Back The Retreat
Chapters (16)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Prologue: Day 7
  6. Day 1
  7. Day 2
  8. Day 3
  9. Day 4
  10. Day 5
  11. Day 6
  12. Day 7
  13. Acknowledgments
  14. Discover More
  15. About the Author
  16. Also by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

Time-stamped only a few days ago: Anna, viewed through the slim crack of a doorway, left just barely ajar. She is in some kind of storeroom, Maeve thinks. The camera pans to the floor and up again, struggles to focus. A low murmur, a man’s voice: she wasn’t alone, someone was with her. Dan.

Maeve suddenly recognizes the basement hall.

It’s not Justin behind the camera. These are Sadie’s files.

The room comes back into view, zoomed closer now: Dan with Anna’s hair taut in his hands, her throat arching. One hand moving over her mouth, then her eyes. Using his hold to direct how she can move. Folding her over a table.

For just a moment, Dan turns, and it’s almost like he’s looking into the camera. Then he turns away. Maeve rewinds, watches again.

Did Dan guess that Sadie was secretly filming them? Did Karo? They all had their twisted loyalties before she ever arrived.

A new thumbnail, and the image changes.

She leans closer. It’s not Anna on-screen anymore, but Maeve.

Maeve in her room. When she thought she was alone. She watches herself cross from the bed to the window, rummage through a bag. Stand and pull her T-shirt off over her head; turn to the mirror, sweep a hand down along her own breasts, her waist. Examining her body before her morning warm-up.

A sudden cold feeling in her chest. Alone in the common room, Maeve looks over her shoulder despite herself.

How did Sadie get this? Why?

She pauses the video, trying to guess the vantage point. Was Sadie actually in the room with her? Or was she filming from the next room, silent and stealthy, that adjoining door just slightly ajar?

She scans forward, her heart starting to race. Maeve from overhead, from some high window, as she fights through the snow. A skip; static. Maeve in the lobby, lost in thought on the floor. Legs wide open, folding over into a stretch. Another skip. There’s no rhyme or reason to the footage, and Maeve realizes they’re almost incidental, hurriedly picked up whenever Sadie had the camera. Whenever she had a chance. Justin was so accustomed to his SD cards that he never noticed what Sadie was saving to the camera itself. Or he didn’t care.

For a second, she wonders if she’s wrong, if Justin took the videos himself the same way he took hate-footage of Anna.

On-screen, a door opens to a darkened room and the camera moves slowly inside. Everything is gray or dark gray. A streak of moonlight from the window lights the way; there’s a muffled sound, movement. But then there’s Sadie’s black, bone-straight hair falling down her back, her slim shoulder, her hip—she’s caught herself, accidentally, in the vanity mirror, camera in hand. A slow turn. Her lovely, strong cheekbones. Her lips.

The camera lifts and focuses on the mirror frame: Maeve’s own little photo strip. Maeve and the kids. Across the room then, to Maeve herself, in bed. Asleep. She stirs as though a dream has disturbed her, and the screen goes black.