The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe Page A

be late
. She forced her eyes open and saw her ex-husband sitting on the edge of the bed. “Too late for what?” she said, but he seemed not to hear her. “Andrew?”
    He was holding out a glass of water. “You awake?”
    “What am I too late for?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    She took the glass of water and drank it down. She tried to sit up, and he reached out feebly, not sure how to help her. Hewasn’t the one who did the heavy lifting down here. She shook her head at him when he tried to pull her up by the wrist and she shimmed back painfully against the mattress to a half-seated position. “Who deputized you?”
    “I deputized myself.”
    “What time is it?”
    He looked at his wrist. “Almost nine.”
    “It was a rather exhausting day. Does Glynnis know you’re down here?”
    The friendly look on his face faded a little. “You’ve been pissing and moaning that I don’t come down here enough. So here I am. I don’t need anyone’s permission.”
    “You don’t?”
    “I can go if you’d like.”
    “I like your bedside manner better,” she said. “At least I used to.” His position on the edge of the mattress unconsciously mimicked one of the common poses from their marriage. A fight would often lead to the two of them separating, her to the bedroom, him to wherever he went to lick his wounds. Afterwards, he’d show up in the bedroom to pretend going about his business, and she’d ignore him from the bed, reading work papers or a book, and eventually he’d come and sit on her side, stare at her until she laid the reading down. Then they’d talk and work it out or not. Sometimes it took a morning and an evening of bedside conversation to unknot whatever it was that had come between them. “I remember this,” she said.
    He was leaned over facing her, his chin in his hand. His fingers barred his mouth. “You remember what?”
    “You sitting there.”
    He lowered his hand into his lap. “Do you want anything?”
    “A bath.”
    “You should eat.”
    She swivelled her legs out from under the sheets. “Afraid I’m going to wither away?”
    “No,” he said nonchalantly. He stood and started for the stairs, his hands in his pockets, another familiar stance. This one meant irritation. “If you change your mind, you know where the food is.”
    “Well,
hold
on.”
    “What?”
    “That’s it? First time in the dungeon in four days and you offer me the menu but nothing else?”
    “What were you expecting?”
    “How about
how are you?
Or something about
you
maybe? Are
you
doing well.”
    “I’m doing fine, Hazel. How are
you?”
    She shook her head at him. “Never mind. Off you go to your throw-pillows and your tarot reading. Have fun.”
    “Never short of charm, are you, dear?”
    He was through the door and up the stairs before she could reply. She heard his staccato footsteps tapping in the space above her. This time she could see through the joists and the pennynails in the floor panels and the linoleum directly to his face and she saw the dread expression there, the black, dead-eyed look of anger on his face, that hurt anger she’d been so good at drawing out of him for so many years.
    She desperately needed that bath. She hadn’t had a day this active since before the surgery and she was sure she smelled like bear. Glynnis had been helping her in and out of the tub, but if she could muddle through an afternoon half back in herofficial capacity, she could get herself into a bath. It took five minutes to cross the room again, to the washroom. She shed her clothes and kneeled on the floor to run the bathwater. She rose with difficulty and stood in front of the mirror as the tub filled. She’d lost weight. All that extra weight her mother had been fighting her to lose last fall was gone now. Her skin looked dense and sallow, like she’d been cured in bleach. She sagged in all the places she’d once feared she would sag, and where gravity had not done its cruel work, a kind of