Page 15 of The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie
“White and gold,” I whispered.
“What color is the dress?”
I burst into hot tears, which streamed down my cheeks.
My husband’s face turned vivid scarlet. He looked as angry as I had ever seen him—as I had ever seenanyone. “Put on the dress,” he growled.
“I…” I wiped tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. “I’ll wear it some other time, okay?”
“If you don’t put on that dress,” he hissed at me, “I’ll have you locked away.”
“Locked away?” I stared at him in astonishment. “For what?”
“For hallucinating!” He waved his phone with the picture of the gold-and-white dress. “I could do it if I wanted. The director of the psychiatric ward is my father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former college roommate. He’ll do whatever I want him to do—trust me.”
I rose from the sofa, my hands clenched into fists. “You can’t do that to me. Youcan’t.”
“I can if you don’t do what I tell you!” Now his face was the deep purple of a ripe eggplant. “Put on the dressright now!”
I had never been so frightened in my entire life. I ran upstairs to the bedroom and locked the door behind me. He pounded on it, shouting at the top of his lungs. He tried to push the dress through the gap between the door and the floor, but it didn’t fit. At one point, I was certain he would break down the door, but he didn’t. Eventually, he calmed down.
But it was never the same after that. Grant became relentless. One morning, I opened my closet, and all my outfits had been replaced with blue-and-black dresses. When I would get out of the shower, a blue-and-black dress would be waiting on the bed for me to put on for the day. For my birthday, he gave me a cake with blue icing and the words “Happy Birthday, Alice” spelled out in black letters.
To the entire world, we seemed like the perfect couple. They had no idea what was going on behind closed doors. The rest of the world got bored of debating the color of that dress and moved on to other things, like that BBC guy whose kids burst in during his interview. But for us, the white-and-gold dress had taken over our lives.
Then Grant announced that he wanted to have a baby. When he presented me with a onesie with blue-and-black stripes, I decided right then and there that I could never bring a child into our marriage. So I took precautions to keep from getting pregnant.
It couldn’t go on like this forever, though. Grant was a ticking time bomb. One day, my neighbors would find me strangled in the bathroom with a blue-and-black silk scarf. Before that happened, I had to do something about it.
But Grant would never let me leave. That was one thing I was sure of. I was one of his possessions, and he would never give me up. No, there was only one way to escape my marriage, and that was if one of us was dead.
15
I had never killedanyone before.
Not to say that I hadn’t ever thought about it. We all think of killing someone. That old lady at the checkout line who is paying in pennies from her change purse. The really tall guy who sits in front of you in the movie theater. Basically, every screaming infant on a plane.
But it’s only a fantasy. You never do it.
I didn’t have a choice with Grant, though. He was a true monster in every sense of the word, and the only way I could escape was to end his life. Really, I would be doing the world a kindness.
Because I had never killed anyone before, I decided to hedge my bets. I mixed hemlock into the orange juice that he drank every morning. I ground up some deadly nightshade to add to the milk he poured on his cereal. I put a banana peel on the top step of our steep staircase. But in the end, it was the cut brake line that did him in.
Still, I was surprised by how easy it was. When the police officer told me to come down to the morgue, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that my evil husband was actually dead.Even when I stared down at his still body, lying on the slab, his white face rigid, I half expected him to come back to life, clutching a blue-and-black dress in his cold, dead hand.
But Grant didn’t come back to life. He was dead. And everyone believed that his car accident was just that—a tragic accident.
The first thing I did after he was gone was throw out all those blue-and-black dresses. I donated most of them to charity, but I saved one. One single dress to remind me of why I’d done what I did.
When I made arrangements for his funeral, I was barely able to believe my husband was gone. I was finally free of that monster. After years of torment, he would never be able to bother me again. I chose a coffin that was white-with-gold trim.
And then, of course, I discovered those two blue lines on the pregnancy test. I had successfully killed my husband, but he had managed to leave a piece of himself behind. I was only relieved that our child would be spared having that man as her father.
Grant is dead. He must be.
But if he is, who is the man who has been following me?
16
