by Mary Kubica
“I liked Alice a lot,” he says. “She was a lovely lady.”
“Indeed she was,” Will says, and again Officer Berg mumbles, “Such a shame,” before he says a final goodbye and goes.
Once he’s gone, Will heads quietly to the kitchen to start dinner. I let him go, watching out the narrow pane of glass alongside the door as Officer Berg pulls his Crown Vic from our drive. He heads uphill, about to join his cohort at the Baineses’ home, or so I think.
But then he doesn’t go to the Baineses’ home. Instead he pulls his car to the end of the drive across the street from theirs, at the home of the Nilssons. Officer Berg steps out. He leaves the car running, red taillights bright against the darkness of night. I watch as Berg places something inside a mailbox and closes the door. He returns to his car, disappearing over the crest of the hill.
CAMILLE
I disappeared that night after Will and Sadie met. I was full of anger, of self-loathing.
But I couldn’t stay away from Will forever. I thought about him all the time. He was there every time I so much as blinked.
Eventually, I sought him out. A little internet surfing told me where he lived, where he worked. I looked for him. I found what I was looking for. Though by then he was older, grayer, with kids, while in all those years, I hadn’t changed much. My gene pool was apparently a good one. Age couldn’t touch me. My hair was still the color of rust, my eyes an electric blue. My skin had yet to betray me.
I put on a dress, a black off-the-shoulder dress. I put on makeup, perfume. I put on jewelry. I did my hair.
I followed him for days, showed up where he least expected to see me.
Remember me? I asked, cornering him in a deli. I stood too close. I grasped him by the elbow. I called him by name. Because there’s nothing that excites us more than the sound of our own name. It’s the sweetest sound in the world to us. Corner of Madison and Wabash. Fifteen years ago. You saved my life, Will.
It didn’t take but a moment for him to remember. His face lit up.
Time had taken its toll on him. The strain of marriage, of parenting, of a job, a mortgage. This Will was a burned-out version of the Will I met.
It was nothing I couldn’t fix.
He just needed to forget for a while that he had a wife and kids.
I could help him with that.
I gave him a wide smile. I took him by the hand.
If it wasn’t for you, I said, leaning in to whisper the words in his ear, I’d be dead.
There was a spark in his eyes. His cheeks flushed. His eyes swept me up and down, landing near my lips.
He smiled, said, How could I ever forget?
He lightened up; he laughed. What are you doing here?
I tossed my hair over a shoulder, said, I was outside, just passing by. I thought I saw you through the window.
He touched the ends of my hair, said it looked nice.
And that dress, he said, followed it up with a long, low whistle.
He wasn’t looking at my lips anymore. Now he was looking at my thighs.
I knew where I wanted this conversation to go. As I often did, I got my way. It wasn’t instantaneous, no. It took some power of persuasion, which comes naturally to me. Rule number one: reciprocity. I do something for you, you do something for me in return.
I wiped the mustard from his lip. I saw that his drink was empty. I reached for the cup, refilled it at the soda fountain.
You didn’t have to do that, he said as I sat back down, slid his Pepsi across the table, made certain our hands touched as I did. I could have gotten it myself.
I smiled and said, I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to, Will.
And just like that, he owed me something.
There’s also likability. I can be extremely likable when I want to be. I know just what to say, what to do, how to be charming. The trick is to ask open-ended questions, to get people to talk about themselves. It makes them feel like the most interesting person in the world.
There’s also the importance of touch. Compliance is so much easier to achieve with a single touch to the arm, the shoulder, the thigh.
Add that to the fact that his and Sadie’s marriage read more like a guidebook on abstinence, from what I’d seen. Will needed something only I could give to him.
He didn’t say yes at first. He grinned sheepishly instead, turning red. He said he had a meeting, somewhere else he needed to be.
I can’t, he said. But I convinced him he could. Because not fifteen minutes later, we were slipping down an adjacent alleyway. There in that alley, he leaned me against a building. He eased his hand under the hem of the dress, pressed his mouth to mine.
Not here, I said, thinking only of him. I’d be fine doing that there. But he had a marriage, a reputation. I had neither. Let’s go somewhere, I said into his ear.
There was a hotel he knew, half a block away. Not the Ritz, but it would do. We raced up the stairs, into the room.
There, he threw me on the bed, had his way with me. When we were done, we lay in bed, breathing heavy, trying to catch our breath.
Will was the first to speak. That was just... He was tongue-tied when we were through, but radiant, beaming.
He tried again. That was amazing. You, he said, kneeling over me, hands on either side of my head, eyes on mine, are amazing.
I winked, said, You’re not so bad yourself.
He stared at me awhile. I’d never been looked at like that by a man, like he couldn’t get enough of me. He said that he needed this, more than I’d ever know. An escape from reality. My timing, he said, was impeccable. He’d been having a shitty day, a shitty week.
This was perfect.
You, he said, drinking me in with his eyes, are perfect.
He listed for me the reasons why. My heart swelled as he did, though it was all skin-deep: my hair, my smile, my eyes.
And then, like that, I was kissing him again.
He pushed himself from bed when he was through. I lay there, watched as he slipped back into a dress shirt and jeans. You’re leaving so soon? I asked.
He stood there at the end of the bed, watching me.
He was apologetic. I have a meeting. I’m going to be late as it is. You stay as long as you’d like, he said. Take a nap, get some rest, as if that was some consolation prize. Sleeping alone in a cheap hotel.
He leaned over me before he left. He kissed my forehead, stroked my hair. He gazed into my eyes, said, I’ll see you soon. It wasn’t a question. It was a promise.
I smiled, said, Of course you will. You’re stuck with me, Will. I won’t ever let you go, and he smiled and said that was exactly what he wanted to hear.
I tried not to be jealous as he left. I wasn’t the jealous type. Not until I met Will, and then I was, though I never felt guilty for what happened between Will and me. He was mine. Sadie took him from me. I didn’t owe her a thing.
If anything, she owed me.
SADIE
Two times I circle the house. I make sure all the doors and windows are locked. I do it once, and then, because I can’t be sure I got them all, I do it again. I pull the blinds, the curtains closed, wondering if it would be prudent to have a security system installed in the home.
This evening, as promised, Will drove Imogen to the public safety building to speak with Officer Berg. I hoped Will would come home with news about the murder—something to settle me—but there was nothing to report. The police weren’t any closer to solving the crime. I’ve seen statistics on murders. Something like one-third or more of murders become cold case files, leaving police departments mired in unsolved crimes. It’s an epidemic.
The number of murderers walking among us every day is frightening.
They can be anywhere and we’d never know.
According to Will, Imogen had nothing to offer Officer Berg
about last night. She was asleep, as I knew she’d been. When asked if she’d seen anything out of the ordinary over the last few weeks, she turned stiff and gray and said, “My mom hanging from the end of a fucking noose.” Officer Berg had no more questions for her after that.
As I contemplate a third go-round of the windows and doors, Will calls to me from the top of the stairs, asks if I’m coming to bed anytime soon. I tell him yes, I’m coming, as I give the front door a final tug. I leave on a living room lamp to give the pretense we’re awake.
I climb the stairs and settle into bed beside Will. But I can’t sleep. All night, I find myself lying in bed, thinking about what Officer Berg said, how the little Baines girl was the one to find Morgan dead. I wonder how well Tate knows this little girl. Tate and she are in class together, but that doesn’t mean they’re friends.
I find that I’m unable to shake from my mind the image of the six-year-old girl standing over her mother’s lifeless body. I wonder if she was scared. If she screamed. If the killer lurked nearby, getting off on the sound of her scream. I wonder how long she waited for the ambulance to arrive, and if, in that time, she feared for her own life. I think of her, alone, finding her mother dead in the same way that Imogen found her own mother dead. Not the same, no. Suicide and murder are two very different things. But still, it’s unfathomable for me to think what these girls have seen in their short lives.
Beside me, Will sleeps like a rock. But not me. Because as I lie there unsleeping I start to wonder if the killer is still on the island with us, or if he’s gone by now.
I slip from bed at the thought of it, my heart gaining speed. I have to be sure the kids are okay. The dogs, on their own beds in the corner of the room, take note and follow along. I tell them to hush as Will rolls over in bed, pulling the sheet with him.
On the wooden floors, my bare feet are cold. But it’s too dark to feel around for slippers. I leave them behind. I step out of the bedroom, moving down the narrow hall.
I go to Tate’s room first. There, in the doorway, I pause. Tate sleeps with the bedroom door open, a night-light plugged in to keep monsters at bay. His small body is set in the middle of the bed, a stuffed Chihuahua held tightly between his arms. Peacefully he sleeps, his own dreams uninterrupted by thoughts of murder and death, unlike mine. I wonder what he dreams of. Maybe puppy dogs and ice cream.
I wonder what Tate knows of death. I wonder what I knew of death when I was seven years old, if I knew much of anything.
I move on to Otto’s room. There’s a roof outside Otto’s window, a single-story slate roof that hangs over the front porch. A series of climbable columns hold it upright. Getting in or out wouldn’t be such a difficult task in the middle of the night.
My feet instinctively pick up pace as I cross the hall, telling myself Otto is safe, that certainly an intruder wouldn’t climb to the second floor to get in. But in that moment, I can’t be so sure. I turn the handle and press the door silently open, terrified of what I’ll find on the other side. The window open, the bed empty. But it’s not the case. Otto is here. Otto is fine.
I stand in the doorway, watching for a while. I take a step closer for a better look, holding my breath so I don’t wake him. He looks peaceful, though his blanket has been kicked to the end of the bed and his pillow tossed to the floor. His head lies flat on the mattress. I reach for the blanket and draw it over him, remembering when he was young and would ask me to sleep with him. When I did, he’d toss a heavy arm across my neck and hold me that way, not letting go the entire night. He’s grown up too fast. I wish for it back.
I go to Imogen’s room next. I set my hand on the handle and sluggishly turn, careful not to make any noise. But the handle doesn’t turn. The door is locked from the inside. I can’t check on her.
I turn away from the door and inch down the stairs. The dogs follow on my heels, but I move far too slowly for their liking. At some point, they bypass me and dash down the rest of the steps, cutting through the foyer for the back door. Their nails click-clack on the wooden floors like typewriter keys.
I pause before the front door and glance out the sidelight window. From this angle, I catch a glimpse of the Baineses’ house. There’s activity going on even at this late hour. Light floods the inside of it, a handful of people milling about inside. Police on a quest. I wonder what they’ll find.
The dogs whine at me from the kitchen, stealing my attention away from the window. They want to go outside. I follow them, opening the sliding glass door, and they go rushing out. They make a beeline for the corner of the yard, where they’ve recently begun digging divots in the grass. The incessant digging has become their latest compulsion and also my pet peeve. I clap my hands together to get them to stop.
I brew myself a cup of tea and sit down at the kitchen table. I look around for things to do. There’s no point in going back to bed because I know I won’t sleep. There’s nothing worse than lying in bed, restless, worrying about things I can’t do anything about.
On the edge of the table sits a book Will has been reading, a true crime novel with a bookmark thrust in the center of it.
I take the book into the living room, turn on a lamp and settle myself on Alice’s marigold sofa to read. I spread an afghan over my lap. I open the book. By accident Will’s bookmark comes tumbling out, falling to the floor beside my feet.
“Shit,” I say, reaching down for the bookmark, feeling guilty that I’ve lost Will’s page.
But the guilt only lasts so long before it’s replaced with something else. Jealousy? Anger? Empathy? Or maybe surprise. Because the bookmark isn’t the only thing that’s fallen out of the pages of the book. Because there’s also a photo of Erin, Will’s first fiancée, the woman he was supposed to marry instead of me.
My gasp is audible. My hand comes to a stop inches above her face, my heart hastening.
Why is Will hiding a photograph of Erin inside this book? Why does Will still have this photograph at all?
The photo is old, twenty years maybe. Erin looks to be about eighteen or nineteen in it. Her hair is wild, her smile carefree. I stare at the picture, into Erin’s eyes. There’s a pang of jealousy because of how beautiful she is. How magnetic.
But how can I be jealous of a woman who is dead?
Will and I had been dating for over a month before he mentioned her name. We were still in that completely smitten stage, when everything felt noteworthy and important. We’d talk on the phone for hours. I didn’t have much to say about my past, and so, instead, I told him about my future, about all the things I planned to one day do. Will’s future was undecided when we met, and so he told me about his past. About his childhood dog. About his stepfather’s diagnosis with cancer, the fact that his mother has been married three times. And he told me about Erin, the woman he was supposed to marry, a woman he was engaged to for months before she died. Will cried openly when he told me about her. He held nothing back, and I loved him for it because of his great capacity to love.
In all my life, I didn’t think I’d ever seen a grown man cry.
At the time, the sadness of Will losing a fiancée only attracted me to him more. Will was broken, like a butterfly without wings. I wanted to be the one to heal him.
It’s been years since her name has come up. It’s not as if we talk about her. But every now and then another Erin is mentioned and it gives us pause. The name alone carries so much weight. But why Will would dig this photograph out of God knows where and carry it around with him is beyond me. Why now, after all this time?
My hand grazes the photograph but I don’t have it in me to pick it up. Not yet. I’ve only seen one other photograph of Erin before, one that Will showed to me years ago at my request. He didn’t want to, but I insisted. I wanted to know what she looked like. When I asked to see a picture, he showed me with circumspection. He wasn’t sure how I’d react. I tried to be poker-faced about it, but there
was no denying the sharp pains I felt inside. She was breathtaking.
I knew in that instant: Will only loved me because she was gone. I was his second pick.
I brush my finger against Erin’s fair skin now. I can’t be jealous. I simply can’t. And I can’t be mad. It would be insensitive of me to ask him to throw it away. But here I am, after all these years, feeling like I’m playing second fiddle to the memory of a woman who’s dead.
I reach for the photo and hold it in my hand this time. I won’t let myself be a coward. I stare at her. There’s something so childish about her face, so audacious and raw, that I feel the greatest need to scold her for whatever it is she’s thinking as she makes a pouty face at the camera, one that is as provocative as it is bold.
I jam the picture and the bookmark somewhere back inside the book, rise from the sofa and bring the book to the kitchen table. I leave it there, having suddenly lost the desire to read.
The dogs have begun to bark. I can’t leave them outside barking in the middle of the night. I open the slider and call to them, but they don’t come.
I’m forced outside into the backyard to get their attention. The patio is freezing cold on my bare feet. But that discomfort is secondary to what I feel inside as I get taken in, swallowed by the darkness. The kitchen light fades quickly behind me as the December night closes in.
I can see nothing. If someone was there, standing in the darkness of our yard, I wouldn’t know. An unwanted thought comes pummeling into me then. My saliva catches in my throat and I choke.
Dogs have adaptations that people don’t have. They can see much better than humans in the dark. It makes me wonder what the dogs see that I can’t see, what they’re barking at.
I hiss out into the night, calling quietly for the girls. It’s the middle of the night; I don’t want to shout. But I’m too scared to go any farther outside than I already am.
How do I know that Morgan Baines’s killer isn’t there?
