Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Nave led me past all of that and toward the side yard where two picnic tables were set under a tree. He set down the box of donuts and opened the lid in a silent invitation.
Did I reach for one of the chocolate-frosted ones like a lifeline? Yes, yes, I did. What can I say? After years of being denied sugar in any form other than fruit, I was desperate to get a taste of it whenever I could. Especially if it was free.
“Do you mind?” I asked, putting Edith’s bag down on the opposite picnic table, then undoing the zipper. Her little brown head popped right out, sniffing the air.
“Ben let you have a dog?”
Even the sound of his name had my stomach flipping over and clenching.
“Let is a kind of fluid concept,” I admitted as Nave reached out toward Edith. She’d hated Ben. And he’d hated her in turn. But she gave Nave a sniff and a tentative lick that he took as an invitation to pick her up.
“How’d you get her then?”
“He got her for me after three months of a depression so deep that I barely ate or bathed. The latter was, clearly, a problem.”
“He always smelled like bleach.”
“He bathed in it,” I told him.
“That tracks. The marble frosted are better than the chocolate,” Nave said, nodding toward one. I knew he was just trying to make me feel able to have another. And, well, I wasn’t going to pass on that. “So he got you a dog.”
“He knew after dragging me into the bathroom and shoving me into the bath to clean me that I was lonely. And since letting me have actual human friends was out of the question, he got Edith. Under some very, very strict conditions.”
“Lots of baths, I’m assuming.”
“Once a week. But her feet had to be cleaned and dried each time she came into the house. She had to be brushed twice daily—even though she is virtually shed-free—and the house vacuumed an extra two times a day. It added another two hours of chores to my day. But…”
“It was worth it.”
“Yeah. She was the only thing getting me out of bed most days.”
“Can I ask you something I’ve wondered for years?”
I watched him dig in the bag to find Edith’s leash, clipping it to her collar, then putting her down to sniff around.
“Why did I stay?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced past him, looking into the darkest part of the backyard and sucking in a deep breath.
“Don’t you think that if I were able to leave, I would have?”
“I had my suspicions,” he admitted. “But I didn’t know if you just stayed because you were scared of being on your own, of having to find your own way, or if it was something… more sinister than that?”
“It didn’t start out that way,” I admitted. “I mean, it happened in phases. If he’d gone full-on controlling monster right at first, he’d never have gotten me into that glass house.”
“Was he always… that clean?”
“I don’t think he showed it to anyone at first. I mean, he was very clean and so was his office. He was a little obsessed with hand sanitizer and insisted on everything being paper or plastic because washing dishes didn’t get them clean enough. But it wasn’t like… what you saw.” And all the things he didn’t see.
“Wait. It sounds like you worked for him.”
“I did,” I confirmed. “I was a temp at his office. Until he decided that he needed me to work for him full-time. And I’d been so desperate for solid employment with good pay that I’d let myself ignore some red flags even in those early days.”
“Whatever happened, it’s not your fault that he was a manipulative and controlling fuck.”
He didn’t even know the half of it.
“I’m not taking on the responsibility of his sick nature. But I can see how often I squashed down my own gut feelings for the promise of comfort and stability.
“It was only three months after working for him that we started dating. Another six weeks before I moved in with him. Before I stopped going anywhere without him. When I agreed to enable tracking on my phone and gave him my passwords. I submitted to all his requests for how to dress, how to bathe, how to eat.
“And each time I gave into him, the walls closed in tighter and tighter. Until I agreed to move into the new glass house.”
I’d been so naively excited at first. So charmed by the views all around, by the little bunnies, deer, turkey, and songbirds that were all around.
“That’s when you really got locked down.”
“Yeah. At first, I let myself believe that all the cameras were just for safety. Especially because we were out in the middle of nowhere and the cops would take forever to get to us if something happened. But then the cameras went up inside.”