She'd been the one who wanted to go to school. She'd applied to various art schools and had been accepted, but their financial situation never allowed her to go. Beryl loved to draw and dreamed of getting a degree in Art. She was the one who one day dreamed of having her name listed as an illustrator in books and magazines.
These were real dreams Beryl didn't see coming true for her anytime soon.
She had also seen the so called newspaper Travis was talking about with the job advertisements he'd circled. She wondered if Travis thought she was a complete fool. The paper he kept referring to was already two weeks old when they left for the retreat. Those jobs were long gone.
And if he had been so busy packing that he couldn't pick up the phone and inquire about the jobs, why hadn't he packed enough underwear for the trip? Travis had the audacity to talk about competing with somebody in the workplace. There was no way he could compete, especially lying in the bed each morning relying on Beryl to wake him up so he could get ready to go to work.
“Wonders never cease,” Beryl said as she reached for the balled up piece of paper. Carefully, she opened it to smooth out the wrinkles as best as she could. She stood gathering her things ready to leave.
“What's that?” Travis asked, looking at the paper. “And where are you going?”
“Don't worry about this.” Beryl held up the paper. She turned and walked away.
“Hey, I thought we were talking?” Travis said.
Again Beryl held the paper up. “We'll talk more about it when we get home.”
Chapter 29
Shelby Tomlinson
Thursday: 9:37
P.M
.
Shelby sat up in the beds they'd pushed together in their bedroom. With the twin beds side by side, it gave the illusion that they were actually sleeping on a king sized bed. With his head in Shelby's lap, Phillip shared his feelings about the events of the previous week and earlier in the day.
“Man, this week has been long,” he said. “Is it over yet?”
“Over?” Shelby asked.
“Yeah, I just don't feel like I'm being effective with these couples,” Phillip said.
“Don't say that. You are.”
“Really, I can't tell.” Phillip let out a deep breath. “I mean look at Nina and George. I didn't see any of that coming with Nina and her drug problem. And you figured it out pretty quickly.”
“Baby, don't say that. George is her husband, and even he didn't know exactly what was going on, and he saw her almost every day.”
Phillip sighed.
“I just went into nurse mode, that's all. I remembered working with some patients when I was in nursing school that showed some of the same signs as Nina. Something had been nagging the back of my mind the last couple of days.
“When Nina fell out and George recapped things he'd been noticing, then I knew something was off kilter. But seeing the pills in the bottle sealed it for me, and I had to have you all get her out of that living room.”
“Good thinking. I am glad you had the presence of mind to keep things private for Nina,” Phillip said.
Shelby stroked the top of Phillip's forehead and head. “It was obvious that George didn't know what was going on. And it wasn't any of the other couples' business,” she said.
“So tell me something.”
“What?”
“Why did you let her take some more of the medication?”
“Even though valium is a prescribed medication, it is still a medication. And just like any street drug, when you are addicted, there are times when it isn't best to just quit cold turkey.”
“Oh.” Phillip nodded his head.
“When they get back home, they'll need to see the doctor and explain what happened. Then her doctor will be able to determine what kind of gradual step down process she'll need in order to be weaned off the drug. It wouldn't have helped for me to take the pills and let her continue to suffer while she's here.”
Shelby chuckled and added, “To tell you the truth, I am glad she has enough pills to last her the next couple of days until she can make it home. Or else, we would have had to find the nearest hospital to have her admitted.”
“God is good,” Phillip said.
“He most certainly is,” Shelby replied.
“I had a chance to speak with George a little earlier and he thanked us for all we did.”
“How did he say Nina was doing?”
“He said they've been talking, and she can't believe he isn't upset with her. George said that their marriage has been through some rough patches the last year and a half, but he holds hope that they will make it through this storm stronger than they were before,” Phillip said.
“Well, amen to that.” Shelby shook her head.
“I don't know how the man does it with all the responsibilities; not only as a husband, but also as a pastor of a mega church. He always seems to be able to keep his cool.”
“I don't know how he does it either. Hopefully one day in the future, I'll be able to visit him and gain some nuggets, which will help me in my walk with God.”
“I'm sure he won't mind. But if you ask me, I think you're doing a good job.”
“Your vote's bias,” Phillip said.
“Maybe so, but I'd like to think I'm a good judge of character.”
“Okay, if you say so. What about the situation with Beryl and Travis?” Phillip asked.
“What about it?”
“Do you think I am getting through to those two?”
“I think you are probably getting through to Beryl. She seems to be taking in everything, taking notes and asking questions. Much of her conversation, and the points she makes, seem to really be directed at Travis. It's like she is trying to indirectly get him to understand her wants and needs.”
“Sometimes she isn't so indirect,” Phillip said.
“That's true.” Shelby nodded her head.
“Her emotions flip flop from being angry and frustrated, to showing signs of wanting to work with Travis to keep their marriage together.”
“Overall, it is sort of hard to read how strongly she feels about calling it quits or really trying to make it work,” Shelby said.
“If you ask me, I think her words are speaking louder than her actions. I think if Travis doesn't start to really hone in to what his wife wants, then he just might find his world completely turned upside down.”
“Maybe you can pull him to the side and find out where his mind really is.”
“I think I will. That one on one talk with George was good. I'll probably talk to Xavier in the same manner,” Phillip said.
“If you'd like for me to, I can try to talk to Beryl and Charlotte also. Nina and I have already said that we'll touch bases tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Could you do that, please?”
“Of course.”
Shelby shifted, lifting Phillip's head a couple of inches in order to readjust her legs, which were starting to feel numb on the thighs.
“Is my head too heavy for your legs?”
“No, big head,” Shelby said placing Phillip's head back down comfortably.
“What about Xavier and Charlotte? What are your thoughts now about their situation?”
“I think Charlotte has been harboring a great deal of anger, and I think her being able to finally confront him allowed her to get a huge weight off her chest.” Shelby stroked Phillip's eyebrows with her index finger.
“She had a lot to get off her chest.”
“And I think she may have more. Like I said before, it didn't exactly look like she was finished with her confrontation the other day,” Shelby said.
“Maybe she was able to talk to him in private. But as far as I can see, it doesn't look like she's talking to him very much.”
“You never know what goes on behind closed doors.” Shelby didn't know why, but her comment about closed doors triggered her mind to think about Phillip's friend, Will.
Will had recently gotten married to a woman named Morgan who he'd met in church. Their courtship had been relatively short, lasting seven months. There was something about Morgan that didn't set well with Shelby.
“Baby?”
Shelby heard the questioning sound in her husband's voice. “Yeah?”
“What'd you do, zone off on me?”
“Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was just thinking about something, that's all. What did you say?”
“You are right, sometimes things aren't what they seem,” Phillip said. “And I'm hoping this is also the case with Xavier and Charlotte. Sometimes the brain distorts stuff.”
Abruptly, Phillip sat up. Startled, Shelby jumped.
“That's it,” Phillip stated.
“That's what?”
“The fun house effect.”
“Huh?”
“My next topic. You know how it is when you're in a fun house like the ones at the fair.”
“Okay, and?”
“Fun houses are pretty blatant, and you know you're in one, especially when you're looking into those altered mirrors. From the moment you step into one of those places, almost everything is distorted.” Phillip looked around for his notepad and pen. When he found it, he sat on the edge of the bed and began writing. “I've got to get these thoughts down while they're fresh in my head.”
“The fun house affect,” Shelby said. “It has a bit of a ring to it.”
Phillip stopped writing for a moment. “Good, because thus far, this cabin has been anything but fun.”
Chapter 30
Charlotte Knight
Friday: 4:55
A.M
.
In her bed, Charlotte tossed and turned, feeling like something was clinging to her body. Upon waking, she felt the tangled sheets around her. She clawed at the sheets as if trying to tear them off. Ever since going to bed earlier that night, she'd been unable to shake the nightmares she was having. Picking her head up, she looked over at the clock on the dresser. In a little over two hours she'd need to get up and face another tension packed day.
Forcefully, she pushed her head back onto the pillow, and then pulled the sheet over her head. The light from the alarm clock was bothering her. Maybe if she made it a little darker under the covers, she'd be able to at least salvage an hour or so of sleep.
After several more minutes, Charlotte still hadn't been able to fall back asleep, and the darkness hadn't done anything to swipe her memory of the awful dreams. The dreams were more like out-of-control flashbacks of all the detective work she'd done over the months.
When she'd gotten the copies of Xavier's cell phone records, it was as simple as going online and pulling up past bills, which had the details of each call. She uploaded each file one by one, then pressed print. Within a matter of minutes, she had a neat stack of pages detailing thousands of calls placed to and from her husband.
To her dismay, the dreams were distorting those very simple steps. In her dream, when she pressed the button to print the pages, they'd ended up flying out of the printer, causing pages upon pages to fill the room. It reminded her of one of the old
I Love Lucy
episodes where Lucy was in a chocolate factory and the chocolates kept coming so fast that she couldn't keep up with them. Lucy ended up putting the chocolates any and everywhere to hide them.
Charlotte's dream shifted as she remembered the time when she'd placed a home phone recording device on their home phone. She'd read in a book once about a character who recorded her phone conversations because she was being harassed by a crank caller. During a quick trip to an electronic store, she'd explained to a salesman what she wanted, and he led her to exactly what she needed.
It was a little recording device, unlike a regular answering machine, in that there was no announcement to leave a message. There weren't any beeping or clicking sounds to make anyone aware that the recording was being done. Whenever the phone rang and the call was answered, the device would automatically start recording the conversation between the people talking.
During Charlotte's quest to catch Xavier in as much dirt as she could, she wanted to also catch any actual conversations he might be bold enough to have from their home. The device ended up working like a charm, recording all of his conversations and even all of Charlotte's conversations, since she'd left the machine hooked up at all times. It was hidden behind the couch in her living room, hooked up to a phone jack they never used.
But again, Charlotte's dreams were taking her actions to a whole new level. In the dream, she saw herself back at the electronics store buying an arm full of the recording devices. She'd placed more around her house, and had even put recording devices on the phones in Xavier's office at work and various other offices throughout the car dealership.
In another dream, she remembered the time she'd taken a little handheld voice activated recorder and duct tapped it under Xavier's driver's side seat in his SUV. It turned out this device hadn't been as effective as the home recording device. The sound of Xavier talking to people, whether it was on the phone or to other passengers riding with him, were often muffled. At times, there were also the competing sounds of the engine and the radio.
This last dream was the worst of all in distorting her true life detective actions. Charlotte was in a hardware store buying an Acme sized roll of duct tape. The huge size of the roll reminded her of something the Coyote would have bought to try to catch the Road Runner.
Charlotte used the roll of duct tape not only to put a recording device in Xavier's SUV, but also in her own car, just in case he borrowed it, which he rarely ever did. Then one night she snuck out to the car dealership, picked the locks and broke in to obtain the keys to all the cars on the lot. Charlotte proceeded to duct tape mini-sized recorders under the driver's side seats.
With sticky fingers and a sweat drenched forehead, Charlotte ran from car to car, installing the devices. After a while the Acme size roll of tape started wrapping around her body like a boa constrictor, trying to squeeze her. She clawed at the tape, trying to tear it off. That's when she woke up realizing the sheets were actually tangled around her body.
She was happy to be awake and glad the nightmares had come to an end. But now she faced the true life living nightmare she was currently in. Charlotte sighed in frustration. She wasn't proud of the things she'd done to try to catch her husband in his lies. Especially since the listening devices hadn't helped her find anything new about his extracurricular activities. Most of the phone calls made to and from their home were the ones she'd made. The phone calls Xavier had made were one hundred percent legitimateâcalls regarding bills, telemarketers, and conversations with his kids.
It was when she overheard the conversations Xavier had with his kids that Charlotte felt she had hit her lowest point. She stepped back and re-evaluated things. Even now she shook her head, not wanting to think about the other minute things she had done to gauge whether her husband was telling the truth or not.
All the detective work she'd done had almost driven her crazy. The things she'd been doing were so out of character it was amazing. Charlotte had gone to so many desperate measures trying to keep a twenty-four-seven watch on her husband. She knew if her friends or family ever found out the extent she'd gone, they might actually try to have her committed to an institution.
She hated the person she'd become, always suspicious and harboring anger toward a man she once loved and adored to the utmost. She'd give just about anything to have her old life back again. The life where she could trust her husband without a shadow of doubt, and a life where the women on the commercials with him hadn't fazed her in the least bit because she knew Xavier had a woman at home who wouldn't hesitate to take care of his every need.
A tear trickled down her face as she wished for at least one night of peace. A night in which she might be able to dream of a better time, making her forget the living nightmare she was playing a staring role in.
Charlotte looked back over at the alarm clock. It was now five thirty-eight. Throwing the covers off, she sat up and let her legs hang over the side of the bed.
On the other side of the room, Xavier continued to sleep. She'd heard him tossing and turning during the past few nights also. Neither one of them were getting any sleep. But for now he seemed to be resting pretty well.
If she were a vindictive woman, she would turn on all the lights and start making noise to wake him. If she weren't sleeping well, why should he? But she wasn't a vindictive woman. She hadn't pulled out all that damaging information in front of six other virtual strangers to embarrass him. If she wanted to do that she could have done so in many other ways at home with people they both knew.
No, she was once again just trying to get her husband to come clean about all of his wrongdoings. She had to admit that when she had confronted him with everything, he did come clean as far as she could tell. But Charlotte still couldn't get over the fact that her husband had strayed from home with at least one other woman and the fact that he'd found it so easy to lie to her for months about his extracurricular activities. How in the world was she going to be able to believe him now? Why would he all of a sudden start telling her the truth, especially when she'd caught him in so many lies? She wondered how he would feel if the shoe was on the other foot?
She also wondered what Xavier would do if he really knew where she had gone those three days when she'd left their home. What would he think if he found out Charlotte had been less than eight miles away on the other side of town, closed up in a house with her co-worker, Shawnâthe same co-worker Xavier didn't like because he thought the man was a little too friendly with her.
Deep down, she knew the answer. Xavier would freak out.