Chapter 1 - The Woman Between Us
On the seventeenth night, I finally lost my patience.
Lucy appeared at our bedroom door at 12:14 a.m. with the same folded blanket beneath one arm and the same pale pillow tucked against her chest.
She didn’t knock anymore.
She simply stepped inside.
Steven was already lying beside me, facing the wall.
Lucy gave me an apologetic smile.
“Just tonight.”
“You said that sixteen nights ago.”
Her smile disappeared.
She climbed onto the bed anyway.
Not beside me.
Not beside Steven.
Between us.
Always between us.
Something inside me snapped.
I grabbed her hair and pulled her upright.
“GET OUT OF MY BED!”
Lucy didn’t fight back.
She didn’t even look at me.
She stared past my shoulder.
At Steven.
Then she grabbed my wrist.
“Emily…”
Her fingers were ice-cold.
“I sleep here to protect you.”
I nearly laughed.
“From what?”
She reached into the pocket of her pajama pants and pulled out a torn strip of dark fabric.
I recognized it immediately.
Steven’s old work jacket.
The one he claimed he had thrown away months ago.
There were brownish stains along one edge.
“I found this on your floor,” Lucy whispered.
My anger evaporated.
“Where?”
“Under your side of the bed.”
I slowly turned.
Steven’s half of the mattress was empty.
The sheet still held the shape of his body.
Warm.
I had felt him beside me moments earlier.
Lucy whispered:
“He was just there.”
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
We both looked toward the open door.
At the far end of the corridor stood Steven.
Motionless.
Backlit by the stairwell light.
He held something long and narrow in one hand.
Lucy immediately moved behind me.
Steven lifted the object.
“Lucy.”
His voice was almost gentle.
“You saw something.”
Lucy’s entire body began trembling.
Then she looked down at the stained fabric in her hand.
“Emily…”
“What?”
“If that came from Steven’s jacket…”
She looked at the shape he was holding.
“…then the thing I found on your floor wasn’t his.”
Steven took one step toward us.
May you like
Lucy screamed.
And from the guest room downstairs, my brother Thomas screamed too.
