Page 42 of What He Doesn't Know

I would make Charlie happy again.

That was a promise I’d keep.

Charlie

There was a loud bang from upstairs when I walked through our front door Friday afternoon.

“Cameron?” I called out, dropping my keys in the bowl by the door before stripping out of my coat and scarf. I hung them on the rack just as another bang came, this time followed closely by a loud curse.

“Don’t come upstairs!”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine! Just…” There was a muffled groan, and then the sound of a door shutting. Cameron appeared at the top of our stairs in the next instant, his dark hair damp and falling over his forehead a bit, bare chest slick with a sheen of sweat. “You’re home early.”

My stomach dropped.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing, I just, please just stay down there for a second.”

My hand was already on the railing, feet carrying me toward him while my stomach twisted into the most tangled knots of my life. I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t listen to any of the words coming out of his mouth.

“Please, Charlie.” He tried to grab for my arm as I passed him, but I slipped by, heading for our bedroom. The door was open, so I swung inside it, eyes ready to shoot laser beams at whoever was in there.

But it was empty.

“Charlie, what are you doing?”

“Where is she?”

Jane and Edward cooed their warm hellos to me, but I zoomed past them, flicking on the light in the bathroom and checking behind the door. I crossed the room to our closet next, and briefly glanced at Cameron’s confused expression.

“She?What are you talking about?”

“WHERE IS SHE, CAMERON?”

I ripped open the door to our closet, but there was no one inside. When I whipped around to face him again, Cameron was saying something, but I couldn’t hear it — because I noticed the door to my library was closed.

And there was a shadow inside it — a shadow where there shouldn’t have been anything but light coming from the bay window.

I stomped past Cameron, my entire body trembling as I reached for the door knob.

“Wait, Charlie,pleasejust listen to me a second!”

I shoved it open, chest heaving as I prepared my heart for the worst. I would murder her. I would murderbothof them. This was it, the moment when I snapped — the moment when I went to jail for the rest of my life.

But when the door swung open, I didn’t find a woman I recognized inside it.

In fact, I didn’t find anything I recognized, at all.

Everything was gone.

My bookshelves, half of my books, the bed by the bay window. All the pictures on the walls. They’d all been removed.

And replaced.

Instead of the bed, there was a reading hammock. The netting was a soft yellow that reminded me of Jane’s feathers, and it was covered with a plush gray and white chevron cushion. At least a half-dozen little pillows sat in the middle of it, and there was a hand-built table that swung out from the wall to rest next to the hammock, though it could be tucked back into the wall to be out of the way, too.