Chapter 3 - The Scent of Warm Cinnamon
Clare’s fingers dug into the meat of my bicep with bruising force. She froze on the third step, her entire posture shifting into a defensive, coiled crouch. In the amber glow of the staircase chandelier, her eyes wide with frantic calculations, she looked less like my former college roommate and more like an operative trapped behind enemy lines.
"Do not react," she mouthed, barely vibrating her vocal cords. "Normal voice. Now."
My tongue felt like a dry strip of leather glued to the roof of my mouth. Every survival instinct I had honed over thirty-two mundane, comfortable years told me to scream, to fling myself over the banister, to run until my lungs burst. But my eyes caught the blue-light residual pattern burned into my retinas—the violent, luminous halos beneath our bathroom floorboards.
"Ethan?" My voice wavered, cracked, and hitched. I cleared my throat, forcing my tone down an octave, trying desperately to inject the groggy, affectionate warmth he expected on Sunday mornings. "Hey! You’re... you’re back fast."
Heavy work boots thudded against the hardwood floor of the entryway. Ethan stepped into view at the base of the stairs. He was wearing his favorite faded Carhartt jacket over a charcoal thermal shirt. His sandy brown hair was ruffled from the wind, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners in that boyish, disarming way that had made me fall head-over-heels for him in a crowded coffee shop six years ago. He looked like the picture of wholesome, dependable American masculinity.
In his left hand, he held a brown grease-stained bakery bag. In his right, he carried a heavy, sealed plastic jug of industrial muriatic acid from the bed of his truck.
My stomach plummeted into a bottomless pit.
"Yeah, total clown show out at the Henderson development," he said, shaking his head with an easy laugh. He set the bakery bag on the console table beneath the foyer mirror, but he didn't set down the chemical jug. He kept his fingers looped firmly through its molded handle. His gaze flicked up the stairs, taking in the two of us standing frozen on the landing. "Morning, Clare. Nat treating you okay? You guys look like you haven't even had your coffee yet."
"Just... just woke up, Ethan," Clare said, smoothly stepping slightly in front of me, her posture relaxing with terrifying, professional deceit. "Natalie was just telling me about the scones. You're an absolute saint."
"Well, I try," he chuckled, but his eyes didn't match the laugh.
The warmth in his hazel eyes flickered, replaced by a razor-sharp, analytical stillness that I had never noticed before. He looked at Clare’s feet—she was wearing her running sneakers, not the fleece slippers she had worn downstairs the night before. Then, his gaze tracked upward, lingering on her duffel bag visible through the open doorway of the guest bedroom.
Finally, his eyes landed on the en-suite door at the end of the hall. It was open three inches.
A dead, suffocating silence dropped over the foyer. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner sounded like artillery fire. *Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.*
"You were upstairs," Ethan said. It wasn't a question. The boyish lilt was entirely gone from his voice, replaced by a low, flat resonance that made the fine hairs on my neck stand upright.
"I had to use the restroom," Clare replied instantly, her voice smooth, level, and entirely devoid of fear. "Your master bath is gorgeous, Ethan. Natalie’s a lucky woman. That Italian porcelain is stunning."
Ethan didn't smile. He shifted the heavy jug of muriatic acid from his right hand to his left. His knuckles were pale, the skin stretched tight over bone.
"I didn't clean it this morning," he said softly.
"Oh, it looked spotless to me," Clare said, taking a casual step down the stairs. "Honestly, cleaner than most five-star hotels I stay in for conferences."
"No," Ethan interrupted, his voice dropping another register, cold and grating. "It wasn't clean. The grout wasn't sealed. I told you, Natalie. I always tell you. The bathroom is off-limits until I do the morning wash down. The ventilation system has a backdraft issue. It pulls toxic fumes up from the crawlspace if the secondary exhaust isn't running."
He was lying. I knew the blueprints of our home; there was no crawlspace beneath the central second-floor master bath. It sat directly above the formal dining room.
He took one slow, deliberate step up the bottom stair. The floorboard groaned beneath his weight.
"You shouldn't have been in there, Clare," he murmured, his gaze locking onto hers with an intensity that felt predatory. "Guests should use the powder room on the ground floor. We talked about this, Nat. Remember? We talked about boundaries in our home."
"Ethan, you’re being ridiculous," I said, my voice shaking uncontrollably now. I couldn't keep up the facade. The sight of that acid jug in his hand, the memories of five years of caustic chemical fumes, the spectral glowing handprints on the shower wall—it all collided in my chest like a freight train. "She just needed to brush her teeth. Put the acid down. Come have breakfast."
Ethan stopped on the second step. He looked at me, really looked at me, and for the first time in five years of marriage, I realized I did not know the man standing in front of me. The gentle carpenter who kissed my forehead before leaving for work was an elaborate, meticulously maintained mask. Behind it was something ancient, hollow, and calculated.
His eyes dropped to Clare’s right hand, which was tucked firmly inside the pocket of her windbreaker. He knew. He could read the tension in her shoulders; he could see the sheer, unadulterated panic vibrating in my chest.
"Who did you call?" he asked quietly.
"Nobody, Ethan," Clare said, keeping her voice completely measured. "We haven't called anyone."
"You're a forensic investigator for the state medical examiner's office, Clare," Ethan said, tilting his head slightly, a small, sad, grotesque smile playing on the corners of his lips. "You don't look at an unwashed shower and think about tile patterns. You look at an unwashed shower and you see evidence."
He set the jug of acid down on the third step. Very slowly, he reached behind his back, slipping his hand under the hem of his Carhartt jacket.
May you like
"Run!" Clare screamed, grabbing the collar of my sweater and violently hauling me backward up the stairs just as Ethan lunged upward with terrifying, explosive speed.
***
