Page 135 of Where the Snakes Sleep

I do not want him staying in my home because danger has made leaving impractical, or coming to my bed because hurting me gives structure to his anger, or asking me for things because he is trying to reverse the imbalance I created between us.

I want him to choose me.

I lie back against the pillows and stare at the ceiling until the room grows dark around me.

There is a word I have avoided because it seemed premature, indulgent, and practically insulting in light of how our relationship began.

Attraction I could admit.

Attachment became impossible to deny.

Fondness sounded absurdly inadequate but was at least safe.

Love is neither safe nor flattering.

Love makes what I did worse.

I close my eyes.

I love him. It’s the only explanation I can find. Why else would I be allowing this? Letting Ryan order me around all day, all while ignoring the fact that the evidence I have searched for my entire life is finally within reach, just behind the guest room door.

I know it because when I imagined my parents’ ghosts in the room with us yesterday, when he crawled out of that hole covered in plaster and clutching what should be the most important thing to me, I felt ashamed.

They would not recognize what I have done to their memory, and if they did, they would despise it.

My mother—a researcher whose patience was the stuff of legend, who once spent four months rearing a single clutch of viper eggs just to confirm a hypothesis about maternal heat transfer—would not congratulate this bastardization of the scientific method.

My father—a man who endured the last years of his life under public scrutiny, who clung to hope with the persistence of a barnacle until the very end—would not have wanted me to become this version of myself. He was a man who died because he could no longer balance his profound love for my mother, his grief at losing her, and the constant accusations that he was the one who drove her away, that he was the one responsible for the loss of the brilliant Nadia Moreau.

I study my hands where they rest in my lap. The red imprints from the makeshift restraint are fading, but it is difficult to shake the sense that I am marked by this in a way no amount of time will erase. I have told myself the ends would justify whatever means I needed, but after tonight, I cannot escape the feeling that the ends are not what I wanted at all. I wanted something truer, but I do not know if that is possible anymore.

Over the next three days, Ryan uses me.

He would object to that description, perhaps because some part of him still considers what he is doing revenge and would therefore prefer language with sharper edges, but the truth is considerably gentler than his intentions.

He asks for breakfast each morning.

He appears in the kitchen wearing sleep-soft clothing and an expression designed to communicate that I remain personally offensive to him, tells me what he wants, then sits at the island while I prepare it. The morning after our encounter, he requests French toast, berries, coffee, and eggs prepared in a specific way that requires two pans.

He makes me do his laundry again.

He sends me upstairs for his phone while he is already halfway up the staircase himself.

He asks me to bring him water while we are both in the kitchen and I am farther from the refrigerator than he is.

And I do it.

Every time.

The requests are never cruel. Ryan does not ask for anything uncomfortable or unreasonable, and seems incapable of enjoying the arrangement for much longer than thirty seconds before guilt begins eating through whatever satisfaction he obtained.

That guilt manifests in small betrayals of his own plan.

He tells me to make his lunch, then automatically carries my plate to the table while I gather utensils.

He leaves his clothing for me to wash, then folds two of my shirts because they emerge from the dryer while he happens to be standing nearby.

He orders me to bring him sparkling water from the kitchen and, when I return, has moved my papers out of the patch of sunlight coming through the window because he knows glare bothers me when I read.