Married, at least

Married, at least
Six months later.

Mrs. Eliot Raines. It feels so bizarre, so heavy, like a dress-up I haven’t figured out how to put on yet. I rotate the diamond, observing how the light bends. It’s a beautiful, heavy chain. Eliot is still asleep next to me, one arm draped randomly across my waist, his breathing deep and steady.

He’s peaceful-looking like this, his dark hair ruffled across his forehead, and his relaxed features. It is a sharp, almost cringing contrast to the now and then vanishing in nothing man, who paces the halls of this hollow house for hours, appearing as he has come upon what the rest of us have never seen.

He calls them his "moods" but they seem more like the shadows he brings in from a colder world. I carefully get out of bed, my feet landing on the cold wooden floor. The house had been quiet except for the sound of the lake outside, gently lapping against the stones. It’s a lonely sound, the only sound for miles out here.

Just six months ago--I can still remember our wedding day, like a picture. How he’ve insisted on keeping it private, just us and a dumbfounded priest in an empty chapel. I thought it was romantic.

A story for just the two of us. Now here, I don’t know if it was the silence, the space, the water, what really was. There is nothing I am sure of.

I step up to the huge oak dresser, a piece of furniture that, like everything else in this house, looms too high above me. When I pull open the drawer to retrieve a sweater—one of his, since I am always cold in this house—something slips out from under the pile of wool and lands on the floor.

A whisper of paper. “It's a piece of paper,” folded neatly, pressed flat, as if has been “hidden for a long time.” I take it up. It’s ancient, the edges stained yellow and crumbled. Somebody wrote on it — familiar, so very familiar handwriting on piece of paper. It takes me a moment, still groggy from sleep, to comprehend what I am seeing.

It’s not just a note. It’s a news clipping, a small, crisp one, on a case I remember vaguely. A case Aiden used to obsess over back at the precinct, calling it “locked-room clean.” Veronica Cheng. Defense lawyer. Found dead on the 13th. My fingers grow numb, the paper suddenly a slice of ice. There’s a circle around the name, executed with a sharp blue pen. And beside it, in a handwriting I would recognize in my sleep, a handwriting that signs checks and leaves me sweet notes on the bathroom mirror, a handwriting that looks a lot like Eliot’s: “Almost done.”

My heart sinks into my stomach, a nauseating icy fall.

What is that supposed to mean? My first reaction is to laugh it off—Eliot’s into dark mystery novels, he reads about forensic science for fun. Maybe it’s research. But something deep in my chest, that cold, hard knot of instinct that I thought I'd left behind when I quit the force, says no. I don't get the vibe that was.

I put the paper down again, my hand shaking as I try to line it up exactly with where I took it. I close the drawer softly and my breath is tightly held. But when I turn around—He’s already watching me.

"Good morning," he says softly. His voice is still hoarse with sleep, but his eyes are keen, alert, and directly on me. Startled, I give a small, pitiful gasp of air from between my lips. "Morning." I want to sound normal, as if I'm trying to smile, but it feels more like a grimace. "You scared me."

He smiles faintly, a slow lift at one corner of his mouth. "You’ve been snooping."

That ain’t no question. My heart skips a beat, a rabbit caught in a snare.

"No, I wasn’t. I was just hunting for a sweater, the drawer… it just fell out—" He slowly sits up, the bulky duvet falling down to his waist, exposing the slender, well-known lines of his chest.

"It’s fine, love." He is calm. Too calm. "No need to explain." I hold back, studying him, my hand still on the drawer's brass handle. There’s no anger, no accusation. Just… this. This disquieting, complete tranquility.

It’s the kind of calm that makes me feel as if I’ve just committed some huge, unfixable mistake. "I found a paper," I say at last, my voice quiet but strong.

"About a case. Veronica Cheng. You circled her name."

He blinks once, twice. Then that easy smile returns. "Oh. That. You scared me for a moment." I fold my arms, the wool in my hands a paltry defense.

"What is it, Eliot?"
"Just research."
"For what?" He gets out of bed and walks toward me. He's all lean muscle and deceptive grace, bare-chested, his hair messy. "I’m working on something. A novel. Darling, didnt I tell you?" My eyebrows furrow. I'rn searching my mind, rr thepast six months for any mention of it. Nothing.

"No," I say.

"Hmm. Must’ve slipped my mind." 
Something in me twists, sharp and angry. "Eliot, that’s… specific. That woman was murdered. Aiden said it was brutal. Why are you researching her?"

He halts before me, but far enough away that I cannot smell the faint, sleepy trace of his cologne. He lifts his hand and tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. His touch is light, unbelievably warm, but his eyes—there is something unreadable and cold in them.

"Ruthie," he murmurs, and my name on his lips sounds like a rebuke, "you worry too much." I swallow hard and my throat goes suddenly dry.

His thumb rests under my lip, pressing me into silence. "Like I said, there's a lot I haven't told you. Stuff from before. But you’ll be able to see everything pretty step-by-step, all right? I promise." That promise sounds more like a threat.

I whisper up to his hand, "I don’t like secrets." And the whole length of our marriage is like that.

He smiles—that slow, sad, trained smile that always makes me fall apart.

"You’ll like this one." Then he kisses me. At first it’s soft, but soon turns deeper, his hands sliding down to my waist as he pulls me in. My mind is yelling at me to say it again, to tell him off, to ask an answer, to not let him change the subject, but my body is betraying me.
It has always been this way. His lips trace a line down my neck, and when he talks, his voice is low and smooth, like warm silk draping over the cool edginess of my fear.

"Do you trust me?" he ponders against my skin. I don't answer. Silence can be an answer.

"Ruthie." He withdraws just far enough to meet my gaze, his hand closing more, "Do you?" I couldn't even think clearly.

"I… I want to." He smiles again, a brief, satisfied flash. "That’s enough."Before I can continue speaking, his lips are on mine, soft and urgent all at once, and he guides me back until my legs rest against the side of the bed.

All the sense begins to go from my brain, and I feel it—that heat of his hands on me, that breath of his against me, the way my name sounds when it leaves his mouth like a whisper. And for a while, I forget the clipping.

I forget everything.
When it’s over, he holds me, pulls circles on my skin. The air has a hint of him—cedarwood, smoke, and something a little darker, metallic, underground. I lie perfectly still, mind detached as I watch dust motes in the warm light. He’s won. He always wins. He presses a kiss to my shoulder.

"You don’t have to worry so much about what you find, love. Some things are best left alone."

I stiffen, ice cold blood running through my veins. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a warning. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing." He smiles against my skin. "Just saying.

You have such a good heart for this world.” I laugh nervously, my voice high and brittle. “That’s… creepy.”

“Maybe,” he whispers, breath warm in my ear. “But true.” He moves, laying his head against my chest as though nothing had changed, his hand possessively on my hip. In no time his breathing slows again—regular, soothing, tranquil.

Asleep. How can he just… sleep? My accustomed, obedient body is aching. But I can’t sleep. My eyes return to the dresser. To that one piece of folded paper stashed under his sweaters.

To the words: Almost done. I think of the other cases Aiden used to talk about, the ones that never made sense, the "clean" ones. I think of the date. The 13th. I think of the pattern. And the first time I think I met Eliot Raines, a
quiet, awful, and­ entirely coherent thought sneaks into my head — What if I married a monster?