Page 21 of The Last Trip

Keep the temperature in the bath low!

On the coffee pot,

Doctor says just one cup per day!

Finally, I had to tell him his actions were causing me more stress than anything and that I felt like I was constantly being watched and chastised. It wasn’t healthy. The next day, all of the signs were down, and I could tell he was making an effort to spend less time reminding me of all the warnings the doctor had given me.

I want our daughter to be healthy, of course I do, but no one warns you about how hard it will be. Pregnancy is a brutal battle every day to keep this precious life inside of you alive until the moment it’s violently ripped from your body. We don’t talk about that enough.

In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and change clothes as quickly as I possibly can. As I do, I can’t stop the way my eyes scan the mirror, looking for a camera lens or some evidence that these people are not who they say they are. That they might be, as I suspect, monitoring us in some way. That they might mean to harm us.

From the moment we arrived they’ve given me the creeps, and coming into the house last night unannounced, watching us, was the final straw. I want to leave. I don’t care that we aren’t supposed to check out for another day. I want to get our things and get away from this house. My only mission for the day is to get Cal to agree.

When I return to the bedroom, Cal is already gone. I find him in the kitchen, a pot of coffee brewing as he leans back against the counter.

“Good morning, my love,” he says, eyes still sleepy.

“Morning.” I wrap the oversized cardigan I’m wearing around myself tighter, shivering from the cold, drafty house.

“Sleep well?” He pours himself a cup of coffee, then hands me a mug. For a moment, I think it’s coffee, and my heart surges, but quickly I spot the tea bag. Herbal tea is nice, but sometimes I miss the taste of coffee. In the beginning, it was allowed, but after my blood pressure started charting too high, it had to be cut out altogether.

“Not really,” I admit, blowing on my tea as I make my way to the counter, preparing my argument. When I reach it, I set my mug down and sigh. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“Okay.”

“I think we should leave early.”

He waits, like he’s expecting me to say more, and maybe I should, but I really want to gauge his reaction to this. “Early?” he asks gently. “You mean early in the morning?”

“No.” I rotate the mug back and forth for something to do. “I mean now. I want to leave today.”

His face is solemn and still as he processes what I’ve said. Finally, his mouth opens. “You want to end the vacation early.”

It’s not a question, but I nod. “Yes. I do.”

He places his mug down and crosses the space between us cautiously. “May I…ask why?”

I can’t believe I have to spell it out for him. For a man so worried about protecting me, I can’t understand why he doesn’t already have the bags packed and us heading out the door. Truthfully, I don’t understand why we didn’t leave last night. If it were up to me, maybe we would have.

“I don’t feel safe here, Cal,” I admit, my heart picking up speed in my chest. I need him to agree with me, to see what I’m saying. I need him to understand. “Every time we turn around,these creepy neighbors are here, and last night was the final strike for me. Coming into the house unannounced while we were here. Who knows what they could’ve seen or overheard. Who knows if that was the only time they’ve even done it. What if they were here the first night, too? What if they were, like, watching us sleep or something?”

He smirks. “Watching us sleep? I think someone’s been reading too muchTwilight.”

My expression is pinched as frustration wells in my gut. “I’m serious. I want to leave, okay? I find myself looking over my shoulders, not saying things because I worry someone’s listening.” I lower my voice. “For all we know, they have cameras in the house, and they’re watching us. I’m getting paranoid, and I can’t stay here any longer.”

He looks as though he might laugh. “Wait. Are you serious? You really want to go home? This trip was your idea. It was important to you.”

“Areyouserious? You actually disagree? You think I’m wrong? It doesn’t matter how important it was before if we’re in danger now. Our safety is all that matters to me.”

All the laughter fades from his expression. “No, of course. It’s not that I think you’re wrong, I just…I mean, they seem harmless. Maybe a bit weird or lonely, but harmless. Maybe, somehow, we didn’t shut the door all the way last night, like she said, and the wind blew it open. If it was my house, and I got an alert that it had been standing open for some time, I’d come to check it out too. I think it was probably all an innocent misunderstanding. And I told them last night how inappropriate it was. They were obviously embarrassed. I can’t see them doing it again.”

I stare at him, completely dumbfounded. “You weren’t saying any of this last night. You seemed just as upset as I am.”

“Yeah, but I’ve had time to sleep on it now, and I think I was overreacting a little bit. It had been a long day and we were both tired. They were probably tired, too.” He pauses, running his hands over my arms. “Look, I get that it’s weird, but I really think it’s fine. I don’t think there was anything malicious about what they did. We’ll make sure we triple-check the doors, and we can even put a chair or something in front of it, so we know we’ll hear it if someone opens it. Would that make you feel better?”

“But shouldn’t we have heard it when they opened the door last night, unless they were being quiet on purpose? Wouldn’t she have called out?”

“Well, she did say she knocked, right? But I was in the bathroom, and you’d already fallen asleep. We just missed it.”

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