Page 31 of Such a Good Wife

“How’s Rachel? Actually I should ask, on a scale of one to ten, how much does she hate us for calling Katie’s dad—or rather, probably just me?”

“She doesn’t hate you. Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

Later, under the fluffy down comforter, I roll over to Collin, who is fast asleep, and put my arms around his broad shoulders. I hold on so tight and bury my face in his back. I’m so, so sorry. I kiss the back of his head and pray that I can make this right.

The next morning I message Luke and tell him I’ll stop by that night. I won’t hire care for Claire again even though I want to do it right now, get it over with. I should have never done that. It was dangerous. I try to make it up to her. I bring her lunch and sit next to her while she eats a tough knot of Salisbury steak and some applesauce, and we watch reruns of Golden Girls, another of her favorites. I quietly vow to myself to become a better cook. I’m making a mental list of penance.

That night, I say that I need to meet Lacy for an hour, that she’s going through something. I cannot let myself think of anything but what I need to do. I can’t let myself cave, change my mind, weaken when his face crumples. I’ll bring the burner phone to give back to him. No more contact. I will end this for good. He’ll move on. I have to think about Collin and my children, I can’t care about his feelings. I say this out loud to myself as I drive. Tears blur my vision.

“Goddamn it!” I scream, punching the steering wheel with my fist as I make the familiar drive to my parking spot, blocks away from his hidden house.

When I reach his property, I wipe my tears, but they continue to flood my eyes and fall. I take a minute so I’m composed. I rehearsed what I’ll say. It will be short and to the point, so I can turn around and leave without him doing anything to change my mind. I walk up the driveway. I take a deep breath. I will say goodbye. This is goodbye.

***

12

THE DOOR IS OPEN when I arrive. I don’t think it’s strange. I think maybe he left it that way to let in the breezy night air. Perhaps he was enjoying a glass of wine on the porch and had run in for a refill. I didn’t know what it would mean that the door was ajar, and I shouldn’t have shut it. I shouldn’t have touched anything.

I call his name, setting my purse on the counter and cocking my head to listen for maybe a shower running or footsteps upstairs. No answer. No sounds. That’s when I notice his phone on the floor of the kitchen. The glass screen is smashed, but it works. That gives me pause. Why would he leave it there like that if he dropped it? When I look through into the living room, I see the couch cushions tossed on the ground. It’s so quiet. What the hell is going on?

I call his name again; my heart starts to speed up as I yell for him and throw doors open to find him. Was there a robbery? I chart the stairs and start to panic a bit. He should be home. The television in the upstairs family room is on, but no one is watching it. When I turn it off, the silence rings in my ears. I see the French doors to the balcony off of the bedroom, which overlooks the pool, are open. When I walk out onto the balcony, I feel a tremor of unease even before I see it.

The backyard is canopied with Spanish moss dripping from the trees and hums with the sound of cicadas, invisible in the branches. The humidity is palpable in the thick night air. I think of calling him, but remember I just saw his phone downstairs. All of a sudden, I wish, desperately, that I could take back every decision I’ve made over the last couple months that landed me here, witnessing what I can never unsee.

He is there. I see him in the shadowy blue light the swimming pool casts across the patio. He is lying on the concrete slab next to the pool with ribbons of blood making a river from the back of his head down to the pool-deck drain.

I rush down the stairs and kneel next to him. His face has an unmistakable pallor. I can tell from the eerie, lifeless stare and gloss over his eyes that he’s dead. I touch the back of my hand to his neck. He’s cold.

I don’t scream. I immediately understand that no one can ever know that I was here. I want to wail over his body, but the utter shock is helping me through the next few minutes without breaking down and being heard. From the pool deck, I look up to his bedroom balcony. Did he fall? Jump? I can’t touch him again. I need to get out. I need to get out of here.

I’m frozen where I stand, wondering if there’s evidence of me here. I go into his office and rifle through his desk drawer. Did he ever write down my name or number? Did I leave anything behind in past visits—clothes, an earring? I don’t see anything, but I’m trembling, not thinking straight. I look in the bedroom, in the bedside table drawers, in the bathroom. I was careful. Then I spot a condom in the small trash can by the bed. Shit, maybe it’s impossible to really be careful anymore. I’m letting myself spin out of control. I take a deep breath, tears streaming down my face as I try to lull the building panic. I take a tissue and pick up the soiled condom like I’m collecting the remains of a smashed insect. I shove it in my pocket. I run, shakily, down the wooden staircase and head for the side door I came in.

His phone! He only called me on the burner number, but I can’t take any chances. I grab his phone and put it in my bag, and then I do another thing I shouldn’t. I rub my prints off the door handle and shut it. I am tampering with the scene of an accident, a suicide or—and I can’t fully let my mind believe this—potentially a homicide. I run back to my car. I didn’t even stay with him. I’m a monster.

I take the back roads down to the bay. I’m driving too fast over railroad tracks and dirt roads with the windows down, trying to outrun my pain. When I finally reach a secluded area of the bay, I sit in my car and make the call. I have to, I can’t leave him lying there all alone. I use the burner phone so it’s untraceable and call 911. I’ve never called before, I’m scared.

“911. What’s your emergency?” the voice asks.

“Uh, I don’t—I heard a noise—It just, I think someone should...do a welfare check.” I mask my voice using an accent—a thick drawl.

“What’s the address of the emergency, ma’am?”

“It’s 806 Holland Lane.”

“Okay, hon. Did you see anyone, is anyone hurt? What sort of noise exactly?” the operator asks, and I stumble over my words. I say the first thing that comes to mind. I wasn’t prepared for any of this. It has to be something that would get them out there, that’s all I’m thinking in the moment. Poor, sweet Luke, alone, hurt. Not hurt. Dead.

“I don’t know, just like a fight maybe. A scream, I think, or something.”

“And what’s your name, ma’am, are you there now, you a neighbor?”

My name? I panic and hang up without another word.

The beep of my car door opening echoes into the nothingness around me. I walk down to an abandoned dock and grip the weathered rail to control a surge of nausea. I take his shattered phone out of my bag and hold it together with the burner phone. The water is glassy and still, but just beyond the horizon, it holds away four million miles of a ferocious, consuming sea. I throw them both into its depths. For a moment, the moonlight allows me to watch them feather their way down until they’re gone beneath the dark water.

I want to scream until I’m hoarse with his name stuck in my throat, but I cannot spend another moment here. I need to appear normal and calm when I go home. I need to make up a lie about Lacy and some terrible thing she confided in me to explain my red face and swollen eyes. There is no way to hide that at this point.

The police should be there by now. An ambulance will follow. The media, probably. No one dies under strange circumstances in this town. Heart disease and the occasional car wreck are all that happens around here. Will they show his body, the way he looked like he was sleeping—if only there weren’t so much blood. As I drive home, I have bouts of light-headedness that make me feel like I’m not really there, like standing up too fast and seeing black for a moment. This can’t be happening. I don’t even know where to direct my manic thoughts to try to calm myself down because I don’t know what happened. My mind is trying to create any scenario to hold on to, to try to make sense of this. I feel a fist of pain in my chest. I want to go home and hold my kids and kiss my husband and pretend that none of this ever happened, and at the same time, I don’t know how I can go home. I feel the weight of my sin pressing down on me, and I feel I might collapse under it. There was a flash, a brief second where I thought about slipping quietly off the end of the dock and into the glistening water, all the way under until only the slice of moon, thin as a fingernail clipping above me, and the tree shadows that it brushed across that glossy surface were left.

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