Page 77 of Such a Good Wife

“Or what?” he screams, dots of spit reaching all the way across the table, a rage I have seen in him before. In the parking lot that night.

“The rape kit they took from me the other night is stored in a crime lab for fifteen years, and your semen is just waiting to have your name attached to it.”

“What the actual fuck are you talking about?”

“I didn’t say who did this to me. I thought maybe you and I could make an arrangement so I don’t have to.” I watch him work out in his head that he used a condom and they don’t have a name, and for sure he never hit me in the face. There is a moment, just a second, where relief forms around his bulging eyes. The next thing he says is quiet, pointed.

“You’re a crazy, fucking bitch.”

“Yep.”

“Semen? I used—”

I stop him abruptly and tell him about using a syringe so it would be found inside me. His jaw drops so dramatically it’s almost cartoonish. He slinks into the chair again, frozen with utter shock and outrage.

“What?” he says, almost in a whisper. “I didn’t do anything to you. Why would you do this? That’s not proof, by the way, psycho. We had sex, that’s all that proves.”

I click on my carefully edited video and show him on my phone. It recorded fifty-four minutes of us from when he arrived with the wine to when we left, but I edited it down to a perfect forty-one seconds of him hitting my face and strangling me while I beg him to stop. The rest of the video doesn’t exist anymore.

“They’ll know you edited that,” he argues.

“Nope. There are safe apps that automatically start recording when you press a panic button. They come with key fobs, so I could have pressed it at any time to start the video. See where it starts, right when I move my hand from the nightstand to my face. It looks like I may have reached over right when the recording started.” It doesn’t matter that I didn’t do it this way. Just that it’s possible is good enough. The other pieces of evidence don’t really need explaining after that. He sees the photos of all my injuries, snapshots I took of my hospital band and the documents I signed in the hospital, the police report.

“Why would you...I didn’t do shit to you.”

“But you did to Lacy.”

“Lacy—wha? What?”

“By the way, I gave her a copy of all this, so if you’re thinking of doing anything crazy, you’ll be even more fucked,” I snap, using the insurance policy I quickly thought about when he walked in.

He looks so defeated and pathetic, I almost feel sorry for him. The way he shakes his head in slow disbelief and lowers his tone as he says, “Why would I do anything to you? Oh my God.”

“It’s all here. Every detail has been covered.”

“What do you want? Why? Because of Lacy? You act like I’m some abuser, some maniac. She hits me all the time, does she tell you that? She provokes a fight, I’m not out there looking for trouble. Jesus, Melanie. Fuck!”

But I don’t feel for him. He’s a bigger liar than I am. He doesn’t know that I not only saw it with my own eyes, I was also the one holding her hand in that hospital after he left her for dead, thinking his coveted position in the community could keep him safe.

“So that’s what you want? You want me out of Lacy’s life? You don’t think there were easier ways to go about that? Fine. That’s fine, I was already done with that cow anyway.”

“That’s part of it, but that’s not why we’re here.”

“Then fuckin’ tell me why we’re here!” He stands and walks to the opposite wall, punching his fist through the cheap drywall.

“There’s one more thing,” I say, and push the printouts of all his communication with Valerie toward him on the table. His eyes scan it, trying to make sense of these messages and why they’re in my possession.

“How did you get this? What the hell is going on?”

“I want you to clear me and my family from your Luke Ellison investigation.”

“You—” He starts to say something, but I stop him.

“Talking to the murdered man’s wife before his death doesn’t look good for you. That, along with all of this—” I swipe my hand across the papers. “You made plans to meet on the night of the murder just before they say it happened.”

“You think I...? You...” He stares at the messages with parted lips, then he sighs deeply.

“All this so your affair with Luke isn’t outed?” he asks, of course not having any idea that if they keep digging, they’ll find a lot more than an affair.

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