All Chapters of They Called Her Unstable Then She Took Everything: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

(Kael )She lied beautifully. That was what I thought, standing in the sitting room doorway the next evening with my bag in my hand.She'd told him she sat on the tiled floor of a salon toilet with her head against the wall, alone and ashamed, counting tiles until the dizziness passed. She described the tiles. Green and white, one chipped. She cried at exactly the right moment. Thorne listened with his fingertips together and finally kissed her forehead and said he was sorry he'd asked.I'd watched from the hall, holding a chart I had already falsified, and thought: she's better at this than I am.I'd spent the afternoon making rounds I didn't need to make. The pantry, the garden path, the corridor outside Thorne's study. Every place a man might reasonably find himself while checking on a patient. What I was really doing was counting. Sable's movements. Beatrix's tray times. The hour Thorne left his study for the drawing room and the hour he came back. I never thought I'd be a man who

(Kael)From the sunroom to the study is forty-one steps. I know because I counted them, which I do when I'm afraid. It's an old habit from the hospital, from the long corridors that led to the rooms where families waited. Count the steps, keep your face still, arrive with your voice level.I arrived. The door was already open.Thorne's study smelled of leather and something faintly medicinal I'd never managed to place. He kept it dim. He kept everything dim, as if light was something you had to earn.He was sitting when I came in, not standing. That was how I knew it would be bad. Thorne stood for friends and pleasantries. He sat when he wanted a person to feel the height of the room."Doctor." He gestured at the chair opposite. "Sit.""I'd rather stand.""Sit, please. I dislike being looked down on in my own house."I sat.He let silence go by. He was good at those. Some men fill a silence with threats. Thorne filled it with patience, until you started wondering what you'd forgotten.

(Marlowe)Mrs. Pell brought the tea at ten, the way she had every night for three years.Same tray, same blue cup, same two sugar cubes set to the side like an apology. She put it on the nightstand, asked if I needed anything, and waited for me to say no. I said no. She left. I counted to sixty, took the cup into the bathroom, and poured it down the sink.Then I sat on the edge of the tub in my dressing gown and shook for a full minute. It happened every night. I'd stopped being embarrassed by it.The shaking wasn't fear of getting caught. It was the memory of the first month, before Kael, when I'd drunk every cup. The way the evenings used to blur at the edges, like a photograph left on a sunny windowsill. I'd wake up not knowing whether a conversation had happened or I'd dreamed it, and Thorne would be sitting on the bed with that patient look, saying, "We talked about this yesterday, remember?" I never remembered. I'd just nod, and he'd squeeze my hand, and I'd think: another one g

(Marlowe)The cup was a quarter inch from my mouth when Kael walked in.I'd been trying to think my way out of it for a full minute. Thorne's hand steady under the saucer, his voice low and loving. Just a little, darling. Chamomile, valerian, lemon balm, and underneath, the taste I knew was like a bad word in my own language, a faint chalky sweetness that settled on the back of the tongue. If I refused, I was the wife who'd refused her husband's gift. Tomorrow's confusion was already half-written. If I drank, I lost the night, and probably the next morning too.I saw Kael in the doorway over Thorne's shoulder. I saw him see the cup. And his face did nothing at all, which told me exactly how much it cost.I made up my mind in the time it takes to blink.My hand came up as if to steady the cup, clumsy, trembling, and I let the saucer tip. Hot tea went across my lap in a single wet rush. I gasped, loudly, and then I made it a cry, because it hurt, actually, enough that the second sound w

MarloweThe burner phone was under the medical journal, and the journal was under my folded hands, and I had perhaps two seconds to decide what kind of woman I was going to be."Whispering?" I said, and let a small, bewildered laugh escape. It was the laugh I'd perfected over three years, the one that said I'm sorry, I've lost the thread again. "Oh, Beatrix. Dr. Everhart was telling me to keep a dream diary. I said I never remember mine, and he said that was rather the point."Kael didn't turn from the shelf. "Writing them down first thing helps with recall," he said. "Patients are often surprised how much comes back.""How sensible." Beatrix came into the room in that soundless way she had, grey silk whispering, and stopped beside my chair. She laid two cool fingers against my cheek. "You do look better, dear. There's colour in your face. Almost like yourself."Almost like yourself. Three years ago I'd have taken that as a compliment."I feel a little clearer," I admitted, looking at