Riptide

won't ever want to leave. We can have more kids, yours
    and mine. Sam was Ann's kid anyway."
    "I'm going to marry Adam."
    He threw the coffee at her. He roared to his feet, sending the
    wooden chair crashing against the wall, and shouted, "No, you're
    not going to marry that goddamned bastard! You're mine, do you
    hear me? You're mine, you damned bitch!"
    The coffee wasn't scalding anymore, thank God, but it hurt,
    splashing on her neck, on the front of her shirt, soaking through to
    her skin.
    He leapt toward her, his hands out.
    "No, Tyler." She ran, but he was blocking any escape out the

back door. There was no place to go except down to the basement.
    But she'd be trapped down there. No, wait, there was another small
    entry on the far side of the basement where long-ago Marleys had
    had their winter cords of wood dumped. She saw it all in a flash,
    and ran to the basement door, jerked it open, then pulled it closed
    behind her. She locked it, flipped on the light, saw the naked bulb
    dangling from the ceiling by a thin wire, even as she heard him
    pulling on the knob on the other side, yelling, calling her horrible
    names, telling her that he would get her, that she wouldn't leave
    him, not ever.
    She ran down the wooden stairs. She looked at the wall where
    she'd found Sam propped up, bound and gagged, then at the far
    wall that still gaped open from when the skeleton had fallen out of
    it after that storm.
    She heard the basement door splinter. Then he was on the stairs.
    She pulled and jerked at the rusted latch that held the small trapdoor
    down. It was about chest high. Move, move, but she was
    shrieking it in her mind, not out loud. What the hell was going on
    with him? It had happened so quickly. He had snapped, just
    snapped, and turned into a wild man. Oh God, a crazy man.
    She heard his feet clattering to the bottom steps. The latch
    wouldn't give. She was trapped. She turned to see him running
    across the concrete floor. He came to a stop. He was panting. Then
    he smiled at her.
    "I nailed that trapdoor shut last week. It was dangerous. I didn't
    think we should take the chance that a kid could open it and fall
    through. Maybe hurt himself. Maybe even kill himself."
    "Tyler," she said. Be calm, be calm. "What's going on here? Why
    are you acting like this? Why this rage? At me? Why?"
    He said, all calm and serious, and he actually waved his finger at
    her, like a lecturing teacher, "You're like the others, Becca. I hoped

you would be different, I would have wagered everything that you
    were different, that you weren't like Ann, that faithless bitch who
    wanted to leave me, wanted to take Sam and go far away from me."
    "Why did she want to leave you,Tyler?"
    He shrugged. "She thought I was smothering her, but that was
    just in her mind, of course. I loved her, wanted to make her and
    Sam happy, but she started pulling back. She didn't need all those
    other friends of hers, they just -wasted her time, took her away from
    me. Then she told me that night that she had to leave me, that she
    couldn't stand it anymore."
    "Stand what?"
    "I don't know. I tried to give her everything she wanted, both
    her and Sam. I just wanted her for myself, wanted her to commit
    herself only to me, and all I asked was that she stay close to me, that
    she look to me for everything. And she did for a while, and then
    she didn't want to anymore."
    "She left?"
    In that instant, Becca knew that Ann McBride hadn't gone anywhere.
    She was still here in Riptide.
    "Where did you bury her, Tyler?"
    "In Jacob Marley's backyard, right under that old elm tree that
    was around when World War One began. I dug her deep so no animals
    would dig her up. I even gave her a nice service. She didn't
    deserve anything, but I gave her all the religious trappings, the
    sweet and hopeful words. After all, she was my wife." He laughed,
    remembering now and said with a smirk, "Old Jacob had been
    dead by then nearly three years so I didn't worry about getting rid
    of him that time."
    He started laughing then. "I killed that ridiculous old dog of
    his--Miranda--a long time ago. The bitch didn't like me, always
    growled when I came near. The old man never knew, never."

She remembered the sheriff telling her how much Jacob Marley
    had loved that dog, how she'd just up and died one day. Her heart
    was pounding, slowly, painfully. Somehow she had to reach him.
    She had to try. "Listen to me, Tyler. I didn't betray you. I would
    never betray you. I came