The Secrets You Keep
Kate White
Chapter 1
I wake to the smell of smoke.
It’s faint but enough to rouse me, and I jerk up in bed, eyes wide open. For a few seconds I freeze there, propped on an elbow and trying to make sense of it. What’s burning?
I start to shove my legs out of bed, but the top sheet fights me. I have to wrench it loose from the mattress so I can force my feet to the ground.
As my eyes adjust to the dark, I realize that I’m not at home. I’m in a hotel room. I’ve been traveling on business . . . yet I can’t remember where. The burning smell intensifies, boring into my nostrils and propelling my head back. Panic surges through me. Fire, I think. Fire.
Using my hands for help, I edge around the second double bed in the room, fast as I can. Warning phrases I’ve read bombard my brain: Fill the bathtub with water. Wet a towel and cover your mouth with it. But I don’t have time for that. I need to get out.
Then there’s a noise, a tapping sound, and I realize someone’s knocking at the door. Maybe hotel staff, warning people.
“I’m in here,” I yell. “Don’t go, I’m coming.”
Now I can actually see the smoke wafting toward me. I stub my toe hard on the outside wall of the bathroom, but I keep going, practically hurling myself forward.
Suddenly I hear a man’s voice—from behind me in the hotel room.
“Bryn, are you okay?” he calls out.
“Yes,” I respond. “But we’ve gotta go.”
“Wait,” he says. “There’s something—”
“I can’t. We have to run. Hurry.”
Reaching the end of the hallway, I frantically pat the wall until I locate the light switch, but nothing happens when I tap it. The power’s off. Even without any lights, I see smoke boiling from the crack at the bottom of the door. I moan in anguish.
More fumbling until my fingers find the security latch on the door and flip it over. To my relief it’s not hot to the touch, just warm. I take a second, trying to picture the exit sign in the corridor. Was it to the left or the right? I have no freaking clue. I still can’t recall the hotel, or the city, or even checking in at the front desk. I grasp the handle and press down, my fingers trembling.
Horrified, I feel the handle begin to dissolve. It sears the skin of my palm, and I snatch my hand away in pain. My lungs start to scald, and I cough again and again, unable to stop.
Somehow, though, the door swings open. Yes, yes, I think. Then I see it. A mass of smoke and pulsing red light fill the hallway. I stare at flames devouring the carpet, licking up the walls.
There’s no way to get out.
Chapter 2
A moment later I’m surfacing, struggling through webs of sleep. It’s only a dream, I realize. Another one of those nightmares. Though I’m fully awake now, my heart’s still thrumming. My skin is hot, like I’ve sat too long in the sun, and the T-shirt I’m wearing is damp with sweat.
I glance around, not sure at first where I am. It’s daylight, maybe late afternoon, and then I know. I’m on the screened porch in the house we’ve rented in Saratoga Springs, New York. From outside I hear the distant, buzzy drone of a lawn mower and one short bark from a dog.
I hoist myself up and take long deep breaths, in through my nostrils and out through my mouth, a technique Dr. G taught me when I started having sessions with her.
Finally my pulse slows. I reach for a pencil and pad lying on the coffee table, and jot down fragments from the dream: hotel room, smoke, dissolving doorknob, the wall of flames. It’s the fourth dream like this I’ve had in the past few weeks. Dr. G suggested I keep track of them because they seem to be about the car accident, the one I was in three months ago. She thinks writing them down will help calm me—and if I’m lucky, ultimately fill in some blanks.
I close my eyes again, trying to recall more details, but the dream begins to unravel in my memory, like a pile of dried leaves lifting apart in the wind. If it was trying to tell me something, I have no clue what it is.
I force myself off the daybed and traipse into the main part of the house. It’s Victorian in style, built a hundred-plus years ago. Though there aren’t a ton of rooms, they’re spacious and elegant, with high ceilings and dark, intricate moldings and paneling. Not the kind of house I would have picked for myself—it’s so prim and proper—but I’m okay with being here for the summer.