Chương 1
"Brett took the keys from my hand while I was still telling him our daughter had started kicking.
Not metaphorically. Not in the vague, sentimental way people spoke about unborn babies as though every flutter carried a message. June—though she did not have that name yet—drove one small heel beneath my ribs hard enough to make me catch my breath, and Brett glanced at my stomach before closing his fingers around my wrist.
“Give them to me, Natalie.”
Outside, ash tapped against the cabin windows like dirty sleet. The evacuation alert had arrived eleven minutes earlier, loud enough to make all four phones on the kitchen counter scream at once. Pine Ridge Road was under mandatory evacuation. The western access was already closed. Residents were instructed to leave immediately by the eastern route.
I had the only set of SUV keys.
Brett’s mother stood near the front door buttoning her burgundy coat. Eleanor had dressed for dinner even though we had canceled the reservation hours earlier. Gold earrings, black leather handbag, lipstick untouched by the smoke already slipping through the gaps around the windows.
Behind her, Tessa Vale bent to pick up an overnight bag I had never seen before that evening.
“Brett,” I said, “there’s room for all of us.”
His grip tightened. Not enough to bruise, probably. Brett had always understood measurements like that.
“Mom can barely walk when her hip locks up.”
“She walked in here carrying wine.”
“Natalie.”
“And why is Tessa here?”
Tessa’s hand stopped on the strap of her bag. She had red hair that looked copper under the kitchen lights and pale skin that showed every change in blood flow. At that moment, color climbed from her collar to her cheeks.
Brett’s jaw shifted.
“This is not the time.”
“It became the time when I saw her toothbrush in our bathroom.”
Eleanor made a sharp, weary sound, as if my humiliation had inconvenienced her personally.
“If Natalie wants to stand here making a scene,” she said, “let her. We need to go.”
I looked at Brett. He looked at the keys.
There had been a point in our marriage when he could make me doubt the evidence of my own eyes. A hotel receipt became a client meeting. A late-night message became a misunderstanding. Tessa’s name appearing too often became proof that I was lonely, insecure, hormonal, tired. Brett never shouted. That was one of the things people admired about him. He stayed calm while I became emotional, and afterward the calmness was what everyone remembered.
Now the sky beyond the back windows had turned an ugly, glowing orange.
“We don’t have another car,” I said.
“You have your phone. Call someone.”
“The emergency kit is in the SUV.”
He pulled once. I held on.
“The backup phone is in there. The charger is in there. My hospital bag is in there.”
“You’re not in labor.”
“I’m six months pregnant.”
“I know how pregnant you are.”
The words came out flat, almost bored. Then his eyes dropped to my stomach for half a second, and something inside me went cold despite the heat pressing against the glass.
I loosened my grip because I expected him to stop.
That was my mistake.
He twisted the keys free, released my wrist, and walked past me.
Tessa stared at the floor.
“Get out of the car,” I told her.
She swallowed. “Natalie, I—”
“Get out.”
Brett opened the front door, and smoke rolled into the entryway. Eleanor covered her mouth with one gloved hand but did not look back at me.
“Enough,” Brett said. “We’ll call someone once we’re down the mountain.”
“Then call them now.”
“We don’t have time.”
“You have time to take her.”
Tessa flinched when I pointed at her. For one desperate second, I believed shame might move her when decency had not. I believed she might put down the bag, step aside, and say that of course the pregnant wife should take the seat.
Instead, she followed Eleanor outside.
The gravel cut my bare feet when I ran after them. I had left my shoes beside the couch after my ankles swelled that afternoon. My coat hung over one arm. The wind shoved smoke between the pines, carrying pine needles, ash, and the bitter chemical smell of something man-made burning farther down the ridge.
Brett was already in the driver’s seat.
Eleanor sat beside him.
Tessa climbed into the back.
The door was still open when I reached it. I grabbed the edge.
“Move over,” I said.
Tessa pressed herself against the opposite side but did not move toward the door. Her overnight bag occupied the middle seat.
“Move the bag.”
Brett started the engine.
“Brett, I can sit on the floor. I don’t care. Just let me in.”
He looked straight ahead.
I slapped the side of the SUV with my palm. “Look at me.”
The dashboard lights painted his face blue and white. His hands settled at ten and two, deliberate and steady.
“Brett.”
He lowered the window two inches.
“I’ll send help.”
“The alert says the road is closing.”
“I’ll send help.”
“You don’t know anyone is coming.”
He raised the window.
I shoved my fingers into the gap until the glass stopped. For a moment we stayed like that, my hand trapped between the pane and the frame, his face turned away.
Then Eleanor said something I could not hear.
The window came down just enough for me to pull free.
The SUV rolled forward.
I held the door handle and ran beside it for three strides. The gravel tore skin from my heel. Brett accelerated. My hand slipped, and the black vehicle carried my husband, his mother, and his mistress down Pine Ridge Road while I stood in the drifting ash with my coat over one arm and our daughter kicking inside me.
The red taillights disappeared around the first bend.
May you like
For several seconds I did nothing.
The forest groaned in the wind. Somewhere to the west, something exploded with a dull metallic boom. The cabin’s exterior lights blinked off, then on again.
