Room 14's Secret: The Heiress Who Outsmarted Her Betrayers novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Room 14
Playing sedated, Adele hears her husband and best friend plan to adopt her daughters, gets word that her grandmother's jet is coming, finds eleven names scratched under her bed and tells the jet to wait, and at dawn a nurse arrives with a syringe.
My husband visited me every day at two o'clock, between his lunch meeting and his three o'clock call.
Today he brought my best friend.
I lay on the narrow bed in Room 14 with my mouth open and a wet patch spreading on the pillow under my cheek.
I had practiced the drool.
It took me three days to get it right.
Stewart's good shoes squeaked on the linoleum. Alicia's heels clicked after him.
Neither of them bothered to lower their voices.
Why would they? I was the vegetable in the end room on Ward C.
"The hearing's set for Friday morning," Stewart said. He was pacing. He always paced when he was pleased. "The judge has the psychiatric reports. Zero improvement in six weeks."
"Because there hasn't been any." The plastic visitor's chair creaked as Alicia sat in it. "Look at her. The lights are on and nobody's home."
She leaned over me. I smelled her perfume, the one I'd bought her for her thirtieth birthday.
She tapped my cheek with one finger.
I let my eyes roll a little.
"God," she said, and laughed.
Stewart stopped pacing. His shadow fell across my face.
"Once the court grants guardianship, we file the adoption papers Saturday," he said. "By next month, the girls are legally ours."
"Edie drew a family picture at school yesterday," Alicia said. "You, me and Flora. Three people. She didn't put Adele in it."
"Good."
"And Flora's stopped asking. I told them Mommy went to heaven. That it didn't hurt." Her voice went soft and satisfied. "Flora said she was glad Mommy wasn't sad anymore."
I kept breathing slow.
In. Out.
Under the thin blanket, my right hand made a fist so tight my nails cut my palm.
Stewart bent close. His cologne was the one I'd given him for our anniversary.
"You had a good life, Adele," he said, in the same flat voice he used on the phone with clients. "A beautiful house. Beautiful children. All you had to do was stay easy."
He straightened his tie.
"Then you started reading the bank statements."
Their footsteps went away. The door clicked shut.
I lay still for a count of three hundred.
Then I slid my hand under the mattress and found the slit I'd made with a plastic fork.
Three white pills sat in it, damp from my tongue.
Fourteen days ago, I stopped swallowing them.
Six weeks I'd been in this room.
Six weeks of being turned and fed and washed by strangers, while my life was taken apart in conversations over my bed.
I'd heard Stewart tell his lawyer to empty my accounts.
I'd heard the ward psychiatrist talk to a nurse the night I miscarried, at ten weeks, on the floor beside this bed.
"Write it up as pre-existing," he'd said. "Mr. Kearns doesn't want complications."
Nobody in this building knew I was awake.
Nobody knew who I really was, either.
Except one person.
Three weeks ago, the night orderly had stood over me with her flashlight while I blinked at her.
Short short short short. Short. Short long short short. Short long long short.
H. E. L. P.
My father taught me Morse code on the deck of his pilot boat in Gloucester harbor when I was eight. He said it was the one language every sailor still had when the radio died.
The orderly didn't tell anyone.
A week later she slipped a cheap phone under my pillow and walked away without a word.
At midnight the ward went dark.
At twelve-ten the hallway camera swung toward the linen closet, the way it did every night for four minutes.
I pulled the phone out of the pillowcase and typed a number I'd memorized when I was twelve.
My grandmother had made me say it back to her every birthday until I was grown.
"It's Adele. I'm alive. Stewart had me committed. I'm at Halcyon House outside Greenwich. He took my girls."
I stared at the screen.
My hands were shaking so hard I mistyped the last line twice.
"Burn it all down."
The answer came seconds later.
"My darling girl. We have been looking for you for two years. Matthew is already at the airfield. The jet is in the air."
I pressed the phone to my mouth so I wouldn't make a sound.
Two years.
Stewart had told her people I moved to Europe.
He'd told me she never called.
I needed to hide the phone before the camera swung back.
I rolled off the bed onto the cold floor and reached up under the steel frame, feeling for the gap where I kept it.
My fingertips brushed something rough in the paint.
Grooves.
I turned the phone's screen up toward the underside of the frame.
Names were scratched into the paint. Small, careful letters, the kind you'd make with a fingernail or the edge of a button.
Women's first names, one under another. The oldest was dated nine years ago.
Eleven names. Each one with a year next to it. Each one with the same little mark after it.
A K.
Under the last name, someone had scratched words into the paint.
"He paid him."
I lay on my back on the floor of Room 14 and read them again and again.
Eleven women had slept in this bed before me.
Eleven husbands had paid the same man.
And I knew three of those names. I had shuffled past them in the dayroom every morning for six weeks.
Down the hall, the camera motor hummed.
One minute left.
I picked up the phone and typed.
"Grandmother. Don't come in."
"What do you mean?"
"Land and wait. I need four more days. I'm not walking out of here alone."
The camera swung back.
I shoved the phone into the gap under the frame and climbed into bed and let my mouth fall open.
I didn't sleep.
At six in the morning the door opened and the overhead light came on.
It wasn't the night orderly.
It was the day nurse, with a tray.
There was no paper cup on it. No pills.
There was a syringe.
"Good morning, sweetheart," she said, snapping on a glove. "Doctor's changed your orders. No more pills for you."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend