Page 35 of Such a Good Wife

“Did you know there was an all-female remake of this?” he asks me, tucking my feet back under his leg.

“Um, yeah, I think I saw a preview.” My eyes are glazed and my voice is flat. I can’t fall to pieces. I force a smile. “Can I have one of those?” I ask, pointing to his beer.

“’Course.” He hands me his and goes to the kitchen for another. I press the cool, sweating bottle to my neck and breathe deeply. Stay strong, I tell myself. Keep it together.

While everyone is engrossed in the movie, my mind reels. I’m devastated, of course, but I’m terrified for myself. I’m not exactly afraid of being a suspect; I’m afraid that something will link me to Luke that will out my relationship with him and destroy my family. The police won’t know I was there that day, or that I moved things, took his phone. There is absolutely no evidence. Besides, what motive would I have? I go over and over it in my mind, the play-by-play of my time in that house. I can’t think of anything I might have left. They would need to have evidence to arrest me in order to get fingerprints or DNA. It would be there, of course, but there is nothing tying me to the crime, so that can’t happen. It can’t.

Over the following days, I do my best to busy myself with the day-to-day. I embrace it, actually. It’s as if I survived a near-death experience, and each mundane moment now feels precious and invaluable. I spend time on Pinterest searching healthy dinner ideas, and I start to plan meals for the week, making soups in the Crock-Pot and freezing them, testing gluten-free bread recipes and frequenting the local farmers market. I pick four large pumpkins out of the giant boxes in front of the supermarket to carve with the kids. Ben is thrilled as we spread newspaper over the table and scoop out pumpkin guts and bake up the seeds. We put candles in our clumsily carved masterpieces and display them on the stairs in front of the house.

It feels almost normal, but in the afternoons when everyone’s gone, I watch the coverage on Luke, carefully. They just keep replaying the same summary. They don’t seem to have much else. I start to wonder if the only reason they think foul play was involved is because of my stupid phone call. Why the hell did I panic and say I heard a fight? What if it really was just a drunken accident? The dropped phone, a few things out of place—he could have gotten hammered and simply fallen. A single guy, no kids, nowhere to be every morning, why not get tanked just for the hell of it—just because you have good whiskey handy and finished a chapter you were working on. I breathe a slight sigh of relief, knowing that things seem to be at a standstill with whatever investigation they’re doing, and maybe it will prove to be nothing more than bad judgment on his part. I ache at the thought of this. No matter what happened, how it happened, he’s gone. I don’t want to let myself indulge in these thoughts, so I find a quick distraction. I turn off the news and call Lacy. I’ve canceled on her twice since this all happened. I should check in, see if she wants to grab a coffee.

When her voice mail picks up, I leave a message and apologize for the last couple of times I had to cancel, and ask if she wants to grab a drink or coffee after my writing group tonight.

I hang up and look at my phone. I haven’t wanted to face her since I found out about her and Luke. It infuriates me, but rationally, I know it’s not her fault. She has no idea. I’m a happily married woman. I’m the shitty one. She should be angry with me for messing up something that might have been just what she needed to move on from Joe, not the other way around. I have no right to harbor resentment. I wonder how she took the news about Luke. She must know; the whole town knows. I guess if she feels scorned by him, maybe she isn’t torn up over it.

I haven’t been able to name it—this feeling that everything is moving in slight slow motion. Maybe it’s because I am overtly conscious of every moment, I’m not rushing through a task or conversation to get to the next thing, as we all do most of the time. I’m letting myself experience each day, staying in the moment to savor it. Gratitude. That’s what it is. I feel fortunate to have this second chance, to not have lost everything that matters to me, and I’m not taking it for granted.

When I go back to the bookstore for the writing group that night I have nothing to share, I’m not writing anything, but I feel like I need to return to routine and Collin thinks this is something I’ve committed to and love, so I’m going to at least go through the motions right now. I don’t see the group gathered, so I buy a cup of hot chamomile tea at the café and sit on a bench in front of the building to wait for people to arrive. The temperature is dipping down into the sixties in the evening and it’s a welcome relief from the blistering summer heat. I close my eyes against the breeze and push away any rogue thoughts that try to creep in. After twenty minutes, nobody from the group is here, and I wonder if they relocated or something during my time away. I still have Mia’s text, so I message her, asking where everyone is. She calls me right back.

“Hey! Group is canceled again. Sorry nobody told you.”

“Oh, that’s okay. Canceled tonight, or for good?” I ask.

“Well, I don’t know. Jonathan is in the hospital, and frankly, I don’t know if anyone else wants the role of leader, organizer, all the crap that comes with that, so I guess we’ll see if he comes back, but for now we’re on a hiatus.”

“Hospital. Is he okay?”

“I think so. He’s not in the regular hospital, he’s in like a psych ward kinda thing. Steve said he had a nervous breakdown. I don’t even really know what that means exactly, but that’s all they told me.”

“Oh, that’s terrible. I hope he’s okay.”

“Yeah, me too. We’re all gonna see him, bring him a card and stuff when he’s out. Even though he’s a dick, I guess it’s the right thing to do.”

“Right, well, let me know. I’ll send something along.”

“Cool. Anyway, everyone was getting busy anyway with the holidays coming up and stuff. I’m sure we’ll start up again at some point. Maybe we can start our own, make it less shitty.”

“Okay, well, thanks,” I say. “Let me know.”

“Sure. I’ll keep ya posted,” Mia says, and we hang up. I’ve never heard of someone actually having a nervous breakdown in real life, and I wonder what happens to a person to cause such a thing. My phone vibrates in my hand. It’s a text from Lacy. Thank God. I was starting to get worried about her, wondering if she was safe. She says she just noticed my message and she’s at Rodney’s if I want to stop in. Ugh, I detest that place, but I’m already right here with canceled plans, so I tell her I’ll be there.

It smells as rancid as I remember it from last time, except there are fewer people on a weeknight. Lacy is in a booth in the back corner, flicking a penny in figure skater spins across the tabletop. As I approach her, she smacks the penny with a loud bang to stop it spinning, and the noise startles me.

“Hi there,” I say, trying to appear cheerful, normal. I haven’t seen her since she told me she was sleeping with Luke. The thought makes me want to go throw up.

“Hey.” She appears a little tipsy. It’s two-for-one night, as it turns out, and she has a couple of empty gin and tonics in front of her and two full ones. I see there are scratches on her face, but I don’t say anything. When I sit, she pushes one of the drinks across the table to me.

“How are you?” I ask.

“Did you know Luke Ellison is dead? It’s all over the news.” She doesn’t look up at me. There is a coaster made of flimsy cardboard that she absently cracks into four pieces and sticks to the condensation on the sides of her glass. Her voice has a whimpery tone.

“Yeah. That’s...horrible.”

Then I see that her left foot is sticking out from under the table because it has a brace on it. I look from her ankle to her face. It’s visibly scraped.

“What happened to you?” I can’t believe that she’d gone back to Joe Brooks after everything. And maybe it’s partly my fault because I took Luke away from her. They could have had a fling at least, that might have kept her away from Joe long enough to get past him and move on.

“Oh, nothin’. I fell at work.”

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