CHAPTER 3 Nowhere To Go

(Sabrina’s POV)

I picked up Nate’s pen. The pen I had bought him for our first anniversary, engraved with his initials on the side. He had never used it. The barrel was cold.

I signed.

I clicked the pen shut and laid it down across the form, right over the word consent.

My hand did not shake. I did not cry.

“There. Done.”

Nate’s mouth opened. He looked, for one flicker of a second, shaken. Like he had expected tears. Like he had prepared himself for begging. Not this.

“Sabrina—”

“Don’t.”

I walked past Alexis. I walked past my husband. I walked into the bedroom that had been mine for three years and turned the lock with both hands.

For about ten seconds, I felt strong.

For about ten seconds I told myself: I’ll call a lawyer. I’ll file for divorce myself. I’ll take whatever scraps the court gives me and I’ll get out.

Then the ten seconds ran out.

I wanted a divorce more than I had ever wanted anything, but wanting and affording are two different languages.

I had nowhere to go.

Aunt Nancy lived in a one-bedroom that smelled like cat food. She slept on a foldout. She didn’t have room for me—especially not for me and a baby. Uncle James was still in a coma at St. Catherine’s.

The Coopers had been paying his bills for three years.

That was why I had married Nate Cooper in the first place.

If I walked out tonight, the bills stopped in the morning.

My own bank account had forty-seven dollars in it. Nate gave me a card for groceries, a card for clothes, one for emergencies. None of them were in my name. All cancelled by sunrise.

I knew, because I had watched him cancel his own father’s card the week the old man died, before the body was cold.

And I was a month pregnant.

I slid down to the carpet at the foot of the bed.

And then, because I am apparently a person who can always be made to feel worse, I threw up into the wastebasket beside the vanity. Morning sickness, but at night. The world was hilarious.

I was wiping my mouth when the knock came.

“Sa-bri-naaa.”

Three syllables. Sing-song. Like she was calling a cat.

“Sweetie. Open up. We need to have a little chat.”

I dragged myself upright. I would not let her find me on the floor next to a basket of vomit. There were limits.

I opened the door.

Alexis was waiting with a face like Christmas morning. She had taken off the cream coat. She was wearing one of my robes.

“Is that my robe?”

“It was hanging in the hallway, sweetie, don’t make it weird.” She breezed past me. Sat on my bed. Crossed her legs. “Ooh, this mattress is dreadful. Did you pick it?”

“Get out, Alexis.”

“No, I don’t think I will.” She looked around the room. “This bedroom is mine now. Obviously. You can move your things into one of the staff rooms downstairs. Chris will show you which one.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’ve practically been the help this whole time, sweetie. Cook, clean, iron, walk his grandmother to the bathroom. You’re already doing it. You’ve just been doing it without the dignity of a job title.” She laughed, delighted with herself. “At least there will be no illusion anymore. Honestly? It’s an upgrade.”

“You want me to move into the servant quarters.”

“I want to be honest with you Sabrina. It’s for your own good.” She tilted her head, looked me up and down, and winced. “God, that sweater, though.”

She stood up and wandered to the window. She ran one finger along the curtains, frowning.

“And these curtains. My God. Who chose these?”

“I did.”

“Well, they’re going.” She turned back to me. “I’ll need the bedroom cleared out by tomorrow night. Oh—and the salmon in the fridge? Throw that out. The smell is making me ill.” She pressed two fingers to her temple, like the very thought exhausted her. “And don’t drag this out. My brothers hate seeing me upset, and Eric is going to be furious enough when he hears what you’ve put me through tonight as it is.”

I watched her move through the room, touching things, rearranging things—my things—and I suddenly realized.

“Alexis.”

She stopped, her hand on the bathroom doorframe.

“You’re not dying.”

She went very still. Just for a heartbeat. Then she turned with a smile already in place, but I had seen it. The flinch, the tiny crack in the mask.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not dying,” I said again. “You’re pregnant. You’re glowing. You walked up three flights of stairs without breathing hard. You’re drinking the water from my Brita like it’s champagne. You’re not sick. You’re not even a little bit sick.”

“Sweetie.” She tilted her chin up to the light. “I’m very ill. Stage four, officially. Don’t I look tragic?”

“You look like a woman who just stole someone’s husband and wants the house to match! You enjoy degrading me, don’t you?”

Her eyes narrowed. The sweetness dropped for one full second, and underneath it I saw something terrifying. 

Then the mask slid back.

“You’re upset,” she said gently. “I understand. It’s been a long night. We’ll revisit this in the morning, when you’ve calmed down.”

She turned to the bathroom, pulling pins from her hair.

“I’m running a bath. Make yourself useful and find me a fresh towel.”

She opened the vanity drawer, rummaging through it. Her hand came out holding a small white candle. The stub of one, anyway, half-burned, sitting on top of a box of matches.

“What’s this?” She turned the candle over in her fingers. “Was this for him? Were you saving this for some little romantic moment?”

She struck a match.

I watched her light the wick. The flame caught and she held it up like a birthday candle, admiring herself in the vanity mirror.

“There,” she said. “Now the room feels more like mine.”

She set the candle on the vanity ledge and turned back to the bathroom, saying something about uniforms.

I smelled it before I saw it.

Smoke.

The candle. She had set it too close to the curtain. The fabric was old, dry, and the flame had already caught the hem. A thin orange tongue was climbing the linen, quiet and fast.

“Alexis—”

She turned. She saw the fire. Her eyes went wide.

And then she screamed.

“HELP! NATE! NATE, HELP! SHE’S SETTING THE HOUSE ON FIRE! SABRINA’S SETTING THE HOUSE ON FIRE!”

I stood frozen. She was looking right at me, and she was smiling. Behind the screaming, behind the panic, she was smiling.

“NATE! HELP! SHE’S GONE MAD! SHE LIT THE CURTAIN!”

The fire was spreading. The curtain was fully alight now, licking up toward the curtain rod. Smoke was thickening in the room. Alexis backed toward the door, still screaming, her hand cupped under her belly like a shield.

I didn’t go after her. I didn’t try to explain.

I ran.

Not downstairs. Not toward Nate’s voice, which was already thundering up the staircase. I turned the other way, down the east hallway, toward the room at the end.

His grandmother’s room.

She napped every evening from seven to nine. She was eighty-three years old and half-deaf and she slept through thunderstorms.

She would sleep through the fire.

The smoke was in the hallway now. I could feel it in my throat, clawing at the inside of my chest.

I reached her door and turned the handle.

“Grandma Cooper. Grandma, wake up. Please. Please wake up.”

She was in the armchair by the window, head tilted to one side. A book lay open on her lap.

I shook her shoulder. She stirred, blinking. “Sabrina? Darling, what—”

She was saying something to me, shouting something, but I couldn’t hear it anymore.

The smoke was inside me. In my lungs, in my blood, in the dark space behind my eyes.

My knees went first. Then my hands. Then the floor came up to meet me, and the last thing I saw before the dark was the small gold flicker of firelight, and I thought: the baby. Please. The baby.

And then nothing.

Until I woke up in a hospital bed. Two men I had never seen before were standing over me.

“Sister,” the taller one said. “My name is Eric Atwood. I have been looking for you for a very long time.”