Page 263 of The Professor's Wife

I grabbed the bottle and brought it to my nose.

There was no scent.

I tried to remember whether I’d heard the plastic seal crack when I opened it. I couldn’t.

What did I think? That he’d put something in it to knock me out?

For what purpose?

Except now I had a purpose, didn’t I?

The passenger door was unlocked, though I couldn’t remember leaving it that way.

Someone had been inside my van while I was out cold. That very someone had opened that paper bag and taken only the two things that mattered. Not my guitar. Not my wallet. Not the cash in the console. Just the puffer with the scratched-out label and the university keycard marked B13.

My pulse began to pound.

Oliver had known.

Maybe not everything. Maybe not Daisy. Maybe not the hotel, or the road, or the way I’d been watching his house like some deranged, jealous drunk.

But he had known enough. He had known I followed him to the pub. He had known I saw him throw that bag away. And then, circling back, he had known I’d gone into the garbage after it.

I had drunk from his hand. I had sat in my van afterward and folded like a dead man. And sometime after that, Oliver had come back.

Or someone had.

But I knew.

I fucking knew.

Old Mill Road.

Tom had asked Oliver if he was heading up Old Mill Road, to his cabin.

Getting it ready for my wife, he had said.

For Daisy.

A cold feeling moved through me.

What he just did was enough of a warning to keep away. I should have driven back to the hotel. I should have found her. I should have told her I was losing my fucking mind and let her decide if she wanted to stand anywhere near this kind of crazy. How would I even tell her I’d had breakfast with her husband after I’d followed him out of their giant house after I’d parked out front of it?

Holy shit.

And no, it wasn’t the first fucking time. I was twisted, and maybe enough damage was done. The sane thing—therightthing—would be to go back to that hotel room and come clean about how warped and consumed with jealousy and pain I was.

Instead, I started the van.

I sat there for a second, hands tight on the wheel, waiting for some other awful thing to happen.

Nothing did.

The van idled along with me. I’d just been fucked with, and I still felt crazy. My vision spotted for a moment as that strange heaviness returned. A voice in my head whispered to go back to the hotel. To stay away from Oliver Black and his cabin. If he wanted his trash back, so what?

I couldn’t avoid the pull, though. The need to understand was louder than the urge to run back to familiarity. I pulled out of the parking lot. The road out was darker than before. The further I drove, the more streetlights thinned and houses spread apart. Trees moved in close on either side, crowding the road.

Old Mill Road wasn’t hard to find on the folded road map I kept in the glove box.