The padlock snapped shut with a hollow, metallic click that echoed through the small cedar room like a gunshot.
Through the thick, thermal-pane glass door, I saw my mother-in-law, Diane Carver, adjusting her dark designer sunglasses. Her manicured hands lingered on the brass padlock wrapped tightly through the heavy steel handles. Beside her, my father-in-law, Russell, stood holding the handle of his sleek black rolling suitcase, casually checking his gold Rolex.
I slammed both of my palms against the glass. The vibration shot pain through my forearms, but I didn’t care. Sweat was already beading on my forehead, stinging my eyes, mingling with hot, furious tears.
“Diane! Open the door!” My voice sounded muffled, deadened by the heavy insulated cedar walls. “Russell, unlock this door right now!”
Diane didn’t flinch. Instead, she smoothed down the fabric of her emerald green floral dress—an outfit that sickeningly matched the one I was wearing, bought with the money she always claimed didn’t belong to me. A thin, venomous smile crept across her freshly painted lips.
“Don’t be dramatic, Maren,” she said, her voice faint but crystal clear through the gap in the seals. “You always make everything about yourself.”
I pressed my face against the transparent panel, my pregnant belly pushing firmly against the glass. At thirty-four weeks, my daughter was fully formed, kicking restlessly beneath my ribs as if she could already feel the sudden, terrifying spike in my adrenaline.
“I am eight months pregnant, Diane! Are you out of your mind?” I rattled the interior handle with all my strength. The door rattled against the steel chain, but the lock held firm. “Let me out! Russell, tell her to open the damn door!”
Russell didn’t even look at my eyes. His gaze dropped to my swollen stomach, cold and entirely devoid of human warmth. He shrugged his broad shoulders underneath his tropical vacation shirt.
“We’re going to miss our flight,” he muttered, glancing toward the foyer of my own home. “Elliot said she needed time to think. She’s got plenty of it now.”
A cold, icy spike drove straight through my chest, freezing the breath in my throat. My hands slowly slipped down the glass.
“Elliot?” My voice cracked, barely above a whisper. “Elliot knows about this?”
For months, my marriage had been fraying, unspooling like cheap thread. There had been whispered phone calls in the middle of the night, mysterious bank transfers, missing documents, and sudden bursts of cold detachment from the man who had promised to love me until death. But even in my darkest paranoia, I had never imagined this. Elliot was the father of the child living inside me. He had kissed my bare stomach that very morning before leaving for what he claimed was an emergency business meeting in Boston. He had smiled, looked into my eyes, and whispered that everything was going to be fine.
Diane’s eyes lit up behind her tinted lenses. She seemed to relish the precise moment my heart broke. Reaching into her beige luxury handbag, she pulled out her smartphone and held it up against the glass so I could see the screen.
An incoming call was connected. The name displayed across the screen was Elliot.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Diane crooned through the glass, her tone dripping with mock pity. “Whose idea do you think it was?”
She tapped the speakerphone button.
The sound of my husband’s voice filled the corridor just beyond the glass. It wasn’t distorted; it wasn’t panicked. It was calm, measured, and ruthlessly practical.
“Mom, stop arguing with her,” Elliot said, his voice flat, completely stripped of any affection. “Just make sure she can’t get out before you leave for the airport.”
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The air inside the sauna suddenly felt thin, impossible to draw into my lungs.
“Elliot!” I screamed, hurling my shoulder against the reinforced door. Pain exploded in my collarbone, but I didn’t stop. “Elliot, listen to me! I’m in the sauna! They chained the door! I’m carrying your daughter! What is wrong with you?!”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. For one agonizing second, I prayed for sanity. I prayed he would realize his parents had taken some petty, vindictive game too far. I prayed he would tell them to unlock the door.
Instead, his reply came without a shred of hesitation.
“Then maybe you should’ve thought about that before humiliating my parents, Maren.”
Diane let out a sharp, gloating laugh. Russell shifted the weight of his suitcase, nodding in silent agreement with his son.
“Five days should teach her who this family actually belongs to,” Elliot added coldly. “I’ll deal with her when I get back from the regional conference. Don’t miss your flight to Sonoma.”
The call clicked off.
