“Don’t reply.”
I stared at him.
“Nathan—”
“Not one word, Claire. Trust me.”
The expression on his face frightened me.
I thought he wanted me to let it go.
I was wrong.
Two nights later, when my fever had finally started coming down, I woke around two in the morning and noticed light spilling from the kitchen.
Nathan was sitting at the table with his laptop open.
On the screen was a photograph of Patricia’s porch.
Beside him was a legal pad.
Four words were written across it.
Fridge.
Cabinets.
Laundry.
Towels.
Each was underlined twice.
“What are you doing?”
Nathan quickly covered the paper.
“Thinking.”
That was all he would say.
The following morning, before five, he woke me holding my coat.
“Get dressed.”
“What?”
“We’re going somewhere.”
Twenty minutes later, we were parked outside Patricia’s house.
Nathan still had an emergency key she had given him years earlier.
“She used ours without permission,” he said. “I think you deserve to understand something.”