He filled a pot with water and put it on the range to boil.
Stuck a roomy saucepan beside it, turned the eye up to medium, and poured a spot of olive oil.
They had five vine-ripened tomatoes left—just enough.
A dinner plan percolated.
He smashed a clove of garlic, diced an onion, dumped it all into the oil.
While things sizzled, he chopped tomatoes.
He could’ve been standing in their kitchen in Seattle. Late Saturday afternoons, he’d put on a Thelonious Monk record, open a bottle of red, and immerse himself in cooking a fabulous dinner for his family. No better way to unwind after a long week. This moment had the feel of those peaceful evenings, all the trappings of normal. Except that a half hour ago he’d cut a tracking chip out of the back of his wife’s leg in the one spot in their house that wasn’t under constant surveillance.
Except for that.
He added the tomatoes and crushed them into the onions and poured more oil and leaned over the stovetop into the sweet-smelling wafts of steam, trying, just for a beat, to embrace the fantasy.
Theresa came out as he was rinsing the pasta. She was smiling and he thought he sensed pain in it—a subtle strain—but there was no falter to her gait. They ate dinner as a family on a blanket in the living room, crowded around the woodstove and listening to the radio.
Hecter Gaither was playing Chopin.
The food was good.
The heat enveloping.
And it all passed too quickly.
After midnight.
Ben slept.
They’d burned through the coffee table in two hours, and now the Victorian was plunging back into the deep freeze.
Ethan and Theresa lay facing each other in bed.
He whispered, “Are you ready?”
She nodded.
“Where’s your necklace?”
“I’m wearing it.”
“Take it off, leave it on the bedside table.”
When she’d done it, she said, “Now what?”
“We wait one minute.”
They dressed in the dark.
Ethan looked in on their son, found the boy out cold.
He walked downstairs with Theresa.
Neither said a word.
As he opened the front door, Ethan raised the hood of his black sweatshirt and motioned for Theresa to do the same.
They went outside.
Streetlamps and porch lights punctuated the darkness.
Frigid and no stars.
They walked out into the middle of the street.
Ethan said, “We can talk now. How’s your leg?”
“Agony.”
“You’re a rock star, babe.”
“I thought I was going to pass out. I wish I had.”
They moved west toward the park.
Soon they could hear the river.
“Are we really safe out here?” Theresa asked.
“We’re not safe anywhere. But at least without our chips, the cameras won’t pick us up.”
“I feel like I’m fifteen again, sneaking out of my parents’ house. It’s so quiet.”
“I love coming out late. You never crept out before? Not even once?”
“Of course not.”
They left the street and wandered into the playing field.
Fifty yards away, the bulb of a single streetlamp shone down on the swing set.
They walked until they reached the end of the park, the edge of the river.
Sat down in the dying grass.
Ethan could smell the water but he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see his hands in front of his face. Invisibility had never felt so comforting.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” he said. “It was a moment of weakness. I just couldn’t stand to have this lie between us. For us not to be on the same page.”
“Of course you should have told me.”
“Why?”
“Because this town is bullshit.”
“But it’s not like there’s something better out there. If you ever dreamed of leaving Wayward Pines, I destroyed that sliver of hope.”
“I’ll take the truth any day. And I still want to leave.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Anything’s possible.”
“Our family would be slaughtered in the first hour.”
“I can’t live like this, Ethan. I thought about it all day. I can’t stop thinking about it. I won’t live in a house where I’m spied on. Where I have to whisper to have a real conversation with my husband. I’m done living in a town where my son goes to school and I can’t know what he’s being taught. Do you know what they’re teaching him?”
“No.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
“Of course not.”
“So fucking do something about it.”
“Pilcher has a hundred and sixty people living inside the mountain.”
“There are four or five hundred of us.”
“They’re armed. We’re not. Look, I didn’t tell you what was going on so you’d ask me to blow everything up.”
“I won’t live like this.”
“What do you want from me, Theresa?”
“Fix it.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“You want your son growing up—”
“If burning this town to the fucking ground would make things just a little better for you and Ben, I would’ve torched it my first day on the job.”
“We’re losing him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It started last year. It’s only getting worse.”
“How?”
“He’s drifting away, Ethan. I don’t know what they’re teaching him, but it’s stealing him away from us. There’s a wall going up.”
“I’ll find out.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, but you have to promise me something.”
“What?”
“You won’t breathe a word of anything I’ve told you. Not a single detail to anyone.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“One last thing.”
“What?”
“This is the first time we’ve been together in Wayward Pines without the cameras watching.”
“So?”
He leaned over and kissed her in the dark.
They walked through town.
Ethan felt freezing motes begin to strike his face.
He said, “Is that what I think it is?”
In the distance, the light of a lonely streetlamp became a stage for snowflakes.
There was no wind. They fell straight down.
“Winter’s here,” Theresa said.
“But it was just summer several days ago.”
“Summer’s long. Winter’s long. Spring and fall shoot past. The last winter went on for nine months. The snow was ten feet deep at Christmas.”
He reached down and took hold of her mittened hand.
Not a sound in the entire valley.
Total hush.
Ethan said, “We could be anywhere. Some village in the Swiss Alps. Just two lovers out for a midnight stroll.”
“Don’t do that,” Theresa warned.
“Do what?”
“Pretend we’re in some other place and time. The people who pretend in this town go mad.”
They stayed off Main, kept to the side streets.
The houses were dark. With no woodsmoke in the valley, the snow-streaked air carried a clean, rinsed quality.
Theresa said, “Sometimes, I hear screams and screeches. They’re far away, but I hear them. He never mentions it, but I know that Ben hears them too.”
“Those are the abbies,” Ethan said.
“Strange he’s never asked me what the sound is. It’s like he already knows.”
They walked south beyond the hospital on the road that purported to lead out of town.
Streetlamps fell behind.
Darkness closed in.
A fragile quarter inch of snow dusted the pavement.
Ethan said, “I paid a visit to Wayne Johnson this afternoon.”
“I’m supposed to take him dinner tomorrow night.”
“I lied to him, Theresa. I told him this gets better. I told him it was just a town.”
“Me too. But that’s what they make you say, right?”
“Nobody can make me do anything. It’s always a choice in the end.”