Taken in My Sleep by My Stepfather David and His Friends novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ring in the Bowl
Zelda wakes in her mother's cabin, three days before her wedding, with four men at the table and her ring in a cereal bowl. She gives them until Friday. Clarence, on the phone, never asks where she is.
I woke up on my mother's pillow, in a bed I had never slept in.
I knew the pillow by the blue thread in its corner.
She had stitched a crooked M there the summer I left for college, and it had lived in my apartment ever since.
The ceiling above me was pine boards.
The window was white with snow.
I sat up in the hotel robe from the bridal suite, with my mother's yellow cardigan over it.
My left hand was bare.
I went out into a cabin kitchen, scared and furious.
Four men sat around a wooden table.
My stepfather David sat at the head of it with his big hand flat on top of a phone.
The phone was mine.
His three oldest friends sat along the sides with mugs in front of them, and none of them said a word.
In the middle of the table, beside a box of cornflakes, was a cereal bowl.
My engagement ring was in it.
"Good morning," David said.
"You carried me out of a hotel," I said.
"Down the service stairs," said Bernard, the big sandy-haired one. "Six floors. You snore, by the way. It's cute."
"Bernard," David said.
"I'm just saying she should know."
I looked at the four of them.
All three of his friends had stood at my mother's wedding and at her funeral.
All four had been at my rehearsal dinner the night before, in good suits, clapping for Clarence's speech.
"It's Wednesday," I said.
"It's Wednesday," Ellis agreed. He had reading glasses pushed up into his dark hair and a cup of tea set at the empty chair across from him. "You slept eleven hours. That's good. Sit down."
"I'm not sitting."
I crossed the kitchen and pulled the front door open.
Snow came in to the top of my thigh.
Beyond it there was a lake with no edge, a grey sky, and no road at all.
"The storm closed it Tuesday night," Garson said from behind me. He had a scar through his left eyebrow and had not moved from his chair. "Nothing gets in or out of here but my sleds, and they're in the shed."
"So you took me somewhere I can't leave."
"We took you somewhere you can think," David said.
"I was asleep!"
"Yes."
He didn't say anything else.
I shut the door and stood there with snow melting down my shins.
Then I noticed the kitchen.
There was a jar of the loose chamomile and lavender tea I drink at night, the brand nobody carries, on the counter by the stove.
The cupboard was stocked with my oat bars and the brand of coffee I buy.
None of that had been bought yesterday.
I opened my mouth to ask how long they'd planned this, and David turned the phone over and slid it across the table.
"Call whoever you want," he said. "Call Clarence."
I took it.
Forty-three missed calls.
I called Clarence and put him on speaker, so the four of them would hear every word.
He answered on the second ring.
"Zelda! There you are. Baby, how are you feeling?"
His voice was soft and warm.
"Clarence, I'm not at the hotel," I said. "I'm not anywhere near it. David and the others took me out of my room while I was asleep."
"I know, sweetheart. It's okay." He breathed out slowly. "You've been so stressed. Honestly, it's the best thing for you. Rest. Take whatever time you need."
"I need to know you heard me. I was taken."
"I heard you. Don't worry about a single thing. My mother's handling the florist. Stay as long as you need."
He told me he loved me and hung up.
I stood with the phone still warm against my palm.
Nobody at the table spoke.
I had just told my fiancé that I'd been carried out of a hotel in the middle of the night, three days before our wedding.
He hadn't asked where I was.
He hadn't asked who. He hadn't asked if I was safe.
I turned the phone over in my hand and looked at David.
He looked back at me and waited.
"I'm not saying I forgive any of you," I said.
"No," David said.
"You'll tell me why."
"When you ask the right question."
"That's not an answer!"
"No," he said again. "But it's the one I've got."
I picked the ring out of the cereal bowl.
I didn't put it on.
I put it in the pocket of my mother's cardigan, where I could feel it against my hip.
"Friday night," I said. "You have until Friday night to give me a reason, or you drive me to that wedding yourselves."
"Agreed," David said.
So I stayed.
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