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“Enough of this bullshit. Why did you lie to me today?”
“About what?”
“Going to the gym. You were at the spa from eleven to two.”
I frowned at him. “How do you know that? Are you having me followed?”
“No.”
“Then how?”
He gave me a vicious smile. “Maybe people are following you. Maybe cameras are watching you. You just never know.”
My throat started to close up. I couldn’t catch my breath, and I gripped the side of the sofa as I tried to stop the room from spinning. He said nothing, merely watched with an amused expression. When I finally found my voice, the only word that came out was “Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
When I didn’t answer, he went on.
“Because I can’t trust you. And I was justified. You lied to me. I won’t be made a fool of.”
“I should have told you, I was just tired today. I’m sorry. You can trust me.”
“I’ll bestow trust on you when you deserve it. When you stop lying.”
“Someone must have really hurt you in the past, made a fool out of you,” I said in a sympathetic tone, knowing it would get under his skin.
Anger flashed in his eyes. “No one made a fool out of me, and no one ever will.” He grabbed my glass of wine, walked over to the wet bar, and poured the remains in the sink. “I think you’ve consumed enough calories—especially considering you were too lazy to exercise today. Why don’t you go and change for dinner? I’ll see you then.”
After he left, I poured myself a new glass and thought about this latest revelation. I bet he was spying on me in other ways too. I couldn’t let my guard down at all. Maybe he’d bugged the phone or put cameras in the house. It was time for action on my part, and I needed a plan. He controlled all of the money. I was given a cash allowance for incidentals but had to give him receipts for everything I spent. All the rest of the bills went to his office. He gave me no discretionary spending—just one more way he tried to keep me under his thumb. He didn’t know that I’d accumulated my own secret stash.
I’d set up an e-mail account and cloud credentials under a fake name on one of the laptops in the office and hid the computer in a closet underneath brochures and flyers—somewhere he’d never think to look. I sold some of my designer purses and clothing on eBay and had the money wired into an account he knew nothing about. I had everything go to a post office box I’d set up in Milton, New York, a thirty-minute ride from the house. It was slow going, but over the past five years, I’d put together a decent enough emergency fund. To date, I’d saved close to $30,000. I also bought a pack of burner cells that I kept at the office. I didn’t know yet what I was going to do with all of it, only that I’d need it one day. Jackson thought he had every angle covered, but, unlike him, I was unfettered by delusions of grandeur. I had to believe that somehow they would be his undoing.
Fifty-Four
Christmas used to be my favorite holiday. I sang in our church choir every Christmas Eve, and Julie was always front and center, cheering me on. Then we’d go back to the inn and have dinner, happy to be the ones waited on for a change. We could give one gift early and save the rest for Christmas Day. The last Christmas that I spent with Julie, she’d been fidgety all through dinner, as though she was bursting with some secret she couldn’t wait to share. I gave her my gift—a pair of gold ball earrings that I’d scrimped and saved for with my tips at the inn. When it was her turn, she handed me a small box, her eyes bright with excitement.
I tore open the paper and lifted the lid. I gasped. “No, Julie. This is your favorite.”
She smiled and took the heart pendant from the box, holding it toward me to put on. “I want you to have it.”
She’d been so much weaker lately. I think she knew, or at least accepted, before we did that her time was running out.
I held back tears and grasped the thin chain in my hand. “I’ll never take it off.” And I didn’t. Until after I married him, and I knew that if I didn’t hide it away, he’d take it from me too. It was safely nestled under the cardboard bottom of one of the many velvet jewelry boxes that contained his gifts to me.
For the past ten years, Christmas had been nothing more than an obscene display of consumption. We didn’t go to church. Jackson was an atheist and refused to expose our children to what he called “a fairy tale.” But he had no problem perpetuating the Santa myth. I had stopped trying to reason with him.
I did take pleasure in the girls’ enjoyment. They loved the decorating, baking, and sights and sounds of the season. This year, I had another reason to be excited. I had Amber. I had to hold myself back from showering her with too many presents. I didn’t want to embarrass her. There was something about her that made me want to take care of her, to give her all the things she never had. It was almost like I was giving Julie all the things she’d never lived to enjoy.
We got up before the girls and went down to have our coffee. It wasn’t long before they swept in, little tornados attacking the mountains of gifts with glee, and yet again I worried at the message we were sending them.
“Mommy, aren’t you going to open any presents?” Tallulah asked.
“Yeah, Mommy. Open a present,” Bella chimed in. Mine were stacked in a tall pile—beautifully decorated in gold foil and elaborate red velvet ribbons. I knew what the boxes would contain—more designer outfits that he’d chosen, jewelry to show off how good he was to me, expensive perfume that he liked, none of the things I would have picked for myself. Nothing at all that I wanted.
We had both agreed that the children’s presents to us would be handmade, though, and I was looking forward to that.
“Open mine first, Mommy,” Bella said. She dropped the half-unwrapped package she had been opening and ran over to me.