Chapter 6 - The Fourth Dinner
The two guests were waiting when we arrived — men I did not know, introduced as Gregory and Samuel, and Samuel watched me, all evening, in a way that made my skin crawl.
Raymond poured me a glass of wine himself and put it directly into my hand.
I did not drink it.
I raised it to my lips and only pretended, and when no one was watching I set it down untouched.
And at seven o’clock, I put my hand to my forehead and said I felt lightheaded, and let Christopher walk me, one more time, to that guest room, and lay me on that bed.
“Rest, my love,” he said.
“I’ll check on you later.” And a moment after he left, I heard a sound I had never heard before in that house: the sound of a key turning in the lock, from the outside.
I was awake, and clear-headed, and locked in.
I lay still in the dark and listened.
Footsteps came down the hall.
I heard Samuel’s voice, low, through the door: “It hit her fast tonight.” And then Raymond’s voice, calm as a man discussing the weather, answered him — a sentence that confirmed, beyond the last shred of doubt, everything the quiet voice had been trying to tell me for four months: that I had been drugged, deliberately, every time, in that house.
I will not repeat the exact words.
It is enough to know that they made plain that what had been happening to me was no accident, and that they intended it to happen again, that night, and that they believed I was unconscious.
The lock turned.
The door opened.
May you like
Three men came into the dim room together: my husband, my father-in-law, and Samuel.
And in the hallway behind them, I would soon understand, everything they thought protected them — a hallway camera, their phones — had been switched off, because they believed there was no one awake to witness what they had come to do.
