by Mary Kubica
Will is in bed with me. Will is not in the chair in the corner of the room.
Someone else is here.
Someone else is watching us sleep.
I bolt upright in bed. My eyes fight to adjust to the blackness of the room. My heart is in my throat. I can hardly speak. “Who’s there?” I ask, but there’s a bulge in my throat and all that comes out is a gasp.
I reach a hand to the bedside table, make an effort to turn the knob on the lamp. But before I can, her voice comes to me, quietly and measured, the words chosen carefully.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”
Imogen rises from the chair. She comes to me, sets herself gingerly on the edge of my bed.
“What are you doing here? Do you need something?” I ask, trying not to let on to my own state of alarm. But it can’t so easily be disguised. My panic is transparent. There should be relief in seeing that it’s Imogen—not an intruder, but one of our own—but there’s no relief in it. Imogen doesn’t belong in my bedroom this late at night, lingering in the darkness.
I search Imogen with my eyes, looking for a reason as to why she’s here. Looking for a weapon, though the thought alone makes me sick, the idea of Imogen sneaking into our room with the intent of hurting us.
“Is something wrong?” I ask. “Something you want to talk about?”
Always a heavy sleeper, Will doesn’t budge.
“You had no right,” she scolds, quietly seething, “to come into my room.”
There’s a sudden tightness in my chest.
My gut instinct is to lie.
“I wasn’t in your room, Imogen,” I whisper back, and it’s in my best interest now to keep quiet because I don’t want Will to know that I was there. That instead of bathing, I went through the drawers in Imogen’s bedroom, the pockets of her clothing. An invasion of privacy, Will would say, not taking kindly to my searching through her things.
“You’re a liar.” Imogen speaks through her teeth now, as I swear, “I’m not. Honestly, Imogen. I wasn’t in your room.”
Her next words come as a punch to the gut. “Then what was your wine doing there?” she asks. My face flames and I know that I’ve been caught. I picture it, clear as day, setting the glass of cabernet on the desktop as I canvassed her room.
And then later, fleeing in a hurry, leaving the wine behind.
How could I have been so stupid?
“Oh,” I say, straining for a lie. But a lie doesn’t come. Not a credible enough one to share anyway, and so I don’t try. I’ve never been a very good liar.
“If you ever,” she begins. But it’s also where she ends, words cutting off abruptly, leaving it for me to figure out what comes next.
Imogen rises from the edge of the bed. Her sudden height gives her an advantage. She towers over me, stealing the breath from my lungs. Imogen isn’t a big girl. She’s thin, but she has great height, which must have come from her father’s side since Alice was petite. She’s taller than I ever realized now that she’s standing so closely beside me. She leans down and breathes into my ear, “Stay the fuck out of my room,” giving me a slight shove for good measure.
And then she goes. She steals away from the bedroom, her feet noiseless on the wooden floors as they must have been when she let herself into our room.
I lie in bed, sleepless and alert, listening vigilantly for her to return.
How long it goes on this way, I don’t know, until eventually I give in to my drowsiness and slip back to my dream.
SADIE
I go during my lunch break. I try to be subtle about it, slipping out the door when I think no one is watching. But Joyce spots me anyway and asks, “Taking off on us again?” with an edge to her voice that suggests she doesn’t approve of me leaving.
“I’m just grabbing a quick lunch,” I tell her, though I’m not sure why I lie when the truth might have been better.
Joyce asks, “When can we expect you back?” and I tell her, “In an hour.”
She grunts at that and says, “I’ll see it when I believe it,” which is by no means a fair assessment of me—that I let my lunch breaks drag on longer than the allotted hour. But there’s no point in arguing. I go anyway, still anxious about finding Imogen in our bedroom last night. She must have known as soon as she found my wineglass that I’d been in her room. She could have come right then and told me. But she didn’t. Instead she waited hours, until I was dead asleep, to tell me. She wanted to scare me. That was her intent.
Imogen isn’t some ingenuous child. She’s quite cunning.
I find my car in the parking lot and drive. I tried to talk myself out of going to the memorial service. At first I thought that there was really no reason to go, other than my desire to see Jeffrey Baines. We’ve lived in our home for a little while now, and in that time, I’ve never gotten a good look at the man. But I can’t shake the idea that he killed his wife. For my safety and the safety of my family, I need to know who he is. I need to know who my neighbors are. I need to know if we’re safe with this man living just across the street from us.
The Methodist church is white with a tall steeple, a sharply honed spire. Four modest stained glass windows line each side of the building. The church is small, your archetypical, provincial church. Matching evergreen wreaths hang from nails on the double doors, adorned with red bows. The scene is charming. The small lot is jammed with cars. I park on the street, follow others inside the building.
The memorial service is being held in the fellowship hall. Ten or fifteen round tables fill the space, covered in white linens. There’s a banquet table at the front of the room and, on it, trays of cookies.
I walk with purpose; I have as much right to be here as anyone else, no matter what Will said. A woman I’ve never seen before reaches out to shake my hand as I step into the room. She thanks me for coming. There’s a handkerchief crumpled in her hand. She’s been crying. She tells me she is Morgan’s mother. She asks who I am. “Sadie,” I say, “a neighbor,” followed with deference by, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
The woman is older than me by twenty or thirty years. Her hair is gray, her skin a road map of wrinkles. She’s trim, dressed in a black dress that goes just past her knees. Her hand is cold and, as she shakes mine, I feel the handkerchief press between our hands. “It was sweet of you,” she says, “to come. It makes me happy, knowing my Morgan had friends.”
I blanch at that because of course we weren’t friends. But that’s something her grieving mother needn’t know. “She was a lovely woman,” I say for lack of anything better to say.
Jeffrey stands five feet back, speaking with an older couple. Truth be told, he looks bored. He displays none of the same grief that Morgan’s mother openly displays. He doesn’t cry. It’s a masculine thing, not crying. That I understand. And grief can manifest itself in many ways, aside from crying. Anger, disbelief. But I see none of this in Jeffrey as he pats the old man on the back, unleashes a laugh.
I’ve never been this close to him before. I’ve never gotten a good look at him until now. Jeffrey is a polished man, tall and refined, with a suave thatch of dark hair that combs up and backward. His features are dark, his eyes hidden behind a pair of bold, thick-rimmed glasses. His suit is black. It’s been tailored for him. He’s quite handsome.
The older couple moves on. I tell Morgan’s mother once more how sorry I am and step past her. I move to Jeffrey. He takes my hand into his. His handshake is firm, his hand tepid. “Jeffrey Baines,” he says, holding my stare, and I tell him who I am, how my husband and I live with our family just across the street from him.
“Of course,” Jeffrey says, though I doubt he’s ever paid attention to the goings-on across the street. He strikes me as one of those savvy businessmen who know how to work a room, adept at the fine art of schmoozing. On the surface, he’s charming.
But under, there�
��s more that I can’t see.
He tells me, “Morgan was thrilled to have new blood on the street. She would have appreciated your being here, Sandy,” he says, and I correct him and say, “Sadie.”
“Yes, that’s right. Sadie,” he says, trying it on for size. He’s self-deprecating as a means of apology. “I was never any good with names,” he says as he lets go of my hand and I draw it back, folding my hands together before me.
“Most people aren’t,” I tell him. “This must be a very hard time for you,” I say, rather than the standard I’m so sorry for your loss. That feels commonplace, a sentiment that’s being echoed over and over again around the room. “Your daughter. She must be devastated,” I say, my body language trying its best to be sympathetic. I drop my head, furrow my eyebrows. “I can’t imagine what she must be going through.”
But Jeffrey’s response is unexpected. “I’m afraid she and Morgan were never close” is what he says. “The upshot of divorce, I suppose,” he tells me, making light of it, de-emphasizing the fact that his daughter and wife didn’t get along. “No woman would ever outshine her mother,” he says, and I reply, “Oh,” because I can think of nothing else to say.
If Will and I were ever to divorce and he to remarry, I’d hope the boys would love me more than their stepmother. And yet Morgan was murdered. She’s dead. The little girl found her. The nonchalance surprises me. “Is she here?” I ask. “Your daughter.”
He tells me no. His daughter is in school. It’s odd, the fact that she’s at school while her stepmother is being mourned.
My surprise is visible.
He explains, “She was sick earlier this year. Pneumonia that landed her in the hospital on IV antibiotics. Her mother and I would hate for her to miss any more school.”
I’m not sure his explanation makes it better.
“It’s so hard to get caught up” is all I can come up with in a pinch.
Jeffrey thanks me for coming. He says, “Help yourself to cookies,” before looking past me to the next in line.
I go to the cookie table. I help myself to one and find a table to sit. It’s awkward sitting alone in a room where nearly no one is alone. Everyone has come with someone else. Everyone but me. I wish that Will were here. He should have come. Many of the people in the room cry, quiet, suppressed cries. Only Morgan’s mother is unreserved about her grief.
Two women brush up behind me just then. They ask if the vacant seats at the table are being saved. “No,” I tell them. “Please, help yourself,” and they do.
One of the women asks, “Were you a friend of Morgan?” She has to lean in toward me because it’s loud in the room.
A wave of relief washes over me. I’m no longer alone.
I say, “Neighbors. And you?” as I scoot my folding chair closer. They’ve left empty seats between themselves and me, which is socially appropriate. And yet it makes it hard to hear.
One of the women tells me that they’re old friends of Patty’s, Morgan’s mother. They tell me their names—Karen and Susan—and I tell them mine.
“Poor Patty is just a wreck,” Karen says, “as you can imagine.”
I tell her how unfathomable this all is. We sigh and discuss how children are supposed to lose their parents first and not the other way around. The way it’s happened with Morgan goes against the natural order of things. I think of Otto and Tate, if anything bad were to ever happen to either of them. I can’t imagine a world in which Will and I don’t die first. I don’t want to imagine a world like that, where they’re gone and I’m left behind.
“And not just once, but twice,” Susan says. The other nods grimly. I bob my head along with them, but I don’t know what they mean by this. I’m only half listening. My attention is focused on Jeffrey Baines and the way he greets mourners as they come by. There’s a smile on his face as he receives people, reaching that warm hand out to shake theirs. The smile is unbecoming for the occasion. His wife was just murdered. He shouldn’t be smiling. If nothing else, he should make an effort to appear sad.
I start to wonder if Jeffrey and Morgan argued, or if it was indifference that did them in. Indifference, a sentiment even worse than hate. I wonder if she did something to upset him, or if he simply wanted her dead, the dissolution of their marriage without a nasty battle. Or maybe it was about money. A life insurance policy to be paid out.
“Patty was never the same after that,” Susan is saying.
My eyes go to her as Karen replies, “I don’t know what she’ll do now, how she’ll get through. Losing one child is bad enough, but losing two?”
“It’s unthinkable,” Susan says. She reaches into her handbag for a tissue. She’s begun to cry. She reminisces on how distraught Patty was the first time this happened, how weeks went by that she couldn’t get out of bed. How she lost weight because of it, far too much for a woman who doesn’t have any extra weight to spare. I look at the woman, Patty, standing at the head of the receiving line. She is gaunt.
“This will ruin—” Karen begins, but before she can finish, a woman sweeps in through the door, making her way toward Jeffrey. As she does, the smile disappears from his face.
“Oh,” I hear Karen say under her breath. “Oh my. Susan. Look who’s here.”
We all look. The woman is tall like Jeffrey. She’s thin, dressed shamelessly in red while nearly everyone else in the room is in dark or muted tones. Her hair is long and dark. It falls down her back over a red top that’s floral and drapey and has a notched neckline that reveals a hint of cleavage. Her pants are tight. Over her arm hangs a winter coat. She stops just short of Jeffrey and says something to him. He attempts to take her by the arm, to lead her from the room, but she’ll have no part of that. She pulls sharply back. He leans into her, says something quietly. She puts her hands on her hips, takes on a defensive posture. Pouts.
“Who’s that?” I ask, unable to take my eyes off the woman.
They tell me. This is Courtney. Jeffrey’s first wife.
“I can’t believe that she would show up here, of all places,” Susan says.
“Maybe she just wanted to pay her respects,” Karen suggests.
Susan harrumphs. “Highly doubtful.”
“I take it the marriage didn’t end on friendly terms,” I say, though it doesn’t need to be said. What marriage ends amicably?
The ladies exchange a look before they tell me. “I thought it was common knowledge,” Susan says. “I thought everyone knew.”
“Knew what?” I ask, and they shift seats, getting rid of the empty one in between, and tell me how Jeffrey was married to Courtney when he and Morgan met. That their marriage started as an affair. Morgan was his mistress, they confess, whispering that word, mistress, as if it’s dirty. A bad word. Jeffrey and Morgan worked together; she was his administrative assistant. His secretary, as cliché as that sounds. “They met, they fell in love,” Susan says.
The way Morgan’s mother told it to them, Jeffrey and his then-wife, Courtney, had been at each other’s throats for a long time. Morgan wasn’t the one to break up their marriage. It was already broken. Their marriage had always been volatile: two like-minded people who constantly clashed. What Morgan told her in the early days of their affair was that Jeffrey and Courtney could both be stubborn and hotheaded. Overwhelmingly type A. Morgan’s demeanor, on the other hand, was the better fit for Jeffrey.
I turn back to Jeffrey and his ex. The exchange is heated and brief. She says something curt, then turns and leaves.
I think that’s it then. That’s all.
I watch as Jeffrey turns to the next in line. He forces a smile and reaches out his hand.
The ladies beside me go back to their gossip. I listen in, but my eyes stay on Jeffrey. Susan and Karen are talking about Morgan and Jeffrey. About their marriage. True love, I hear, though from the expression on his face—detached, dispassionate—I don’t
see it. But maybe this is a form of self-preservation. He’ll cry later, in private, once the rest of us are gone.
“There’s no stopping true love,” Karen says.
A thought runs through my mind just then. There is one way to stop it.
Susan asks if anyone wants more cookies. Karen says yes. Susan leaves and returns with a plate of them for us to share. They return to their conversation about Patty, decide to start up a meal train for her to be sure she eats. If no one is cooking for her, it’s liable, in her grief, that Patty won’t eat. This worries them. Karen thinks aloud about what she’ll make. She has a potpie recipe she’s been wanting to try, but she also knows that Patty is quite keen on lasagna.
Only I am still watching as Jeffrey, a minute later, excuses himself and slips from the room.
I push my chair back and stand. The legs of the chair skid across the floor and the ladies look sharply at me, surprised by my sudden movement.
“Any idea where the restroom is?” I ask, incanting, “Nature calls.” Karen tells me.
The hallway is relatively quiet. Though not a large building by any means, there are a handful of halls, which lessen in people the farther I go. I turn left and right, the halls becoming vacant before I come to a dead end. I find myself backtracking to where I began.
The lobby, when I reach it, is empty. Everyone is inside the fellowship hall.
There are two doors before me. One for the sanctuary, and one to go outside.
I draw open the doors to the sanctuary by an inch or two, just enough to see inside. The sanctuary is small, poorly lit, cast in shadows. The only light comes from the four stained glass windows on either side of the room. A cross hangs above the pulpit, looking out at the columns of rigid pews.
I think that the sanctuary is empty. I don’t see them at first. I’m about to leave, thinking they’re outside, considering the possibility that they’re not together at all. That she’s left the building and he’s in the restroom.
