Page 33 of Such a Good Wife

He heads off to the media room, and I’m so relieved I don’t have to put on a show anymore tonight. I don’t have the strength.

I imagine Luke with medics surrounding him. A coroner, his brother being called to the scene. What happened? Would he have killed himself? Why? That doesn’t make sense. He had plans of Italy, and...no. Jumping from the second floor. If his head hadn’t hit the concrete the way it did, he may have only broken a leg, if that. I know in my heart that’s not what it was. That leaves accident. Did he get drunk? Did he have some fit of rage or frustration in the house? A lovers’ quarrel with another lover, maybe?

In many ways I knew everything about him down to his upcoming dentist appointment and favorite childhood memory. In many ways I didn’t know him at all. Would anyone be out to hurt him? If he was sleeping with Lacy, am I a total idiot to believe there weren’t others? A famous romance writer could be fucking every housewife in town and one may have gotten possessive, jealous.

I think about DNA, if his house were to become a crime scene. Even if mine is all over the sheets, the glasses, on everything, I have never even had a speeding ticket. I would not be in any database for them to check against. I am in disbelief that a thought like this is even crossing my mind. Getting out of volunteering for the fall bake sale was my biggest focus before all of this started and now I’m wiping fingerprints from a potential crime scene.

I need to make it my full-time job to figure out what happened to him, so it’s never even suspected that I knew who he was, so it doesn’t come back to me. I wasn’t there. I never met him. They cannot find one reason to ask for a statement, or for DNA, or even find my name in their mouths.

I remember that I still have his novel that he signed for me. When I get out of the bath, I pull on a light robe and tiptoe downstairs. Collin is in the living room in front of the football game. He’s occupied on his phone, so I walk quietly into the front sitting room where I usually write and pull open the credenza where his book sits, no book jacket, just a naked, nondescript green cover, shoved in the back and covered by magazines.

From inside the basket full of sewing supplies, next to a La-Z-Boy, I pull out the pages I’ve worked so hard on writing—finally I had something I felt was worth writing about—but it describes every seedy detail of this affair. I thought that someday in the future, maybe years from now when this was long behind me, it could be a good novel. None of it true, I could say, just my imagination, of course. Just fiction. I would sell it as steamy romance. No one would ever know what it was based on. Now, fictionalized or not, it can’t exist anymore. I’m glad I wrote it on paper and left no trace of it in the computer.

I creep back across the wood floor and grab my gym bag from the mudroom. I cram the book and my manuscript into the bottom of the bag, underneath sneakers and a protruding yoga mat. Then I go upstairs and hide the bag in the back of our closet until tomorrow...when I can take it outside and burn the book and the manuscript to ash.

***

14

A COUPLE DAYS GO BY, and I catch Collin looking at me now and again, when I am obviously somewhere far away, zoning out; when I don’t know that I’m standing at the kitchen sink, staring through the window, my hands once drying dishes, now at my sides, a towel in one and mug hanging by the handle in the other, still. My mind replaying the moment I saw Luke’s lifeless body.

A text pings on my phone. It jolts me back into the present, and I stab a finger at the screen to read it. The writing group has been canceled this week. Mia has sent a group text. I sigh, annoyed at all the texts that will filter in from everyone else, and then I think about Jonathan. How uneasy he made everyone, how much he hated Luke. Why was group canceled all of a sudden? I feel a surge of something that I can’t name until I’m abruptly interrupted.

“Want some help with those?” Collin pretends not to notice my distance most of the time, but he also doesn’t want the kids to notice, I’m sure. He startles me as he takes the dish towel from my hand. He takes a clean dinner plate from the dishwasher and dries it.

“Oh. No, you don’t have to...”

But I see he’s already taken the mug from my hand and put it on the counter. “Thanks.”

“Are you feeling okay?” he asks, and I know he senses I’m not. I know he sees the bags under my eyes from crying every time I’m alone, but he’s kind. He’s also becoming concerned, I can tell.

“I’m just really tired. I’m just not sleeping well, sorry.”

“This Joe Brooks stuff is getting to you. Maybe you should just, like, do what you think is right even if it pisses off...” He pauses, forgetting her name.

“Lacy.”

“Yeah, I think it’s really unfair that you’re put in this position.”

“It’s not about pissing her off, it’s putting her in danger. And she has a little kid. If Joe is capable of what I saw him do...and that’s with people just feet away inside the bar. It was totally risky. He could have been caught...what would he go and do to her in private? He thinks he’s God, I guess. I can’t be the reason he flips.”

Collin puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in, kissing my head.

“Well, why don’t you go and get a little rest. We can order in tonight if you want.”

“Thanks.”

I take him up on his offer. I go up into our bedroom and lie across the neatly made bed. I watch the ceiling fan swirl above my head and force myself not to cry. I try not to think of Luke, the back of his skull concave against the pool deck. His arms were sprawled out on either side, his hands limp. I spent time studying his hands, kissing each finger on afternoons in bed together. I quickly try to think about something else so I stay in control, so I don’t sit at the dinner table with my children with a red nose and puffy eyes. A light rap on the door, and Rachel pokes her head in.

“Mom?” she whispers, probably instructed by Collin not to wake me. I sit up quickly, turning to her.

“Yeah, honey.”

“Dad said to see what you wanted to order for dinner.”

“What do you want, sweetie?” I ask, and she looks shocked. I can tell she doesn’t know if she can suggest junk food.

“Umm, can we get pizza?”

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