“Of course, I began to see the destructiveness of our cycle, as well,” Evan said. “I was enabling her, acting like some kind of catharsis for her shame. I started to see a therapist myself, in order to help me establish some limits with her. It was during my own therapy that I started to realize the sheer depth of Elizabeth’s pain and agony. I began to wonder and have my suspicions about the source of her dysfunction.”
I sat up in bed, propping myself up on my elbow. “You began to suspect Noah of abusing her?”
“Yes. At first, I thought it’d all taken place in the past. I didn’t realize it was ongoing,” he said, sounding weary. Looking weary. I had a fleeting thought that I should tell him to stop, to keep the rest of his explanation until tomorrow. He needed to sleep, too. But he k
ept talking, sounding tired but determined to tell this story, ugly as it was.
“Maybe four months or so before she disappeared, I was having a bout of insomnia. It happened a lot, the years before Elizabeth died. So I got up, planning to go down to the kitchen to have a drink or some warm milk… anything to help me sleep. I hadn’t even turned on the light yet in the kitchen when I saw Elizabeth… saw the paleness of her nightgown moving in the darkness.”
“Didn’t you notice she wasn’t in bed with you before you came downstairs?”
“We weren’t sleeping together in those last years. That part of our relationship was finished. It’d been killed by some of the things Elizabeth had done. I stayed because I wanted to see her reasonably healthy and stable before we separated. But you can’t go back. Not after some things.”
We stared at one another. In the silence, I heard my heartbeat thrum in my ears. Is that what’s happening to us now? Surely what Evan had done to me was one of those unforgiveable things.
Evan blinked and swallowed thickly. I found myself wondering if he’d had a similar thought.
“While Elizabeth and I still shared a bed at the beginning of our marriage,” he continued gruffly, “I would often wake up and find her gone. A few times, I looked all over the house for her. I checked the garage. The boat slip. But all the cars and boats would always be there. At some point upon returning, I’d find her, either back in bed or going up the stairs. Of course, she always made an excuse as to where she’d been. ‘We must have just missed each other,’ she’d say, and laugh it off. I’d let it pass, but it always struck me as odd.
“But on this particular night when I saw her up out of bed, I knew more. I knew about her mental illness, and her infidelities. I knew how she’d used that viewing room in the past, for her little drug and sex parties. Orgies, to put it bluntly.”
His mouth went very hard at that. I sensed his outrage. It couldn’t have been easy for any man, no matter how compassionate he might be, to endure something like that.
“She’d been going through a relatively stable period at that time. But when I saw her, moving so excitedly and secretively in that dark room, I recognized immediately that she was manic again. Sexually compulsive. It was like a little explosion went off in my brain. How dare she do this to me again? What kind of a monster was she?”
His eyes blazed as our gazes locked. He’d been asking rhetorically, in part, but another part of him—a small, wounded part—wanted an answer, craved an answer so badly. I stared at him, speechless. I didn’t know the answer to his question. I couldn’t even fully imagine the things he was telling me, couldn’t make sense of how someone survived such suffering.
“So I followed her. Before, I’d always dreaded the idea of catching her in the act with one of her lovers. She’d confessed things to me, things that would turn your stomach, Anna. Things I can’t even bring myself to repeat,” he said, breaking our stare.
“Her actions were hers, Evan. She was sick, and she acted out. You did your best to try and protect her, but you couldn’t completely control her decisions and choices. Not unless you turned into a Noah Madaster.”
His gaze flickered over to me. I sensed his surprise at my compassion. Maybe I was weak for offering it. But it was hard to withhold simple honesty, in the face of so much sorrow.
He inhaled, seeming to take courage to continue from my words.
“That was the night I discovered the corridor. The one between the North and South Twin.”
The hair on my arms and the nape of my neck stood on end. “You didn’t know it existed before?”
“No. No one ever mentioned it to me. The entrances were concealed. There’s a hidden door at the back of a storage room. It’s on the same level as the workout facility and the viewing room. You have to know where to access it. I’m sure Lorraine never knew of its existence, either. I’m willing to bet that a good portion of people who lived at Les Jumeaux over the past century didn’t know about it.”
“Did you follow her into the corridor?”
“Yes. She didn’t realize I was behind her. I stayed back and watched her open the door.”
“Where did it lead?”
“To a concealed room on the lower floor of the South Twin.”
“That’s how Noah and Elizabeth were meeting for their… trysts?”
“If that’s what you want to call them,” he said flatly, that bitter-taste expression once again on his face. “Madaster would claim that’s where he was carrying out his research.” He made an angry quote-gesture around the word research. “But in fact, it’s where he was regularly drugging, brainwashing and raping his own daughter.”
My chest felt very tight when I tried to inhale. “He was using that thing—the Analyzer on her?”
“Yes,” Evan replied gruffly. He blinked and looked at the table. He picked up a water glass and drank half of it thirstily before setting down the glass with a jarring bang. “That monster would have her wear the sensor cap of the Analyzer while they had sex.”
He said it like he was giving me a reluctant, necessary blow to my head. But I was only confused by his revelation.