The Break-Up Retreat(34)

I close my eyes. And I nod.

“I promise,” I say. “Thank you. For doing this. For picking up.”

“I’ll always pick up when you call,” he assures me, and it should make me feel safer, but somehow it just makes me feel worse.

“I just . . . being here, seeing what they are doing, it makes me feel even more strongly about it,” I attempt to explain. “I wish you could meet some of the other patients here, Armin. They’re . . . vibrant, and smart, and successful. And Martina has convinced them that if they just pay her enough money, if they just give into her teachings, they will find this thing they are missing. An easy five-minute fix to all of their problems and they will have their happy ending. And because they want it so bad, she can break them down, so that she can take from them. Money, and time, and trust. And no one is stopping her. It’s . . . it’s not right.”

I draw a deep, shuddering breath.

“Isobel,” Armin begins to say, but his voice is all wrong; confusion cut with fear, like ice melting in a strong drink. “There is someone behind you.”

“What?”

“There is someone in the window, Isobel!”

I look up from his face on the phone screen to the little square showing mine. My shiny, tired visage, my stringy, air-dried hair, my red-rimmed eyes.

And the window behind me. A little rectangle of blue.

A shadowy outline of a person, standing outside, looking in. Looking at me.





Chapter 18


I drop the phone and spring to my feet, turning as I go and almost falling over. I catch myself on the bed and straighten up, only to look out the window and see nothing. Only the deep blue of the night sky staring back at me, reflected in the pond.

But there was someone there. I saw them. Armin saw them. And I can feel it, still. Creeping over my skin.

Someone was here. Someone was watching me.

I turn around, running toward the door. I don’t stop to put my shoes on. The ground outside is icy cold against my bare feet. The nighttime dew has fallen, and the gravel is slippery. But I run around the cabin, down to the walking path, the pond.

I’m half-blind in the dark, my eyes not yet adjusted to the low light outside. When I turn to face the main building, the staff quarters and the dining hall, they are all dark and abandoned. No light shining in the windows.

Just me, and the water, and the trees.

But I’m not alone. Not really.

There was someone here.

I turn around to look at my cabin again. It’s higher than the walking path. You would have had to walk up there on purpose.

Walk up there, still and quiet, so I would not hear the footsteps on the gravel.

My heartbeat thundering in my ears, I hear my own ragged breathing, feel the chill already seeping in under my insufficient clothes, the soles of my feet growing numb.

I turn slowly, looking around me. The air feels sharp in my throat, as though the damp cold is cutting me.

“Hello?” I say.

The word is swallowed up by the night.

I take another few steps down, until I’m standing at the edge of the water. And I try to listen.

Whoever it was must be nearby. But it’s entirely quiet. From where I am standing, I would hear the faintest footstep, even coming from the other side of the pond.

So either they managed to get away, quicker than any person should be able to move.

Or . . .

Or they are standing somewhere, close by. Not moving.

Still watching.

Still waiting.

I can feel my breath tightening in my chest. The adrenaline swirling in my veins.

It’s not only the cold making me shiver.

I feel very small. Reduced to my true form. A trembling little animal, with no fur or claws to protect me.

The sky is so much bigger, up here. The dark so much deeper. Despite the cozy little cottages, despite the electricity and the wifi and the catering, we are in the wild. So very far away from anyone who might be able to help.

There is a splash in the pond, behind me, and my whole body jerks violently as I spin around and stare out over the water.

Rings are moving lazily from a point about ten feet out, rippling the perfect mirror of the black sky.

Is there someone in the water? Hiding, right under the surface? Waiting to burst out and pull me under?

I can see it so vividly. A body, bursting forth with sudden violence. Gripping my shoulders with icy strength and pushing me down, until the last image I’d see would be the same thing I saw through the window.

A silhouette. An anonymous shadow.

I can’t stay here in the open. But I can’t go back, either. The goddamned doors don’t lock from the inside.

I refuse to sit there, waiting for them to come back. Waiting for them to find me.

We are in the middle of nowhere. The figure in the window could have been anyone. Ellen, or Belinda, or one of the other patients.

Or someone else, entirely.

Someone who has been waiting in the woods, lying still and low and quiet, biding their time until the right moment to pounce and prey on the women staying in these small, unprotected cabins, sleeping and relaxed in their beds, lulled into a false sense of security by flashy marketing.

Here, in the night, alone by the edge of the water, with no company but the deafening silence and the crushing feeling of unseen eyes creeping over my skin, I feel it rolling over me, choking me. The mammalian whisper, far back in my mind, screaming at me to go. To get out.