Is she moving? The thwack, thwack, thwack of tires on concrete permeates the din of horror and she thinks, yes, I’m in a car. A car’s trunk, she realizes.
All of this has processed in the space of three heartbeats, and now comes the panic, rising like a tidal wave through her body.
Breathe, she coaches herself. Breathe.
When the panic subsides a bit, when she feels like she has a grip on the reality of things, she assesses her body. Her hands are tied in front of her, not behind. A small mercy; her collarbone feels like it’s taken on a load of shrapnel. She can’t imagine how much it would hurt if her arm was twisted back. She is wearing her silk top and soft fleece pants from this morning—assuming this is the same day, of course. It’s possible she’s been drugged into oblivion for hours, days, she has no idea.
He’s going to kill her. He’s just marking time—
A horn sounds, sharp, loud, and Olivia jerks awake with a massive gasp, heart thundering in her chest. It takes a moment to right herself.
She’s been dreaming again.
She’s had variations of this nightmare since she came to Alys, but this one was by far the worst. The scent of blood commingling with oil, and the terrible pain in her collarbone, which has been mending well these past few weeks, these details are new.
She is healing. All of her. Mentally. Physically. She had her first period since the miscarriage, and it was as sad and awful to start bleeding again as she expected. But being alone, consumed with the work on Annika’s house, helped dull the pain in her heart. Next month, she’ll have an idea of when her cycle is going to start and be ready for it. It is freeing, in a way, to know that there is no possible chance of being pregnant outside of an immaculate conception. That was the hardest part of the past several years of trying to get and stay pregnant—the damn hope of it all. Hoping that this was the time. Hoping that the two lines on the stick would turn pink. Praying that they were. And when they weren’t, waiting longer, three minutes, five, ten; dragging the stick out of the trash can hours later to examine the blank space under the light for any hint of color. Olivia had always stuck with the old-fashioned pregnancy tests. Somehow the ones that screamed Pregnant or Not Pregnant seemed too in her face. The two lines system was gentler on her psyche.
But no more of this emotional roller coaster. Next month, she’ll bleed, and there will be no tests, no fears. No hoping and praying. Just a regular woman’s body doing its monthly biological duty.
But these nightmares are getting worse.
She rolls out of the bed with a small yelp; the pain from the dream is explained—she’s woken up on her right side. Her collarbone aches, her shoulder feels stiff. But it’s progress that the pain didn’t wake her in the night. It’s felt better since she got the stitches out. She does her exercises quickly just to loosen things up.
The sun is rising, and she follows the liminal brightness to the kitchen, setting water to boil so she can take a cup of green tea out onto the deck and enjoy it. The days are growing incrementally shorter, and she knows vitamin D is the best possible remedy for dipping moods. Coming off the failed pregnancy, she was already living clean, but she’s stuck with it. No caffeine, no alcohol. She’s off the postsurgery pills, too. Loads of water, sunshine, fruit and green tea and exercise, and she’s feeling more like herself again.
She hasn’t been alone for such a long time. Hasn’t been self-sufficient like this since she was a kid, between the Perry breakup and the Park reconciliation.
When she finishes the tea, she goes for a walk. This has become her routine—early to bed, early to rise, tea, walk. She’s doing some of the best work of her career on Annika’s place. Design is an art form like any other, and she recognizes the stages. She’s moving into a new phase of her career, and she likes how it’s going. If Picasso could go blue, so can she.
The sand is soft under her feet, packed perfectly for walking but fine-grained, like sugar. There is the tiniest hint of chill in the morning air, dew sparkling on the webs strung between the sea oats. Soon enough she’ll need shoes for her rambles, but for now, she relishes the cool water and delicate sand. Seagulls swoop and scold overhead, and the sand pipers are out in force, tearing madly across the strand, zigzagging to and fro; there must be a huge field of periwinkles for their morning feast. She’s been using the soft translucent pastels of the tiny mollusks’ wet shells as her inspiration for the colors in the renovation. The breeze, gentle when she started out, has picked up, shifting to a more southern flow, eliminating the chill but causing her hair to whip, tangling around her neck and into her mouth. She’s forgotten a ponytail holder, tucks it behind her ears and down into her shirt and soldiers on.
It is a mile and one half to the next major boardwalk, which is her usual turning spot. The sun is climbing steadily now, and she’s broken into a light sweat. The outdoor shower will feel so good, and then she’s going into town for supplies—the marble she ordered is in, she wants to take a look at the slab before she has it delivered, and the French oak for the ceiling should be in, too. She started in the kitchen and has been working her way into the rest of the house like spokes of a spiderweb.
The rug for the living room is next up. It gave her fits, but she’s settled on a soft cerulean-and-cream antique Turkish from a store on the mainland; it will anchor the palette of the room and allow her to build off the look. The new doors open accordion-style onto the water view, and she’s had four new windows framed and installed and painted the interior walls the same Greek white as the outside to make the space as bright and airy as she can.
A shell catches her eye, and a piece of sea glass next to it. Gasping with pleasure at the find, she scoops it up. It is a big piece, exactly the shade of Perry’s eyes, the softest gray with a hint of blue, like the feathers of a tiny bird.
So is the rug.
So is the veining in the marble.
Shit. There she goes again. She’s recreating her ex-lover’s gaze in textiles.
She’s so lost in thought about the color scheme that she doesn’t notice the man sitting on the steps of the house’s boardwalk until she’s almost to the stairs.
“Olivia.”
She jerks into awareness, gasps aloud to see Perry Bender in the flesh, as if she’s conjured him out of salt and sand and wistful remembrance.
“What are you doing here?”
“Hello to you, too,” he says, amusement in his voice. He doesn’t move—not to touch her, not to get out of her way. He just sits there with that crooked smile she’s been dreaming about in between the nightmares.
“I thought you’d be at the top of the Matterhorn by now.”
“I thought I would be, too. But something came up.”
“More important than work?”
She sounds sharp, she knows it, but he’s caught her so off guard.
“Yeah.” His face goes blank. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Come up to the house,” she says, playing it cool, when inside her heart is throwing a raucous party, yelling and screaming. He’s come for her. Perry has come for her.
The man she wanted to show up, finally has. And she has no idea what this means.