This has to be some kind of scam where they give you a fake key to a time-share, but then when you get there, they make you sit through a four-hour presentation and smooth-talk you into signing your life away.
I place the key back inside the box and set it aside for now, opting to sort through the rest of the mail.
I’ll check into it later.
I’m sure it’s nothing.
CHAPTER 2
It’s forty minutes past six Tuesday evening when my tenant, Niall, gets home. I deliberately delayed fixing dinner in hopes that we could eat together.
I do that sometimes. And he always seems grateful. Besides, I see what he eats when I don’t cook, and it’s usually something along the lines of a turkey sandwich and an apple and strawberry Greek yogurt. Cold things. Quick grabs. Nothing that sticks to the ribs. The man eats like a bird, not a doctor who’s on his feet twelve hours a day. He could use a hot meal every now and then.
“Smells amazing—what is it?” he asks, tugging his name badge off his teal scrub shirt when he walks through the back door.
“Shepherd’s pie,” I say. My grandmother was always big on comfort food. As a result, casseroles comprise three-fourths of the things I know how to make.
He flashes a smile that lights his face, softening his strong features. His deep-set crystalline eyes and square jaw can be harsh on him if his expression veers to the serious side, but when he’s in good spirits, I swear he can light an entire room with just one look.
“More than enough,” I say, which is my nonchalant invitation to dinner, not that he needs one at this point. He’s lived here for several months now, moving in shortly after my attack, when living alone was becoming overwhelming in ways I never knew possible before.
“Let me grab a shower, and I’ll be back down.” He squeezes past me, his hands resting on my shoulders for a sliver of a second, and then he disappears, footsteps fading until they’re swallowed by the second level.
I check the timer on the oven before setting the table.
Despite the fact that our relationship—if you can call it that—is strictly platonic, sometimes it feels like playing house with him 1950s-style. I’m the stay-at-home wife. He’s the husband with an MD. We live on one of the prettiest tree-lined streets in town. We never discuss politics or religion—only the best parts of our days. All that’s missing are a couple of kids, some old-fashioned romance, and a border collie named Frisbee.
But whatever this is, I don’t mind. It makes me not feel like a freak. He helps me forget. He quells the loneliness if only for an hour or two of my day. Niall is a welcome distraction from the bizarre bubble that has become my life.
I take a seat at the table a few minutes later, a steaming dish of shepherd’s pie resting on one of my grandmother’s iron trivets. My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten a thing since before noon, but I wait for him out of politeness. A quick glance at the front door confirms the lock is engaged. It doesn’t matter how many times I check it during the day, I can never help second-guessing myself at the most random of moments.
With my elbows resting on the table and my chin in my hands, I stare out the lace-covered windows of the dining room at a sky that has long turned to dusk.
I’m lost in my own thoughts for I’m not sure how long when the flicker of the aged brass candelabra chandelier above steals my attention.
A sharp pop follows next, then darkness, and for a second I can’t breathe, as if the air is trapped in my paralyzed lungs.
My entire house is black, the only source of light filtered through the sheer panels that hang from the windows.
“Niall?” I call up the stairs, palms damp against the tops of my thighs. I don’t wait for him to reply before dashing to the kitchen and yanking my keys from the drawer. I’m sure it’s just a blown fuse or tripped breaker, but I refuse to lumber around a pitch-black house without taking a couple of safety precautions. One of the first things I did after leaving the hospital was order a handful of portable self-defense tools I could carry on my key chain—pepper spray, a personal alarm, brass knuckles, a miniature stun gun.
Next, I grab a few candles and a lighter from the cupboard beside the sink, placing them in the center of the dining room table before lighting the wicks. It isn’t much, but it’s better than stumbling around in a dark void.
Turning to carry the lighter back to the kitchen, I stop in my tracks when I nearly bump into Niall standing in the doorway. My heart lurches into my throat with such force it’s almost painful.
“Hey,” he says, voice soothing like balm. He places his hands over mine, his steady over mine trembling. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The earthy, antiseptic scent of tea tree oil bodywash emanates from his warm skin, and even in the dark, I can see his hair is damp, parted on the side, and combed through.
“I must’ve tripped a breaker when I was shaving,” he says. I exhale. I’m sure that’s all it was. This old house needs new electric, but whenever I think of the handful of strangers that’ll be working in my home for days, possibly weeks, I immediately change my mind. “You have a flashlight?”
Niall releases my hands and I squeeze past him, fishing around in a kitchen junk drawer until I produce a small black flashlight.
He takes it from me, heading to the basement door, his pace calm and patient.
“When was the last time anyone looked at your electrical panel? Might be time to have it replaced.” He clicks on the flashlight before heading downstairs.
I return to the dining room table, taking refuge in the dancing light of the candles until the chandelier above flickers back to life.
This happens sometimes—the tripped breakers—but this is the first time it’s happened at night, after the sun’s gone down.
Thank God Niall’s here. I’ve always hated that basement. The musty smells. The decades-old canned vegetables sitting on shelves. The iron furnace with its menacing facade. The way the house creaks and moans when the wind blows hard from the north and all the sounds are amplified down there.
“All good,” Niall says when he returns a couple of minutes later.
My cheeks flush with warmth. I know I overreacted. I know I got worked up for nothing. But once the body’s fight-or-flight response is engaged, there’s no shutting it off until the threat to safety has been removed—something I’ve learned during my recovery.
He takes a seat beside me at the table. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”
“Dig in,” I say with a small smile, ignoring his comment and wishing I could erase my overreaction from a few moments ago from both of our memories. I know our relationship is that of a landlord and tenant, but I’ve always treated him as a guest. A friend, really. I want him to know that I enjoy his company. I want him to feel welcome and at home.
This is his home after all.
“Starving,” he says as he heaps a portion onto his plate. “Barely had time to think today, let alone eat a proper lunch.”
I know Tuesdays are his busiest days. He’s said so in the past. They like to perform surgeries earlier in the week; that way if there are any complications or emergencies, they’re normally caught before the weekend rolls around and doctors have to be paged in.