Format: Paperback, 336 pages
Release Date: November 14, 2023
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Publisher
Genre: Horror / Thrillers / Suspense
A sharp-edged, supremely twisty thriller about three women who
find themselves trapped inside stories they know aren’t their own, from
the author of Alice and Near the Bone.
Celia
wakes up in a house that’s supposed to be hers. There’s a little girl
who claims to be her daughter and a man who claims to be her husband,
but Celia knows this family—and this life—is not hers…
Allie is
supposed to be on a fun weekend trip—but then her friend’s boyfriend
unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. No one
else believes Allie, but she is sure that something about this trip is
very, very wrong…
Maggie just wants to be home with her daughter,
but she’s in a dangerous situation and she doesn’t know who put her
there or why. She’ll have to fight with everything she has to survive…
Three women. Three stories. Only one way out. This captivating novel will keep readers guessing until the very end.
Christina Henry's Good Girls Don't Die is a story that follows three women who wake up in a fantasy like world reminiscent of an episode of Black Mirror. The main players are Celia, Allison, and Maggie. The book itself is broken into 4 sections with 1 section each for the three main players. Celia wakes up in a house that’s supposed to be
hers. There’s a little girl who claims to be her daughter and a man who
claims to be her husband, but Celia knows this family—and this life—is
not hers.
Even though she has a New York State drivers license, and even though she clearly has some skills as a restaurant owner and cook, there is something at the back of her mind telling her that this is all wrong. Then things spiral out of control. A woman who Celia argued with ends up dead, and she receives a phone call saying "You're going to pay for what you've done. Women like you always get what they deserve." Is this some sort of survival game? Someone did this to Celia. Someone stripped her of her life and now it is time to fight back. It appears that someone intends to treat Celia like she's one of the Stepford wives by stripping away her entire identity.
Allison is
supposed to be on a fun weekend trip with her best fiends Cam and Madison. When her friend’s boyfriends (Brad & Steve)
unexpectedly shows up and invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods, Allison is weary about being a third wheel. To make matters more twisted, Alli is an aficionado of horror classics. Let's call this scenario Cabin in the Woods. She knows most if not all of the signs that something is wrong. No one
else believes Allie, but when the car they were riding in is destroyed, and one by one her friends are attacked and left for dead, Allie knows that someone has picked her for some sort of sick survival game.
supposed to be on a fun weekend trip with her best fiends Cam and Madison. When her friend’s boyfriends (Brad & Steve)
unexpectedly shows up and invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods, Allison is weary about being a third wheel. To make matters more twisted, Alli is an aficionado of horror classics. Let's call this scenario Cabin in the Woods. She knows most if not all of the signs that something is wrong. No one
else believes Allie, but when the car they were riding in is destroyed, and one by one her friends are attacked and left for dead, Allie knows that someone has picked her for some sort of sick survival game.
Maggie wakes up to find that she is with 8 other women who seemed to have been chosen for some sort of survival game. The people running the game claim that they have no right to refuse anything they are told to do or they will lose someone close to them. In Maggie's case, that is her daughter who she fought tooth and nail to get away from her psycho ex-boyfriend. Maggie allies herself with a woman named Sonya to try to get though the maze and the ending that wakes for them. Let's call Maggie's scenario a cross between the Hunger Games and the Maze Runner.
At the end of the main characters parts in the story, they each find a door where the have escaped from a mob of men who want them dead. Maggie, Allison, Sonya, and Celia now have to figure out why they were chosen in particular. There are hints along the way that should give readers a clue as to why they were chosen, and who is responsible. Let's just say that the twists at the end of the book are not only surprising but unexpected. It is mentioned quiet a few times along the way that these character think of themselves in terms of books like Hunger Games, Truman Show, and Black Mirror.
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CHAPTER ONE
mysterybkluv: who else here loves cozy mysteries best?
poirotsgirl: cozies are my fave, esp if they have recipes in the back
mysterybkluv:
ngl it would be great to live in a small town where there are lots of
low-stakes murders and I could solve them while working in my family
restaurant
tyz7412: lol living the dream
"Mom."
"Earth to Mom. Come in, Mom."
"Mom, I'm going to be late for the bus!"
Celia shook her head. The small person beside her was blurry, out of focus. Did she need glasses now?
And why was this person calling her "Mom"?
Celia
blinked hard, once, twice, and the little person came into focus. A
girl-maybe ten, eleven years old?-staring at her expectantly, holding an
open backpack.
"What?" Celia asked.
"My lunch," the girl said. "I need my lunch. Did you drink enough coffee this morning?"
Celia
looked down. In front of her, on a white countertop, was an open cloth
lunch bag. Inside it there was already a plastic bag of sliced apples, a
bag of all-natural puffed corn snacks (cheese flavored), and a
chocolate soy milk.
A piece of waxed paper lay unfolded on the counter. What is all this disposable packaging? I would never buy things like this.
"Mom!" The little person was getting really insistent now. "Sandwich!"
Celia couldn't think. She needed this small girl to leave so she could organize her thoughts.
Why does she keep calling me "Mom"? I don't have any children.
"Two minutes!" the girl screeched.
There
was a loaf of wheat bread and a package of cheese from the deli next to
the waxed paper. Celia took out two pieces of bread.
"One piece in half! Mom, what's wrong with you today?"
"Sorry," Celia said, cutting the single slice of bread in half. "How much cheese?"
"Two pieces! Come on, come on!"
You're
old enough to do this yourself, Celia thought as she folded the bread
around the cheese, wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper and shoved
everything in the lunch bag. The girl grabbed it, stuffed it in her pack
and sprinted toward the door.
"Bye, love you!" she said as she threw the door open, then slammed it shut behind her.
Celia
walked like a sleepwalker to the window next to the door and peered
out. The little girl was running down a long inclined driveway toward
what appeared to be a country road. Across the street there was nothing
to see except trees, tall trees that looked like older-growth maple, oak
and ash.
The little girl reached the end of the drive just as a
yellow school bus pulled up in front of the mailbox. She clambered onto
the bus and it pulled away.
She's gone. Now I can think.
Footsteps
sounded overhead and Celia glanced up at the ceiling in alarm. The
steps moved across the floor, and a moment later Celia heard someone
large coming down the stairs. She couldn't see the stairs from where she
stood. The kitchen was attached to a dining room on one side and a
hallway on the other. Celia peered into the hall. The bottom of the
stairs was at the far end.
A strange man rounded the banister and
headed toward her, frowning at his cell phone as he walked. Celia
backed away from him, her heart pounding. Her butt bumped into the edge
of the counter. She scrambled around it and positioned herself close to
the door so she could run if she needed to do so. She looked down at her
feet. Socks. Not even slippers. There was a pair of low shelves
positioned next to the door with shoes neatly arranged on them. One of
those pairs should be hers. But would she have time enough to figure out
which pair, put them on and get out the door?
"Hey, babe, I've got a ton of meetings this morning," the man said. "I'll stop by the restaurant at lunchtime."
Who is he?
The
man was very tall, at least six inches taller than herself, and she
wasn't a small woman. He had dark hair cut in what she thought of as
"millennial fund manager" style and wore a well-tailored gray suit. He
had a gym-toned look about him and altogether gave the impression of
someone who belonged in a city. This impression was reinforced when he
pulled on an expensive-looking wool overcoat. His shoes, Celia noted,
were very shiny.
He leaned close to her and kissed her cheek
absently, still looking at the phone so he didn't notice the way she
inched backward. She caught a whiff of his aftershave, something musky
and heavy. Her nose twitched.
"See you later," he said, and disappeared out the same door as the little girl.
Celia
went to the window and pulled one blind up to peek out. The man who'd
called her "babe," the man who'd kissed her goodbye, had gotten into a
black Audi SUV that was parked at the top of the driveway. He backed
down the drive and pulled out onto the road, heading in the opposite
direction of the bus.
An Audi. City guy, she thought again, and then wondered why she thought this.
Because
I live in a city and I see those kinds of guys all the time, she
thought, but the thought was like a stabbing pain in her head. She
looked around the kitchen, then out the window once more.
Clearly, she did not live in a city. Why did she think she lived in a city?
But now, finally, all the people were gone from the house and she could stop and think.
The
kitchen was large and had a white countertop that wrapped around half
of the room and then extended out on the third side as a breakfast bar.
There were stools lined up along that side, facing the dining room.
Celia
pulled one out, sat on it and stared at the rectangular dining room
table and chairs, done in some heavy dark wood that she never would have
chosen for herself. She didn't like dark wood, didn't like the
formality of it, and she definitely didn't like anything that looked
like it would need regular polishing. Celia hated to clean, and she
particularly hated to dust and polish. That dining room table
represented everything she didn't want in a piece of furniture.
"I didn't buy that," she murmured. "I have a round oak table."
Again,
there was a little stabbing feeling between her eyes, and she rubbed
the spot with her forefinger. Obviously she didn't have a round table.
The two people who'd rushed out of the house seemed to think she lived
there, that she belonged there.
And that guy, that guy who kissed me goodbye-he did look a little familiar.
"He said he would see me at the restaurant. Do I work at a restaurant?"
She had a vague memory of her hands collecting dishes from a table, of tucking a notepad into an apron.
Maybe I drank a lot last night. Or maybe I had a mini stroke or something.
The only thing she knew for sure was that her first name was Celia.
She
stood up again and walked into the dining room. At one side of the room
there was a large cabinet with glass doors on top and drawers on the
bottom. The cabinet matched the dining set, and she crinkled her nose at
it.
I hate that matchy-matchy thing. I bet all the dishes are in a matching pattern, too.
When
she opened the glass doors, she confirmed that her prediction was
accurate. All the tableware and serving plates were in a matching
pattern, a kind of country floral that made her think of wedding
registries.
On the wall opposite the cabinet there was a large,
posed photograph of three people. The background was soft gray, like
they'd been in a photo studio. There was Celia, sitting next to the tall
dark-haired man. They both wore white-cabled fisherman-style sweaters.
The lunch-demanding little girl stood in front of them, positioned so
that she was halfway between them. She, too, wore a cabled sweater, this
one in pink. All three of them had the slightly glazed eyes and overly
toothy smiles that came with posed photography.
This is my family? Celia thought, then told herself, more firmly, This is my family.
There was obviously something wrong with her today. Amnesia seemed unlikely. Early-onset dementia?
It can't be dementia. I'm only thirty-four.
"Ah!" she said, and clapped her hands together. She'd remembered something else. She was thirty-four.
Okay,
okay, you just need to walk around for a bit and then you'll remember
everything. Maybe you just didn't sleep well or something.
She
paced slowly through the dining room and into the living room. Leather
furniture-more yuck-a huge entertainment system, several more
photographs of herself and her family caught in various activities:
eating drippy ice cream cones, building sandcastles, taking a picture
with a certain mouse at an amusement park. Regular family things.
There
was something about the pictures that bothered her, but she looked at
them for a few minutes and couldn't put her finger on it, so she moved
on.
She climbed the stairs and found four rooms upstairs-two
bedrooms, one office and a bathroom. The little girl's bedroom had
posters of Korean pop stars and a pile of soccer gear in the corner. The
carpet was pink and so were the walls. It wasn't to Celia's taste, but
then it wasn't her room, so it didn't matter.
The second bedroom wasn't to her taste, either, but apparently this was her bedroom.
The bedroom I share with that strange man, she thought, with a trickle of unease.
Like
the furniture downstairs, everything in the bedroom was made of heavy,
dark wood, with a thick blue carpet underfoot. She didn't like
wall-to-wall carpeting, and yet it was everywhere in this house. On an
end table on one side of the bed there was a wedding photograph of a
younger Celia smiling next to the strange man. Beside the photograph was
a brown leather purse.
Brand name, high-end. I wouldn't have
bought this for myself. It's a waste of money. The Audi guy must have
bought it. He seems like the type to care about stuff like this.
Celia
sat on the edge of the bed and emptied the purse onto the dark blue
comforter. A large wallet fell out, along with a pack of Trident
spearmint gum, a package of tissues, a bottle of hand sanitizer, a
powder compact, a hairbrush, a cherry-flavored ChapStick and some
business cards.
Standard purse contents, but like the photos
she'd seen downstairs, something seemed to be missing. She just couldn't
think of what that something might be.
She opened the wallet and
found a New York State driver's license with her photo on it. The name
listed was "Celia Zinone." She said the name to herself. It seemed
right, unlike everything else she'd experienced so far. There was a
debit card and two credit cards in the same name, and a few more family
photos-mostly the posed kind-in the photo flap. All the photos were of
her immediate family. Did she have no parents? No brothers or sisters or
nieces or nephews?
Celia picked up the stack of business cards.
They advertised Zinone's Italian Family Restaurant next to a cartoon of a
plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Her own name was listed underneath as
the owner, and beneath that was the address and phone number.
I run a restaurant. Okay.
She again had a flash of memory-of stirring a giant pot of sauce, of folding ingredients into layers of lasagna.
"He said he would see me at the restaurant at lunch," Celia said.
She
looked at the business card again. So she should probably get dressed
and take herself to this restaurant. Maybe going to work would help her
remember more.
Terror clutched at her for a moment. It was as
though she stood beside a dizzying abyss, with no real sense of self, no
memories, no knowledge of what she'd done the previous day or even that
morning before the little girl started shouting about her lunch.
Black
spots danced in front of her eyes and her heart seemed like it was
trying to escape her chest. Her breath came in hard pants and she heard
the wheezy quality of it, an inability to get the oxygen all the way to
the bottom of her lungs.
She dug her fingers into the comforter on either side of her legs, feeling the material scrunch beneath her hands.
Calm, calm, calm. Breathe, breathe, breathe. You're okay. You're not in danger.
Hard on the heels of that thought came another one. Why would I be in danger?
Celia
forced herself to take deep, calming breaths, and after a few moments,
her heart rate slowed, though its beating still seemed unnaturally loud
to her.
I just need to go to the restaurant and then things will
click into place. But how will I get there? I'm not sure where I am in
relation to it.
She glanced over the items on the bed and
realized what was missing. A cell phone. Surely she had one. Where had
she left it, though?
She checked all the surfaces in the bedroom
and found two charging stations on top of the dresser. Assuming the
strange man (your husband) didn't carry two cell phones, then one of the
chargers was for her phone.
Why wasn't it in her purse? She
always kept her phone in her purse when it wasn't on the charger. She
didn't like to use it in the house.
Celia grabbed on to that
thought the same way she'd done with the memory of her age. It was
something concrete, something solid that she knew about herself for
certain. She avoided using her phone in the house because she didn't
want to be one of these people who mindlessly scrolled all day.
But
she couldn't find it in the bedroom, no matter how many drawers she
opened or pockets she checked. She did note the type of clothes in the
closet-conservative-looking sweaters and button-down blouses in low-key
colors, lots of beige and gray and black and soft pastels. The sight of
them made her feel, again, that these weren't things she would have
chosen for herself. She was more of a happy-print skirt and quirky
T-shirt girl.
For a third time her forehead stabbed with pain,
and she wondered if she needed to hydrate more, or perhaps a migraine
was coming on.
A loud ringing echoed through the house, the sound
of an old-fashioned rotary dial phone. The noise pulled Celia out of
the bedroom and down the stairs in search of the source, and she ended
up back in the kitchen, where she'd begun
mysterybkluv: who else here loves cozy mysteries best?
poirotsgirl: cozies are my fave, esp if they have recipes in the back
mysterybkluv:
ngl it would be great to live in a small town where there are lots of
low-stakes murders and I could solve them while working in my family
restaurant
tyz7412: lol living the dream
"Mom."
"Earth to Mom. Come in, Mom."
"Mom, I'm going to be late for the bus!"
Celia shook her head. The small person beside her was blurry, out of focus. Did she need glasses now?
And why was this person calling her "Mom"?
Celia
blinked hard, once, twice, and the little person came into focus. A
girl-maybe ten, eleven years old?-staring at her expectantly, holding an
open backpack.
"What?" Celia asked.
"My lunch," the girl said. "I need my lunch. Did you drink enough coffee this morning?"
Celia
looked down. In front of her, on a white countertop, was an open cloth
lunch bag. Inside it there was already a plastic bag of sliced apples, a
bag of all-natural puffed corn snacks (cheese flavored), and a
chocolate soy milk.
A piece of waxed paper lay unfolded on the counter. What is all this disposable packaging? I would never buy things like this.
"Mom!" The little person was getting really insistent now. "Sandwich!"
Celia couldn't think. She needed this small girl to leave so she could organize her thoughts.
Why does she keep calling me "Mom"? I don't have any children.
"Two minutes!" the girl screeched.
There
was a loaf of wheat bread and a package of cheese from the deli next to
the waxed paper. Celia took out two pieces of bread.
"One piece in half! Mom, what's wrong with you today?"
"Sorry," Celia said, cutting the single slice of bread in half. "How much cheese?"
"Two pieces! Come on, come on!"
You're
old enough to do this yourself, Celia thought as she folded the bread
around the cheese, wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper and shoved
everything in the lunch bag. The girl grabbed it, stuffed it in her pack
and sprinted toward the door.
"Bye, love you!" she said as she threw the door open, then slammed it shut behind her.
Celia
walked like a sleepwalker to the window next to the door and peered
out. The little girl was running down a long inclined driveway toward
what appeared to be a country road. Across the street there was nothing
to see except trees, tall trees that looked like older-growth maple, oak
and ash.
The little girl reached the end of the drive just as a
yellow school bus pulled up in front of the mailbox. She clambered onto
the bus and it pulled away.
She's gone. Now I can think.
Footsteps
sounded overhead and Celia glanced up at the ceiling in alarm. The
steps moved across the floor, and a moment later Celia heard someone
large coming down the stairs. She couldn't see the stairs from where she
stood. The kitchen was attached to a dining room on one side and a
hallway on the other. Celia peered into the hall. The bottom of the
stairs was at the far end.
A strange man rounded the banister and
headed toward her, frowning at his cell phone as he walked. Celia
backed away from him, her heart pounding. Her butt bumped into the edge
of the counter. She scrambled around it and positioned herself close to
the door so she could run if she needed to do so. She looked down at her
feet. Socks. Not even slippers. There was a pair of low shelves
positioned next to the door with shoes neatly arranged on them. One of
those pairs should be hers. But would she have time enough to figure out
which pair, put them on and get out the door?
"Hey, babe, I've got a ton of meetings this morning," the man said. "I'll stop by the restaurant at lunchtime."
Who is he?
The
man was very tall, at least six inches taller than herself, and she
wasn't a small woman. He had dark hair cut in what she thought of as
"millennial fund manager" style and wore a well-tailored gray suit. He
had a gym-toned look about him and altogether gave the impression of
someone who belonged in a city. This impression was reinforced when he
pulled on an expensive-looking wool overcoat. His shoes, Celia noted,
were very shiny.
He leaned close to her and kissed her cheek
absently, still looking at the phone so he didn't notice the way she
inched backward. She caught a whiff of his aftershave, something musky
and heavy. Her nose twitched.
"See you later," he said, and disappeared out the same door as the little girl.
Celia
went to the window and pulled one blind up to peek out. The man who'd
called her "babe," the man who'd kissed her goodbye, had gotten into a
black Audi SUV that was parked at the top of the driveway. He backed
down the drive and pulled out onto the road, heading in the opposite
direction of the bus.
An Audi. City guy, she thought again, and then wondered why she thought this.
Because
I live in a city and I see those kinds of guys all the time, she
thought, but the thought was like a stabbing pain in her head. She
looked around the kitchen, then out the window once more.
Clearly, she did not live in a city. Why did she think she lived in a city?
But now, finally, all the people were gone from the house and she could stop and think.
The
kitchen was large and had a white countertop that wrapped around half
of the room and then extended out on the third side as a breakfast bar.
There were stools lined up along that side, facing the dining room.
Celia
pulled one out, sat on it and stared at the rectangular dining room
table and chairs, done in some heavy dark wood that she never would have
chosen for herself. She didn't like dark wood, didn't like the
formality of it, and she definitely didn't like anything that looked
like it would need regular polishing. Celia hated to clean, and she
particularly hated to dust and polish. That dining room table
represented everything she didn't want in a piece of furniture.
"I didn't buy that," she murmured. "I have a round oak table."
Again,
there was a little stabbing feeling between her eyes, and she rubbed
the spot with her forefinger. Obviously she didn't have a round table.
The two people who'd rushed out of the house seemed to think she lived
there, that she belonged there.
And that guy, that guy who kissed me goodbye-he did look a little familiar.
"He said he would see me at the restaurant. Do I work at a restaurant?"
She had a vague memory of her hands collecting dishes from a table, of tucking a notepad into an apron.
Maybe I drank a lot last night. Or maybe I had a mini stroke or something.
The only thing she knew for sure was that her first name was Celia.
She
stood up again and walked into the dining room. At one side of the room
there was a large cabinet with glass doors on top and drawers on the
bottom. The cabinet matched the dining set, and she crinkled her nose at
it.
I hate that matchy-matchy thing. I bet all the dishes are in a matching pattern, too.
When
she opened the glass doors, she confirmed that her prediction was
accurate. All the tableware and serving plates were in a matching
pattern, a kind of country floral that made her think of wedding
registries.
On the wall opposite the cabinet there was a large,
posed photograph of three people. The background was soft gray, like
they'd been in a photo studio. There was Celia, sitting next to the tall
dark-haired man. They both wore white-cabled fisherman-style sweaters.
The lunch-demanding little girl stood in front of them, positioned so
that she was halfway between them. She, too, wore a cabled sweater, this
one in pink. All three of them had the slightly glazed eyes and overly
toothy smiles that came with posed photography.
This is my family? Celia thought, then told herself, more firmly, This is my family.
There was obviously something wrong with her today. Amnesia seemed unlikely. Early-onset dementia?
It can't be dementia. I'm only thirty-four.
"Ah!" she said, and clapped her hands together. She'd remembered something else. She was thirty-four.
Okay,
okay, you just need to walk around for a bit and then you'll remember
everything. Maybe you just didn't sleep well or something.
She
paced slowly through the dining room and into the living room. Leather
furniture-more yuck-a huge entertainment system, several more
photographs of herself and her family caught in various activities:
eating drippy ice cream cones, building sandcastles, taking a picture
with a certain mouse at an amusement park. Regular family things.
There
was something about the pictures that bothered her, but she looked at
them for a few minutes and couldn't put her finger on it, so she moved
on.
She climbed the stairs and found four rooms upstairs-two
bedrooms, one office and a bathroom. The little girl's bedroom had
posters of Korean pop stars and a pile of soccer gear in the corner. The
carpet was pink and so were the walls. It wasn't to Celia's taste, but
then it wasn't her room, so it didn't matter.
The second bedroom wasn't to her taste, either, but apparently this was her bedroom.
The bedroom I share with that strange man, she thought, with a trickle of unease.
Like
the furniture downstairs, everything in the bedroom was made of heavy,
dark wood, with a thick blue carpet underfoot. She didn't like
wall-to-wall carpeting, and yet it was everywhere in this house. On an
end table on one side of the bed there was a wedding photograph of a
younger Celia smiling next to the strange man. Beside the photograph was
a brown leather purse.
Brand name, high-end. I wouldn't have
bought this for myself. It's a waste of money. The Audi guy must have
bought it. He seems like the type to care about stuff like this.
Celia
sat on the edge of the bed and emptied the purse onto the dark blue
comforter. A large wallet fell out, along with a pack of Trident
spearmint gum, a package of tissues, a bottle of hand sanitizer, a
powder compact, a hairbrush, a cherry-flavored ChapStick and some
business cards.
Standard purse contents, but like the photos
she'd seen downstairs, something seemed to be missing. She just couldn't
think of what that something might be.
She opened the wallet and
found a New York State driver's license with her photo on it. The name
listed was "Celia Zinone." She said the name to herself. It seemed
right, unlike everything else she'd experienced so far. There was a
debit card and two credit cards in the same name, and a few more family
photos-mostly the posed kind-in the photo flap. All the photos were of
her immediate family. Did she have no parents? No brothers or sisters or
nieces or nephews?
Celia picked up the stack of business cards.
They advertised Zinone's Italian Family Restaurant next to a cartoon of a
plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Her own name was listed underneath as
the owner, and beneath that was the address and phone number.
I run a restaurant. Okay.
She again had a flash of memory-of stirring a giant pot of sauce, of folding ingredients into layers of lasagna.
"He said he would see me at the restaurant at lunch," Celia said.
She
looked at the business card again. So she should probably get dressed
and take herself to this restaurant. Maybe going to work would help her
remember more.
Terror clutched at her for a moment. It was as
though she stood beside a dizzying abyss, with no real sense of self, no
memories, no knowledge of what she'd done the previous day or even that
morning before the little girl started shouting about her lunch.
Black
spots danced in front of her eyes and her heart seemed like it was
trying to escape her chest. Her breath came in hard pants and she heard
the wheezy quality of it, an inability to get the oxygen all the way to
the bottom of her lungs.
She dug her fingers into the comforter on either side of her legs, feeling the material scrunch beneath her hands.
Calm, calm, calm. Breathe, breathe, breathe. You're okay. You're not in danger.
Hard on the heels of that thought came another one. Why would I be in danger?
Celia
forced herself to take deep, calming breaths, and after a few moments,
her heart rate slowed, though its beating still seemed unnaturally loud
to her.
I just need to go to the restaurant and then things will
click into place. But how will I get there? I'm not sure where I am in
relation to it.
She glanced over the items on the bed and
realized what was missing. A cell phone. Surely she had one. Where had
she left it, though?
She checked all the surfaces in the bedroom
and found two charging stations on top of the dresser. Assuming the
strange man (your husband) didn't carry two cell phones, then one of the
chargers was for her phone.
Why wasn't it in her purse? She
always kept her phone in her purse when it wasn't on the charger. She
didn't like to use it in the house.
Celia grabbed on to that
thought the same way she'd done with the memory of her age. It was
something concrete, something solid that she knew about herself for
certain. She avoided using her phone in the house because she didn't
want to be one of these people who mindlessly scrolled all day.
But
she couldn't find it in the bedroom, no matter how many drawers she
opened or pockets she checked. She did note the type of clothes in the
closet-conservative-looking sweaters and button-down blouses in low-key
colors, lots of beige and gray and black and soft pastels. The sight of
them made her feel, again, that these weren't things she would have
chosen for herself. She was more of a happy-print skirt and quirky
T-shirt girl.
For a third time her forehead stabbed with pain,
and she wondered if she needed to hydrate more, or perhaps a migraine
was coming on.
A loud ringing echoed through the house, the sound
of an old-fashioned rotary dial phone. The noise pulled Celia out of
the bedroom and down the stairs in search of the source, and she ended
up back in the kitchen, where she'd begun
