The Betrayed Wife

by Kevin O'Brien

  In reply, his mother murmured something that Steve couldn’t quite hear, but she sounded scared. Her voice was all shaky.

  Still clutching the bat, Steve opened the door and stepped out to the hallway. He saw his parents by the top of the stairs—his mother with a cardigan over her blue pajamas, his father in white boxer shorts. Steve slept in a T-shirt and long pajama bottoms, even when it was hot out. He was so pale and skinny, he felt uncomfortable sleeping shirtless. His father didn’t have any such problem.

  “Is everything okay?” Steve asked nervously.

  “Oh, Jesus,” his father muttered, looking exasperated. “It’s nothing. Stevie, go back to bed. You’ll wake Gabe and Hannah—”

  “It’s not nothing!” his mother whispered.

  His dad patted her on the shoulder. “Okay, okay. I’ll go down and check. Stay put. If I’m not back in five minutes . . .” He trailed off.

  “If you’re not back in five minutes, what?” she asked.

  “Nothing, I’ll be back in five minutes. God.”

  Steve joined them at the top of the stairs. “I’ll go down with you,” he offered.

  His dad sleepily kissed him on the forehead. “Stay here with Mom, keep her company. And try to be quiet, okay? No use waking up the whole house—at least, not until we know what’s what.”

  Steve offered him the bat. “Here, Dad, take this.”

  “You hang on to that. I’ll be okay.” With a sigh, his father started down the stairs.

  Watching him, Steve put an arm around his mother. “Should I get my phone in case we need to call the police?” he whispered.

  She nodded. “Good idea, honey.”

  Steve broke away and hurried back into his room, where he snatched his smartphone off the desk.

  When he stepped back out to the hallway, he didn’t see his mother—and his heart stopped for a moment. Then he noticed her halfway down the stairs, peering over the banister at his dad. Steve crept down the steps to join her. He clutched the phone in one hand and the bat in the other.

  He watched his dad check the front door. His dad stepped into the living room and looked out of the windows. Then he headed into the dining room, out of sight.

  Since reading up on so many serial killings, Steve had become squeamishly aware of just how easy it would be to break into their home. There were no fewer than four entrances. The front door was solid with some good locks on it. But the kitchen door and another door in the den, down the hall, had French-style windowpanes. All an intruder had to do was break one little pane of glass, reach inside, and unlock the door. There was a flimsy chain lock near the bottom of the door in the kitchen, but one good kick and that chain lock was history. Finally, there was a basement door off the laundry room—which, fortunately, seemed pretty sturdy. A concrete stairwell outside led down to it.

  Their house was a Craftsman, surrounded by tall hedges. West of them, the Curtis house was only about thirty feet away. Steve used to reassure himself that, if one of them screamed in the middle of the night, Mr. or Mrs. Curtis would probably hear and call the cops.

  But that house was empty and dark now.

  Bordering them on the other side was an alley, and across from that, another neighbor’s garage. Steve had a view of it from his bedroom window. In front of the house, across the street, was Roanoke Park—a square block of trees, shrubs, grass, and pathways. The small playground, made up of a swing set, jungle gym, and slide, was on the opposite end of the park, so Steve and his family were spared the sound of squealing, laughing children during the day. But the park could be pretty creepy after sunset. In one of the true-crime stories Steve had read, a family of four were robbed and killed in their Denver home. Their murderer had confessed that he used to watch them from the park across the street. He’d sit on a park bench, have his lunch or a book with him, and he’d think about how he was going to break into the house and kill them all.

  Steve didn’t like living in a house with a similar setup. He wondered if the man his mom had seen outside their garage had been scouting their place for a while. Was he just checking up on them tonight? Did he plan to come back some other night—when Steve’s dad was out of town?

  He listened to his dad’s footsteps. It sounded like he’d moved from the dining room to the den. Both rooms had a lot of valuable stuff a prowler might want. They had a ton of silver in the dining room breakfront, and on his dad’s desk in the den, there was a notebook computer. They’d just bought a TV, which sat on the shelf beside an expensive music system. Steve wondered if his father double-checked the lock on the door in the den. He must not have discovered anything suspicious, because soon Steve heard him in the kitchen at the back door. At least, Steve hoped it was his father at the door. The chain lock rattled.

  Biting his lip, he crept down to the bottom of the stairs and peeked into the kitchen. The backyard lights were on. His father had left the door open while he stepped out into the yard—barefoot, and in his underwear, no less. His dad obviously wasn’t scared, or shy. He was about as self-conscious in his boxer shorts as a boxer would be.

  “I wish he’d taken the bat,” Steve’s mother muttered, coming up behind him in the hallway. She rubbed his shoulder. “He doesn’t believe me, but I saw someone.”

  Steve glanced back at her for a moment. “Well, he’s outside checking right now,” he whispered. But maybe his mom was right. His dad seemed to be making this house and perimeter check just to appease her. That was probably why he hadn’t taken along the baseball bat. And why he’d gone out there in just his underwear. He must have been pretty damn sure he wouldn’t run into anybody.

  But Steve kept wondering, What if someone is really out there?

  He handed the phone to his mom. “Could you hold on to this?” He wanted to have both hands free in case he needed to use the bat.

  From where he stood in the front hall, Steve had a partial view out through the living room and dining room windows. If his dad was checking around the entire house, there was no sign of him yet.

  Steve stepped into the kitchen. He didn’t see his dad outside any of the kitchen windows, either.

  He couldn’t help noticing what was on the kitchen’s boomerang-patterned counter. It wasn’t a box of Ritz crackers. It was a half-full bottle of bourbon. His dad was right about his mom drinking. But she didn’t seem drunk—just scared.

  Steve looked at the open door again, and he wondered why his father was taking so long.

  It was deathly quiet. Any second now, he expected the silence to be shattered by a gunshot or a low, bloodcurdling scream. Or maybe his dad was already dead. The killer could have snuck up on him from behind and slit his throat. In one of the cases Steve had read about, a waitress had her throat slashed, and according to her killer, the only sound she’d made had been a sigh.

  With trepidation, Steve approached the door.

  “Honey, no,” whispered his mother, who had followed him into the kitchen. “Don’t you go out there, too.”

  He hesitated. He didn’t see his father anywhere in the backyard. Solar lights in the ground dimly illuminated his mother’s garden, a tiered plot of carefully arranged stones, plants, and flowers with a birdbath in the middle. It was a white marble slab that Steve’s sister, Hannah, claimed looked like a headstone in a cemetery. Steve had never thought so—not until now. Suddenly, everything looked a little sinister. It wasn’t a big yard. The two tall trees that broke up the carefully trimmed lawn had floodlights fixed on them. With the branches swaying in the breeze, shadows rippled across the landscape.

  “Dad?” Steve called out softly.

  He could feel the cool night air raising goose bumps on his bare arms. He was about to call to his dad again.

  But then he heard a tin-like clatter.

  Frozen in the doorway, Steve heard his mother gasp.

  “Dad?” he called out again, louder this time. His voice was shaky. “Dad, are you okay?”

  Silence—except for leaves rustling.

&
nbsp; Steve clutched the bat tighter. He felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder.

  He saw a dark figure in the shadows coming from around the garage. It took a moment for him to realize it was his dad approaching them.

  “Everything’s fine,” he announced, rubbing his hands together as if they were dirty. “A raccoon must’ve tipped over the trash can earlier. Left a hell of a mess.”

  Catching his breath, Steve lowered the bat. He stepped back and cleared the doorway for his dad.

  “It wasn’t a raccoon,” his mother insisted. “I heard the trash can tip over just seconds after I saw someone in the garage window.”

  Steve’s father wiped his bare feet on the mat. Then he closed and locked the door. He bent down to fix the chain lock near the bottom of the door. “Well, I looped around the entire house and no one’s out there—at least, not anymore.” Straightening up, he headed to the sink and started to wash his hands. “I think we’re okay, hon. But I still don’t get what you were doing in the garage.”

  “I—I thought I heard something,” she replied. “I stepped out there to check, and that’s when I saw him run past the window.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t feel safe. I think we should call the police. This guy could still be around.”

  His father dried off his hands with a paper towel. “Honey, let’s not, okay? Please? Would you feel better if I checked the garage?”

  She nodded anxiously. “The basement, too.”

  Steve followed his dad as he stepped from the kitchen into the garage. His dad switched on the overhead light. Steve noticed a skinny tree gently swaying outside the cracked window where his mom said she’d seen the man. His dad stepped back into the kitchen. Steve followed him and watched him lock the garage access door. Stopping by the desk in the office nook, his father reached over and nudged the computer mouse. The screen lit up. It showed some woman’s Facebook page. Steve didn’t know her.

  Frowning, his dad picked up the empty glass on the desk and carried it to the sink. Then he put the bottle of bourbon away in the cupboard.

  With Steve’s phone still clutched in her hand, his mom glanced at the floor.

  “I’ll go down to the basement with you, Dad,” Steve piped up.

  “Thanks,” his father muttered.

  He noticed his parents weren’t looking at each other. He wasn’t sure why his dad had checked what was on his mom’s computer screen. But it was obvious he objected to the drinking. Steve wasn’t dumb. He knew his mom drank sometimes late at night to help her fall asleep. But he didn’t think that necessarily made her an alcoholic. Then again, maybe it did. He wasn’t sure.

  At the door to the basement, he switched on the light. With his dad right behind him, Steve felt safe enough to lead the way down the carpeted stairs. His mom remained in the doorway at the top of the steps. “Be careful!” she called in an amplified whisper.

  Steve worried about her—working too hard, not sleeping enough. A while back, last year sometime, they’d all gone to a school play Hannah had appeared in. His parents had gotten dressed up for it like it was a very big deal. Steve recalled them all rushing around to get ready before they left for the high school. When the play was over and everyone piled into the car to go home, his mom caught a look at herself in the rearview mirror. She had on a little jacket that went with her dress, and she noticed a big rip in the shoulder. Some of the padding was even sticking out. His mom went nuts. “Am I invisible?” she asked everyone in the car. “Didn’t anybody even notice this? I’m so busy rushing around at the last minute, fetching things for everyone else, that I leave the house looking like a complete idiot! All I’m good for is cooking, cleaning, and doing the laundry. Otherwise, I’m the invisible woman! I can’t believe this.”

  At the time, no one had seemed to take her too seriously. It had just been their mom blowing off steam. Sitting next to Steve in the back seat, Hannah, still wearing her stage makeup, had barely glanced up from her phone. “Well, don’t yell at me. I didn’t rip it.”

  But maybe his dad had been paying attention that night. And maybe that explained what happened about a week later—at least, Steve remembered it being about a week later. His dad had had another business trip coming up, and he was supposed to be gone longer than usual. The night before he left, he stepped into Steve’s bedroom and talked to him about how he’d be the man of the house for the next several days. Steve remembered him saying, “Your mom gets a little fragile sometimes—I mean, emotionally. So I’m counting on you to look out for her, Stevie, cheer her up if she’s blue. Make her feel appreciated, you know?”

  That week while his dad was out of town, Steve had accompanied his mom to one of her dances at the retirement home where she volunteered. She was so good with the old folks, so patient and friendly. She ran the whole show like a combination master of ceremonies and disc jockey. Everyone there—the staff, the old people, the visitors—they all adored her. Steve felt like the son of a superstar. He was proud of her.

  A few nights later, he walked through the kitchen while his mom washed the dinner dishes, and he realized she was crying. She saw him and tried to pretend like everything was fine. He pretended not to have noticed. But he was left to wonder what she was crying about. Was she lonely for his dad, or lonely in general? Was she really emotionally fragile, like his dad had said? Or maybe she just hated washing dishes.

  After that night, Steve almost always washed the dinner dishes for her. He didn’t mind, really. He figured it was the least he could do to help his mom feel appreciated. Plus, it gave him an excuse to procrastinate on his homework.

  Now, as he walked through the basement with his father, Steve realized his dad was probably right, both tonight and that night months back. His mom was a bit fragile. And in all likelihood, she’d had too much to drink tonight and imagined she’d seen someone through the garage window.

  But God bless his dad, still going through the motions and giving the place the once-over. He started in the family room, which was carpeted, and had a big-screen TV, a sectional sofa, and a foosball table. Framed vintage travel posters covered the walls.

  Down a short corridor off the family room, his dad switched on the light and stuck his head inside the basement’s guest room. The twin beds were stacked with junk: piles of stuff that was supposed to have gone to Goodwill weeks ago and rolls of wrapping paper. It was the most ignored room in the house. Steve’s parents hadn’t had an actual guest sleep in there since his dad’s widowed mother stayed with them two years ago, and she was dead now.

  It was also the most coveted room. Steve, Hannah, and Gabe sometimes used the room when a friend spent the night. Hannah had recently been campaigning to make it her bedroom, but she was too lazy to make the move, which would require first cleaning up her pigsty of a bedroom. Meanwhile, Steve had also put in a bid for the room. His current bedroom was tiny, and so close to the master bedroom and the siblings’ bathroom that he felt like he didn’t have any privacy at all. He was always worried someone would barge in while he was in the middle of whacking off. Plus, the basement bathroom was right across the hall, so it would practically be all his.

  If his parents ever decided to let him have the room, he’d have to get accustomed to being alone down there at night—two floors away from where everyone else slept. Just down the hall from that coveted bedroom was the laundry room, which connected to a storage room, a furnace room, and his dad’s workroom. If there was a creepy section of their house, those rooms were it. They were the bowels of the place, probably unchanged since the house was built in the 1930s: cement floor, exposed pipes, and plaster peeling off the dingy walls.

  Now he and his dad checked those rooms, which, except for the laundry area, always seemed sort of dark and creepy—no matter what wattage light bulb they tried in the old ceiling fixtures.

  Steve watched his dad jiggle the knob on the laundry room door to make sure it was locked. “Think we should check outside?” he asked his father. “I mean,
if I was going to hide, that stairwell would be a pretty good place.”

  His dad’s shoulders slumped, and he gave him a look that seemed to say, Are you really going to make me do this? With a sigh, he unlocked the door.

  It suddenly occurred to Steve that, if they were in a movie right now, this was when the killer would pop out from the shadowy stairwell on the other side of the basement door, when everyone least expected it. Steve tightened his grip on the bat.

  The door was stuck, and his dad had to tug it open.

  For a horrible moment, Steve wondered if someone was holding onto the knob on the other side.

  But his father finally yanked the door open, and there was no one out there. A couple of dead leaves blew in. The dirty cement floor felt cold under Steve’s bare feet.

  “You and your mom . . .” his dad mumbled as he closed and locked the door.

  “Me and mom . . . what?”

  His father hesitated, smiled and quickly shook his head. “Nothing. C’mon, let’s go up and tell your mother the coast is clear.” He put his hand on Steve’s shoulder.

  Steve was pretty sure his dad had been about to say something along the lines of like mother, like son. Then he must have thought better of it. But he would have been right if he’d said it. Just as Steve’s mom couldn’t have slept until his dad had checked every corner of the house, Steve wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep, either. He wondered if his dad considered him “emotionally fragile,” too.

  His father switched off the lights in the basement family room, and they headed upstairs together.

  Steve’s mom was waiting in the kitchen, his phone still in her hand. “Well?”

  “All clear,” his dad said, turning off the basement light and closing the door behind him.

  “I still think we should call the police,” she muttered.

  His father sighed. “Honey, in less than four hours, we all need to be up. I don’t know about you, but I’m seriously beat.” He took a deep breath and turned to Steve. “Why don’t you hit the sheets, okay, Stevie? Thanks for helping out.”