Page 74 of The Teacher
I don’t entirely understand what he means by that. At least not until his hands wrap around my neck.
“You’re not telling anyone about this, Eve,” he growls. “I won’t let you.”
His grip tightens around my neck, and I can’t get a breath in anymore. It feels like my eyes are bulging out of their sockets, and black spots dance in my vision. I desperately claw at his hands, but Nate is much stronger than I am, especially since I just got knocked unconscious.
The next five seconds seem to last an eternity as I realize that my husband has every intention of choking the life out of me. He will do anything to keep me from ruining his reputation—even this.
My vision slowly fades to black. I am dying. This man is killing me, right here and right now. I can’t even take a last dying breath because he is crushing my windpipe. And as I die, I wonder who will care that I’m gone. Not my parents, who barely speak to me anymore except on holidays. Jay might care, although on some level, he’ll also be relieved.
And certainly not my husband, who is the one squeezing the life out of me and is the last face I see before I die.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
ADDIE
I choosea navy-blue sheet to wrap the woman I killed in.
They mostly have white and cream-colored sheets, and I have to search to find a darker color. There’s blood all over her hair, and it will go right through the white sheets. Navy blue is a better bet.
As I walk down the steps with the navy-blue sheet draped over my arm, I get a flash of vertigo. I can’t believe all this is happening. I can’t believe Mrs. Bennett is dead in the kitchen and that it’s all my fault. Every time I think of it, my entire body starts to shake.
Thank God Nathaniel is levelheaded enough to know what to do. Obviously he’s right that calling the police won’t go well for me.
I step into the kitchen, expecting to find everything just as I left it. Except instead of Mrs. Bennett lying on the floor with Nathaniel standing over her, now he is crouched next to her. And his shoulders are shaking.
“Nathaniel?” I say. “Are you okay?”
For a second, it’s like he doesn’t even hear me. Then he turns around, and I notice his eyes are slightly damp. Was he crying? He looks more rattled than he did when I left the room, but I guess that makes sense. It probably just hit him that his wife is dead. And even after everything she did, he must have cared for her on some level.
After what feels like an endless silence, he gets back to his feet. “I’m okay. Let’s do this.”
Great.
The next step is wrapping Mrs. Bennett in the sheet. It means I have to get close to her dead body, which makes me almost want to throw up. But I have to do this. If I don’t, I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life. And it’s not like if I come clean, it would bring her back to life.
So I take a giant breath and join Nathaniel next to his wife’s body. But the weird thing is she seems to be lying in a slightly different place than she was before. I thought she was closer to the kitchen island.
“Did you move her?” I ask.
He nods. “I thought it would be easier to wrap her over here.”
He’s thought of everything.
I crouch next to Mrs. Bennett, my heart pounding. Her features are slack, and her lips are tinged with blue. There’s blood caked in her brown hair, smeared on the kitchen floor. And I notice one other thing:
Dark red marks on her neck.
I stare at the marks for a moment. I got up close and personal with Mrs. Bennett when I was checking to see if she was alive, and I’m almost certain those marks weren’t there before. I would have for sure noticed them.
“What’s that on her neck?” I blurt out.
Nathaniel’s eyes drop as he studies the red marks. He frowns. “Christ, who knows?”
“They weren’t there before, were they?”
He snatches the sheets out of my hands and starts unfolding them. “Yes, they were.”
Were they? I chew on my lower lip, unable to tear my eyes away from those angry red marks. They almost look like they’re in the shape of…fingers.
