She smiled. “Thanks.”
He looked back and forth from the food to his wife. The feeling was foreign. While the air was cold and a little smoky, it was as if he had stepped back in time, before the chaos happened. To a time of luxurious smells, of calm assurance. She dipped back toward the fire, slipping a mitt on her hand before pulling the skillet away. She removed the steaks, butter bubbling across their surfaces, and put them on plates.
“Where did you get steak?” he asked.
“I’ve been keeping a frozen packet under the deck since we lost power,” she said.
“You’ve been hiding food?”
“Just this. I thought I would save it for a special day.”
“A special day?”
She smiled. “Sean, it’s our anniversary.”
He rubbed his bearded cheek and chuckled.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to know what day it is.”
He had looked at the farmer’s almanac every day to reference the temperature. He knew what the day was—God, early May. His anniversary hadn’t even registered.
“Stop frowning,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to remember.”
“Where’s Aidan?”
“I sent him upstairs to play. I set up the last propane heater to keep him warm and told him not to come down unless he was bleeding or the house was burning down.”
He smiled, though his mind was so busy analyzing his next move it was shutting down from the traffic. So when she spoke, her voice seemed to emerge out of nowhere. “You all right?”
He didn’t plan for this. “I just feel like an idiot.”
“I just cooked us steak in butter. We should enjoy it.”
“Babe, this is too extravagant.”
“We need to feel normal for once,” she said, her voice catching. She wiped her eyes. Genuine emotion there. Genuine love.
All he ever wanted from her.
He thought of what he might get out of the evening, looking down at the steak, pulling Elise into his arms. A good meal. Maybe a little action. His loins stiffened at the thought. That would be better. The best was that she trusted him. He needed that more than anything.
She motioned for him to take a seat at the coffee table. He pulled a pillow from the couch, set it on the ground, and planted his knees on it. He watched as she went back and forth from the kitchen. First, she set out a few napkins. On the next trip out, she carried two clear water glasses.
His stomach sank, but he didn’t show it. She placed one in front of him and another next to her own plate, and he smiled back at her. “This smells amazing.”
“Thanks,” she said and disappeared around the corner.
His smile faded as soon as she was out of sight. If this was a game, it wouldn’t work. He swapped the drinks. That would not happen. Not now. Never again.
A second later, she rounded the end of the couch, setting salt and pepper shakers on the table, grabbed her own pillow, and got on her knees in front of the food. He downed half the glass from his new water and smiled at her, just to let her know he trusted her.
Always multiple steps ahead.
She extended her hand out to him, and he took it. Another prayer. He didn’t understand how she couldn’t see that there was no God anymore. He was gone. Only a sadistic being would leave His creation without sunshine so that everything would eventually die and everyone would starve.
But he took her hand anyway. Appearances. She bowed her head and thanked her God for the steak. He bowed along just so she wouldn’t say anything about it. When she finished her prayer, she clapped her hands together and said, “Let’s eat.”
He took his fork and knife and separated the first piece from the rest of the slab. It was a deep red and steamed as he cut it. A good medium-rare. Perfect. He skewered the meat with his fork and placed the morsel into his mouth.
His face twisted. He knew the meat had been frozen, but it was bland, all pepper but not savory. “Did you salt this?” he asked.
She looked at him as if he had interrupted her greatest moment of ecstasy. “Yeah. Does it not taste good?”
He told her it was fine, even though it tasted like dog food. “Just needs a little more salt.”
He grabbed the salt shaker and covered his steak. Popped another chunk into his mouth. The luscious, salty flavor washed over his tongue. Now he was in ecstasy.
“Better?” she asked, looking hopeful.
“Much better.”
“I hoped so,” she said and took another bite.
Chapter 37
ELISE STUCK THE disgusting slice of meat into her mouth and faked as if it were the best thing she had ever tasted. She chewed, even moaned, but she was just trying to get it down.
She had to act like she wasn’t doing the hardest thing she had ever done in her life, but it needed to be done. Michael had been right. Sean wasn’t the same man she had married. He wasn’t even the same man who had protected them from the intruders. What he was now was a shell with everything inside rotting. That didn’t give her a right to kill him, but she saw no other choice.
Sean told her with confidence that the three of them had a food supply that would last them at least a year. He made it that way. He murdered Andrew, poisoning him and allowing his windpipe to collapse. Used the medicine designed to stabilize a seizure and relax his son’s body so it didn’t become so stressed that his brain had an aneurism. But when someone wasn’t having a seizure attack, it could stop the major organs from functioning. Sean knew this, and he used that knowledge to murder the boy.
One day, the food would get really low. He wasn’t the kind of man anymore to sacrifice his wellbeing for anything. He would kill them, she was sure. First, he would start with her and then he would kill his son. She knew it wouldn’t be cruel in how he did it, not like making Michael kill his wife, but death was death. As much as she looked forward to Heaven, she couldn’t imagine leaving her son back on Earth, alone, among all the destruction and death. In danger from his own father.
She still loved the man in front of her, or maybe the man he used to be, but she knew he didn’t love her the same way anymore. He loved the idea of her, and when that idea became irreconcilable in his plan for survival, she would be disposable. She knew that. She knew.
She knew.
She ate another chunk of steak and watched her husband chew. Sean always liked his meat salty. He sprinkled a little more onto his steak and took another bite, savoring it. Most men don’t get to die eating steak. It was a better death than her brother got.
He had switched the waters earlier. She planned for that. There was a small hairline crack near the top of the spiked glass, so she knew which was which. He took a sip from it. It was good that he was drinking it, but she had alternatives if he didn’t. It was a shell game. Put the water out first, and he would be so occupied with it, he wouldn’t consider the other options she might use.
Like putting crushed pills into the salt shaker.
Sean had thought of himself as steps ahead. She had to be better. As hard as that was.
Her husband pulled up his napkin and wiped the meat juice off the corners of his lips. “This might be the best thing I have ever tasted,” he said.
“I’m glad,” she said, taking another bite.
It would take a while for the sleeping pills to work. Longer than the duration of this meal. She would have to occupy him, make him think the symptoms were natural. If he got even the least bit suspicious, he would resist the sleep and his paranoid mind would jump to the right conclusions: that Elise had done it.