Page 29 of My Wife

I couldn’t stay, though. I’m a horror buff, but that… it’sreal. It’s not like the movies. You can smell the blood, the sickening sweetness of death, the shit he expelled when he died… the room was rancid. Rank. There was so much blood. I compare it to the crime scene photos I saw of Clay’s car.

That was a lot.

This ismore.

Chase and Tommy stood over Tyler as I left, hushed murmurs passing between them about what we should do next. I’m assuming part of their decision was leaving the body alone, just like we did with Vee, because they come outside almost immediately, locking the door behind him.

If Summer notices, she doesn’t say anything. She just gulps a couple of deep breaths, trying to get herself under control. She has an audience now, and if that’s unkind after I saw what happened to Tyler, the way she turns her tears off as quickly as she does makes me not regret my thought.

At least, unlike Summer, I keep it to myself.

Chase waits for her to finish composing herself. What happens next is nothing less than a cross examination, and if I like Summer a little more, I’d feel bad for the way that Chase is going all lawyer on her so soon.

Not that I blame him. Another one of us is dead, and while it was pure luck that Tyler stumbled upon Vee’s body after she fell, why the hell did it take until the afternoon for her to realize that her husband was lying dead in his bed.

None of us are pros, though Chase likes to think he is. We can’t say for sure when Tyler died, but since he’s already in rigor mortis and the spilt blood itself has started to oxidize, he’s been dead for a while.

So why did Summer only just find him?

“That’s easy. Because I didn’t sleep with him last night. I only just went back to our cabin now to change and see what he was up to because I was bored. Okay?”

“If you weren’t with Tyler, where did you sleep?” asks Chase.

“I slept in the vacant one next to yours,” she says, tilting her chin up in defiance. “Tyler was tossing and turning ‘cause of everything that happened. I just wanted to sleep and since Aaron’s not here, I took his bed.”

She’s lying. To be fair, if Summer’s not being a total bitch to me, most of the time I expect whatever she says to be a lie. Like when she boasts about how Tyler loves her, or that she’s loyal when even Vee let slip that Summer gets some on the side whenever she’s bored, or that we’re the bestest of best childhood friends when she’d happily throw me to the wolves if given the chance.

This is different, though. She’s lying about last night. Not where she slept, because I’m pretty sure Summer’s not the type of chick to make her bed up in the morning. If she was in Aaron’s assigned cabin, there will be evidence of that. But why was she there? Because after the way she came tomycabin the night before, so desperate to go to bed with Tyler she needed Tommy to help find him, I can’t imagine she chose to sleep alone.

No. Something’s off.

Something’s not right.

I remember her reaction when I suggested she might’ve been involved in Vee’s accident. I’d been fucking with her because, let’s face it, she’s Summer fucking Kaye, but I didn’t honestly believe she had anything to do with the fall.

But now that Tyler’s beenmurdered…

“Convenient alibi,” I murmur, my voice soft though everyone gathered can definitely hear me. “You leave your husband alone just in time for him to be stabbed to death.”

Summer lifts her hand as if she’s going to slap me. I don’t flinch. I’m not afraid of her, and she sees something in my face that has her thinking better of following through with her strike.

Shaking her hair out, her voice trembling in a combination of fury and grief, she says, “He was sleeping fitfully when I left. I even complained to Tommy and Chase when I saw them talking on the porch. And the snoring… the snoring…” Summer’s voice trails off, as if realizing that despite her bitching, she’ll never hear Tyler snore again. Her voice breaks, then drops. “You could hear it through the window. He was alive when I swapped cabins.”

“That’s right,” Tommy says, confirming Summer’s story. Through the sudden sheen of tears in her eyes, she gives him a thankful—and almost besotted—look. “After I talked to Chase, I poked my head in on Tyler when I heard the snoring stop. I thought he was awake, but he was tossing and turning, just like Sum said. She didn’t do it.”

“See? I told you?—”

Madison gasps, cutting Summer off. “So you were the last one to see Tyler alive.”

“What? Tommy?” Forgetting my own suspicions from last night—because, for my sanity, Ihaveto—I scoff. “Are you saying thatTommykilled Tyler?”

Madison doesn’t back down, though she does take a sidestep closer to Chase. Not Summer, I notice.Chase. Like he’s going to protect her fromme? Please. “I’m just saying that Tommy was the last one who saw Tyler alive. Isn’t that how it works?” She glances up at Chase. “You’re a lawyer. Don’t the cops always suspect whoever saw the victim last? Like with Cyn and her mom?”

It takes everything I have not to react to Madison’s comment. Of course. Of fucking course. One of our own has been murdered—maybe eventwo—and this dumb bitch wants to bring up my mom again.

Tommy lays his hand on my arm. “I didn’t kill Tyler,” he says.

“You could’ve,” insisted Madison, all while Summer holds her tongue. It’s so unlike her, I have to wonder if she has her own suspicions—and Madison is the one to voice them. “We all know you have that knife.”

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