d paid to give her a makeover. To make her teethextra shiny. He’d found her a stylist and paid for a voice coach so she could transform herself into the sort of swan who belonged on his arm. Or at the very least didn’t embarrass him.
All she’d ever been expected to do was give him a baby.
Looking back, it was easy to see how David’s behavior had changed over time with every passing month she didn’t get pregnant. Less Prince Charming, more... resentful. And increasingly vicious.
When she’d walked in on him and one of the maids, he hadn’t even been apologetic.
Why should I bother to give you fidelity when you can’t do the one thing you low-class, white-trash trailer-park girls are any good at?
She would hate herself forever, she thought as she packed the last of her little suitcase, for not leaving immediately that first time. For staying in that house and sleeping in that bed. For telling herself that it was a slip, that was all. That they could work through it.
As if she hadn’t seen the hateful way David had looked at her.
When she had. Of course she had.
That charming man she’d fallen in love with had never existed. David could pull out the smiles and the manners when he liked. But it only lasted as long as he got his way.
And Mariah had turned thirty. Despite years of trying, they hadn’t even had so much as a pregnancy scare. She’d found David with the first maid the following week.
He was never going to bother to pull out his charm forher again and she’d spent more agonizing months than she cared to recall imagining she could fix something he didn’t think was broken.
In the end, after the second time she’d caught him in their bed with another woman, Mariah had been faced with a choice. She could look the other way, the way she knew many wives in their circle did. She could figure out a way to keep what she liked about life as Mrs. David Lanier and ignore the rest.
But it was as if the part of her that had been sleeping for a decade woke up. That scrappy, stubborn McKenna part of her that she’d locked away when she’d left Two Oaks. McKennas hadrough and tumblestamped into their stubborn, ornery bones. They fought hard, loved harder, and didn’t take much notice of anyone else’s opinions on how they went about it.
Roll over and play dead long enough,her grandmother used to say,and pretty soon you won’t be playing.