By nine that morning, I had learned how exhausting it was to pretend your life had not changed. Dererick sat across from me eating toast while I stirred yogurt I could not swallow. He talked about an invoice at work, a colleague who had missed a deadline, and whether we should replace the loose cabinet hinge in the kitchen. I answered at the right places. I even laughed once. Every normal sound coming from my own mouth felt borrowed from the woman I had been yesterday.
Then Dererick mentioned that his schedule would be unusual for the next three days. He would be working late, possibly staying overnight near a client site on the second evening. Normally I would have complained about eating alone. Instead I lowered my eyes so he would not see what the information did to me. Three days. It was not safety, but it was a window, and I had no idea when another one might open.
After he left, I locked the front door and stood with my back against it. I wanted to collapse. Instead I began making a list. Passport. Cash. Identification. Clothes. Charger. Medication. Evidence. Safe place. Person I trusted. The handwriting looked strangely neat considering how violently my hand trembled. I stared at the final word until it seemed larger than the others.
Evidence.
I still had almost none.
That had to change.
I called Clare.
Her phone went directly to voicemail.
I closed my eyes.
Of course it did. She was finishing an overnight shift at the hospital.
“Clare, it's Anna. I need you to call me as soon as you can. It's serious.”
I stopped there.
Anything more felt dangerous to leave recorded.
Then I walked through the house.
Not as its owner.
As an investigator.
Dererick's study was at the back, a narrow room with two bookcases, a desk, and a window facing the alley. I had entered it hundreds of times. I brought him coffee there. I searched drawers for stamps. I dusted around his computer.
That morning the doorway felt like a border.
I stepped inside.
Nothing immediately looked suspicious.
Laptop. Bills. Pens arranged in a ceramic cup. A stack of envelopes. Two folders from work.
Then I saw the notebook.
Dark leather.
Closed.
Placed precisely beside his keyboard.
I remembered seeing it before, but Dererick had always treated it like a work planner.
My fingers hovered above the cover.
Touching it meant crossing another line.
Then I remembered the syringe.
I opened the notebook.
The first pages were ordinary enough: appointments, initials, numbers. Several pages later the structure changed.
Names appeared.
Some I recognized.
Others I didn't.
Beside each were dates, short abbreviations, times, and symbols.
One woman's name appeared repeatedly over six weeks.
Another had been crossed out.
Beside a third, Dererick had written two times and a location.
My mouth went dry.
I pulled out my phone and photographed the pages.
One after another.
No flash.
I forced myself not to rush.
Every page had to return exactly as I found it.
A small folded receipt slipped from between two sheets and landed near my shoe.
I froze.
For several seconds I simply stared at it.
Then I crouched.
The receipt was from a medical supply company.
There were item numbers I did not understand and quantities large enough to make my stomach tighten.
I photographed it and replaced it carefully.
Then I reached the page that changed everything.
My own name was there.
ANNA.
Below it were dates.
At least nine.
Some corresponded to nights I remembered waking with headaches.
Beside several dates were measurements.
One line contained a word I could understand without medical training.
Response.
I sat down hard in Dererick's chair.
Nine documented nights.
Maybe more.
I had spent weeks asking myself whether I was imagining something that had happened once.
The notebook told me otherwise.
I kept photographing.
There were other names before mine.
Women.
Men.
Some identified only by initials.
The pattern extended months beyond the beginning of my strange sleep.
My fear expanded until it no longer fit inside our marriage.
I was not looking at evidence of a husband secretly drugging his wife.
I was looking at a record.
A system.
I needed whatever was on his computer.
The laptop required a password.
I tried nothing.
Guessing incorrectly might create an alert.
Instead I searched the desk.
The first drawer held stationery.
The second contained cables, batteries, and an old phone.
The third was locked.
I stopped.
There was a limit to how much risk I could take without understanding what I was doing.
I photographed the desk and closed everything.
Before leaving, I looked around from the doorway and forced myself to memorize the room exactly as it had been.
Notebook aligned with keyboard.
Chair pushed halfway in.
Pen angled toward the window.
Nothing disturbed.
Back in the bedroom, I packed a small bag.
The act felt surreal. A sweater. Two shirts. Underwear. Sneakers. Passport. Cash from an envelope we kept for emergencies.
Apparently this qualified.
I added the small stuffed owl Clare had given me years ago when I moved into my first apartment. It was ridiculous and took up precious room, but I wanted one object that belonged to a life Dererick had never controlled.
I hid the bag behind winter coats.
Then I checked our accounts.
Nothing unusual appeared at first. Mortgage, utilities, groceries.
I downloaded recent statements anyway.
If I had to disappear quickly, I needed to know what Dererick could access and what he could freeze.
By noon, fear had become work.
That helped.
Every task converted something shapeless into a problem with edges.
I changed the passcode on my phone.
Then changed it back.
A sudden change might be noticed.
Instead I disabled message previews.
I created a new email account from a private browser and wrote the address on paper rather than saving it.
I copied the photographs from Dererick's notebook into it.
Then I deleted the sent record from my phone.
It was clumsy, amateur work.
But it meant that if my phone disappeared, the evidence would not disappear with it.
At one thirty I crossed the street to Mr. Peterson's house.
I had not planned to involve him.
He became part of the plan because he was sitting on his porch.
Mr. Peterson had lived across from us longer than Dererick and I had been married. He was the kind of neighbor who knew which garbage truck came late and which delivery driver left packages in the rain. Dererick occasionally joked that nothing happened on our street without Peterson recording it mentally.
That suddenly seemed less amusing.
“Anna?”
I stopped.
He lowered his newspaper.
“You all right?”
I almost said yes.
Then I realized that the old man was studying my face.
“No,” I said.
The honesty came out before I could stop it.
He folded the newspaper.
“What happened?”
I sat beside him.
For several seconds I watched a squirrel run along the fence because looking at anything human seemed impossible.
“I need to ask you something strange.”
“At my age, strange is usually more interesting.”
“Have you noticed Dererick going out late?”
Peterson did not answer immediately.
That frightened me.
“How late?”
“After midnight.”
He leaned back.
“A few times.”
“How many?”
“Enough that I noticed.”
My fingers tightened around my phone.
“What was he doing?”
“Sometimes taking something to the car. Sometimes the trash.”
“What kind of thing?”
“A black bag once or twice.”
I looked at him.
He saw the answer in my face.
“What has he done?”
I told him enough.
Not everything.
The tea. The camera. The gloves. The notebook.
Mr. Peterson did not interrupt.
When I finished, he rubbed one hand across his jaw.
“You need the police.”
“I need evidence.”
“You need to stay alive long enough to use it.”
The sentence landed with uncomfortable force.
“I don't know whether he's trying to kill me.”
“I didn't say he was.”
“You said stay alive.”
“Because people do foolish things when they're frightened, and people do worse things when they think they're about to be exposed.”
He looked toward our house.
“Does he know you know?”
“I don't think so.”
“Keep it that way.”
The bluntness steadied me.
Peterson offered to watch the house.
Nothing heroic. Nothing that required him to confront Dererick. He would note when Dererick came and went, write down unfamiliar vehicles, and call if anything changed.
“I've got eyes,” he said. “Might as well use them.”
I almost cried.
Instead I asked, “Can I leave something with you?”
He nodded.
I emailed one set of photographs to an address he gave me and wrote down the password on a folded piece of paper.
“Don't open them unless I tell you to,” I said.
“And if you can't tell me?”
I looked at him.
He folded the paper and placed it in his shirt pocket.
“I understand.”
When I returned home, the front door seemed different.
Not because anything had changed.
Because I now knew someone across the street was watching it.
I went upstairs and made another copy of the photographs onto a flash drive.
The drive was bright red.
Too obvious.
I wrapped it in plastic and pushed it into the soil beneath a large potted fern near the back window.
Then I washed my hands and stared at the dirt disappearing down the drain.
My phone rang.
Clare.
I answered immediately.
“Anna?”
The moment I heard her voice, everything I had held together began coming apart.
“Something's wrong with Dererick.”
“What happened?”
I told her.
Not elegantly.
The story came out in fragments: tea, sleep, camera, gloves, vials, notebook, names.
Clare became completely silent.
When I finished, she said, “Leave.”
“I need more evidence.”
“No. Leave.”
“He doesn't know.”
“You don't know that.”
“He's working late.”
“Anna.”
Her tone changed.
It was the voice she used at the hospital when something had become nonnegotiable.
“Pack what you can carry. I can be there in about an hour. Don't confront him. Don't eat or drink anything he gives you. And don't go digging around if you hear him come back.”
“I already packed.”
“Good.”
“I found other names.”
Another silence.
“How many?”
“I don't know. A lot.”
“Photograph everything you safely can. Then get out.”
I looked toward the study.
“I think there may be more on his computer.”
“Anna, listen to me. Evidence is useless if collecting it gets you hurt.”
She was right.
I knew she was right.
But the notebook had transformed the situation.
If I simply escaped, Dererick might destroy everything before anyone obtained a warrant.
Other people might never know what had happened.
“I have three days,” I said.
“No, you have however long it takes him to notice something is different.”
The distinction frightened me because it was true.
Clare said she would come.
She told me to leave through the back if Dererick returned first and go directly to Peterson's.
I agreed.
After the call, I checked the time.
2:43 p.m.
Dererick usually came home after seven.
I had hours.
I used one to prepare.
I moved the packed bag closer to the back door.
I placed my keys inside my pocket instead of their usual dish.
I photographed the medical-supply receipt again.
I wrote down every detail I remembered from the previous night.
At 4:12, I heard a car.
I stopped writing.
The engine idled outside.
Too early for Clare.
Too early for Dererick.
I went to the window without standing directly in front of it.
A dark vehicle was parked at the curb.
I could not see the driver clearly.
After perhaps thirty seconds, it moved on.
My phone vibrated.
Peterson.
Saw it too. Don't recognize it.
My throat tightened.
Maybe coincidence.
Maybe not.
I returned to the kitchen.
The house seemed suddenly full of hiding places that worked both ways.
At 4:37, another engine entered the driveway.
This one I recognized immediately.
Dererick.
He was home more than two hours early.
For one second I could not move.
Then every plan I had made compressed into a single command.
Go.
I grabbed the bag.
Keys rattled outside.
I crossed the kitchen.
The front lock turned.
I reached the back door.
“Anna?”
Dererick's voice came from the hallway.
I stopped with my hand on the knob.
He was already inside.
