I stare at the broken glass in the photo, the scar on my head aching dully. Our wedding photo is broken—smashed to pieces. My face is a spider web of cracks. There’s something unsettling about it. Why wouldn’t he put the photo away until he could replace the frame?
“Why don’t you go take a shower?” Graham suggests. “I’ll go downstairs and make us some breakfast before I have to leave for work.”
I don’t want to say this to him, because he’s being so nice to me, but I’m deeply relieved that Graham is going to leave the room, and even more relieved that he’s going to work and will be out of the house all day. I don’t want to be anywhere near this stranger.
I return to the bathroom and shut the door behind me. I reach for the doorknob to lock the door, but that’s when I realize there’s no lock on it. When Harry and I bought this house, there was a lock on the bathroom door. I remember it distinctly.
Where did the lock go?
I suppose it was removed at some point. Maybe Graham felt it wasn’t safe for me to be locked in the bathroom, given my situation. But I hate the idea that anybody could burst into this room at any moment.
I force myself to look at my reflection in the vanity mirror. It’s so strange. It’s me, but not me. But also definitely me. The short hair is the most jarring part of all, but my face looks different in subtle ways. Ways that maybe only I would notice. A few creases around my eyes. My cheeks aren’t quite as full.
And there are dark purple circles under my eyes.
I pull off my night shirt and drop it on our shiny new toilet. I run my fingers over the bare skin of my chest. It’s not that different from what I remember. But if I continue to have these memory problems over years and decades, that will change. Someday, I’m going to walk over to the mirror and see an old lady staring back at me.
The thought of it brings on a wave of nausea. I double over, clutching my stomach. I need to calm down. It’s like that letter I wrote said—if I relax and accept it, I’ll be fine.
And then I notice something on my thigh. Black ink.
Somebody scrawled a sentence on my thigh, above where my nightshirt ends. It looks like my own handwriting, but it’s hard to tell. I squint at the words, and a chill goes through me when I realize what they say.
Graham is drugging you.
Oh my God.
I’m shaking so badly that I barely make it to the toilet before my legs give out beneath me. I sit there, staring at the message scribbled on my leg. I’m obviously the one who wrote it there. It’s upside down, the way it would be if I were writing it. Nobody else could have written that. And I wrote it in a place where I didn’t think Graham would see.
My husband is drugging me. I don’t know whether I have a head injury, but either way, something is going on. He’s doing this to me.
I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to call the police.
I peek outside the bathroom—Graham has gone downstairs. I forget about showering and slip outside the bathroom. I fumble through the drawers, looking for something to wear. I find piles of women’s clothing, but none of it looks familiar to me. All my old stuff is gone. My Weezer T-shirt. My fuzzy green sweater I always wore on St. Patrick’s Day. My favorite pair of blue jeans with the giant hole in the right knee that Harry used to joke made me look like I was in a grunge band. Everything is gone.
But I don’t have time to care about any of that. I select a sweater and a pair of jeans, then slide my feet into a pair of blindingly white sneakers, so new that they still feel stiff. I look around for a wallet or any kind of money—I usually keep my wallet on the clothing dresser.
But there’s nothing. And my phone is MIA as well.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll leave here with no money and I’ll find the nearest police station. I’ll tell them what I know about Graham. I’m sure they can do some blood or urine tests to find out if he’s been drugging me or not.
I try to be as quiet as possible as I walk down the stairs. I don’t know Graham, and I don’t know what he’s capable of. Well, I know he’s capable of poisoning me. But I don’t know if he’s the sort of person who would attack me if I tried to leave. Better not to find out.
The living room is quiet. It looks so different from the way it used to look when Harry and I lived here. It looks like the living room out of a magazine about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Where did the money come from to buy all this stuff?
I smell bread toasting in the kitchen. The sizzle of a frying pan. Graham is occupied at the stove. Now is the perfect time to slip away.