My Lovely Wife

by Samantha Downing

  “I did not!”

  “Then how did you get in?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Holly, stop. Just stop. You’re not going to fool my husband the way you fooled Mom and Dad.”

  Millicent was right about that.

  “Oh my god,” Holly said. She clasped her hands on her head and closed her eyes, as if trying to block out the world. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”

  Millicent took a step back.

  I stepped forward. “Holly,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t stop. It was like she couldn’t even hear me. When she smacked the side of her head with an open hand, I glanced back at Millicent. She was staring at Holly and looked too scared to move. Millicent had frozen.

  I raised my voice. “Holly.”

  Her head jerked up.

  She dropped her hands.

  Holly’s face had contorted into something angry, something almost feral. It felt like I was seeing what Millicent was so afraid of.

  “You should have died in that accident,” she said to Millicent. It sounded like a growl.

  Millicent moved closer, using me as a shield, and she gripped my arm. I half turned to tell her to call the police, but she spoke first. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Thank god the kids aren’t here to see this.”

  The kids. A picture of them flashed in my mind. I saw Rory and Jenna in the room instead of us. I felt their fear as this insane woman confronted them.

  “Holly,” I said.

  She couldn’t hear me. She couldn’t hear anyone. Her eyes were fixed on Millicent, who was trying to hide behind me.

  “You bitch,” Holly said.

  She lunged toward me.

  Toward Millicent.

  In that moment, I did not make a decision. I did not run through the options in my mind, weighing the pros and cons, using logic to arrive at the best possible course of action. If I had gone through all that, Holly would still be alive.

  Instead, I did not think, did not decide. What I did next came from somewhere much deeper. It was biology, self-preservation. Instinct.

  Holly was a threat to my family, so she was a threat to me. I reached for the closest thing. It was right next to me, leaning against the wall.

  A tennis racket.

  Fifteen

  A FEW DAYS PASS before someone on TV asks about Owen Oliver Riley.

  Josh, my earnest, young Josh, brought up the serial killer’s name during a press conference. Ever since Lindsay was found, the police have been holding press conferences at least every other day. They are held in the late afternoon so the highlights can be replayed on the evening news.

  Josh’s question will be today’s highlight.

  “Has it occurred to you that Owen Oliver Riley is back?”

  The lead detective, a balding man in his fifties, did not look surprised at the question.

  Josh is far too young to remember any details about Owen Oliver, but he is an intelligent, ambitious reporter, capable of surfing the Internet at light speed. He just needed someone to give him a starting point.

  For this, I went back to some of the most famous serial killers. Several communicated with the press, sometimes even the police, and that was long before e-mail was invented. But given how easy it was to track anything electronic, I decided against using e-mail. I went old-school.

  Owen never wrote letters to anyone, so all I had to do was create something just plausible enough to be real. After several attempts, from long to short, poetic to rambling, I ended up with a single line:

  It’s good to be home.

  —Owen

  I wore surgical gloves while handling the paper, envelope, and stamp. When it was sealed and ready to go, I spritzed the envelope with a cheap drugstore cologne. It smelled like a musky cowboy.

  That was just to mess with Josh.

  Then I drove across town and dropped it in a mailbox. Three days later, Josh brought up Owen at the press conference but not the letter. Maybe Josh is keeping this to himself, or maybe the police have asked him not to mention it.

  For now, I am content to wait and see, because there is something else I need to do. Last night, I was out watching Annabelle Parson’s apartment. Finally. The meter maid who’d caught my eye was more difficult to find than the others. For Lindsay and Petra, all I had to do was look up their names on the Internet. Annabelle was smarter than that, no doubt to hide herself from all those angry people who got a parking ticket from her. To find out where she lived, I had to follow her home one evening. It was a little annoying.

  Last night, I waited outside her apartment to see if she would return home alone or if she was seeing someone. Around midnight, I received a text from my son.

  Out again? It’s going to cost you.

  What do you want?

  You mean, how much do I want?

  This time he doesn’t want another video game. He wants cash.

  The next day, I meet him at home after work. He is already on the couch, channel surfing, texting, and playing a game. Millicent is not home yet. Jenna is upstairs.

  I sit down next to him.

  He glances up, eyebrows raised.

  This is a mistake. I should have told Millicent everything. We could have sat down with both Rory and Jenna, and explained that nothing is going on.

  Dad just likes to take long drives in the middle of the night. Occasionally while wearing a suit.

  I hand Rory the cash.

  He is so busy counting the money he isn’t paying attention to the TV, where they are replaying press conference highlights on the news. Rory is oblivious to the real reason his father is out at night. All he has to do is look up.

  * * *

  • • •

  WE HAVE TACOS for dinner, made with leftover chicken, and they are delicious. My wife is a good cook and insists on making dinner every night, but the quicker she throws something together, the better it seems to be.

  I don’t tell her that.

  Dessert is peach slices sprinkled with brown sugar, and we each get one snickerdoodle cookie. Rory is the first to roll his eyes, though Jenna is right there with him. Millicent has always been stingy with dessert.

  We all eat it differently. Jenna licks the brown sugar off her peaches, then eats the cookie and finishes the rest of the peaches. Rory eats the cookie first, then the peaches, although it’s all sort of a blur, because he inhales everything so fast. Millicent alternates between the fruit and the cookie, a bite of one and then a bite of the other. I mash the peaches and cookie together and eat it all with a spoon.

  Tomorrow is our movie night, and we discuss what we will watch. Last week, it was a talking animal movie. Rory always groans at first, but he loves those as much as anyone. Both of the kids like sports movies, so we pick one about a baseball youth league trying to make it to the world championships. We vote on this like it’s a serious election, and Batter Up wins by a landslide.

  “I’ll be home by five thirty,” I say.

  “Dinner at six,” says Millicent.

  “Are we done here?” Rory asks.

  “Who’s Owen Oliver Riley?” Jenna says.

  Everything stops.

  Millicent and I look at Jenna.

  “Where did you hear that?” Millicent says.

  “TV.”

  “Owen is a horrible man who hurt people,” I say. “But he can never hurt you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry about Owen.”

  “But why are they talking about him?” Jenna asks.

  “Because of that dead girl,” Rory says.

  “Woman,” I say. “Dead woman.”

  “Oh. Her.” Jenna shrugs and looks over at her phone. “So are we done?”

  Millicent nods, and they pick up their phones, clearing the t
able while texting. I rinse off the dishes, Jenna helps put them in the dishwasher, and Millicent gets rid of whatever is left of the tacos.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHILE WE GET ready for bed, Millicent turns on the local news. She watches the press conference highlights and then turns to me. Saying nothing, she asks if I had something to do with it.

  I shrug.

  She raises an eyebrow.

  I wink at her.

  She smiles.

  Sometimes, we do not have to say anything.

  We weren’t always like this. In the beginning, we spent entire nights talking, just like all young couples do when they fall in love. I told her all my stories. Couldn’t get them out fast enough, because I had finally found someone who thought they were fascinating. Who thought I was fascinating.

  Eventually, she knew all my old stories, so we traded only new ones. I texted her in the middle of the day to tell her the smallest things. She would send me a funny picture depicting how her day was going. I had never known someone so well, nor shared my life so completely with another. This continued until we got married, even afterward when Millicent was pregnant with Rory.

  I still remember the first thing I didn’t tell her. The first thing of any importance, I mean. It was the car. We had two; hers was the newer one, and mine was a beat-up old truck that held all my tennis equipment. When Millicent was eight months pregnant, my truck broke down. It needed a thousand dollars in repairs, and we didn’t have the money. Any money we did have had been squirreled away, bit by bit, to afford a crib and a stroller and the mountains of diapers we were going to need.

  I didn’t want to upset her, didn’t want to make her worry, so I made a choice. I told her the truck broke down but not how much it would cost. To pay for the repairs, I opened a new credit card only in my name.

  It took more than a year to pay it off, and I never told Millicent. I never told her about the rest of the charges, either.

  That was the first big thing, but we both stopped talking about the small things. We had a baby, then another, and her days became more exhausting than funny. She no longer recounted every little thing, nor did I tell her all the details about my clients.

  We both stopped asking, stopping sharing the minutiae, and instead we stuck to the highlights. We still do.

  Sometimes a smile and a wink is all we need.

  Sixteen

  WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, Owen Oliver Riley is everywhere. His face is all over our local news and websites. My clients want to talk about him. Those who aren’t from here want more details. Those who are from here have not decided if he’s really back. Kekona, the local gossip, is in the middle on both counts.

  Though she was born in Hawaii, she has been living here long enough to know all our legends, myths, and infamous residents. She doesn’t believe Owen Oliver is back. Not for one second.

  We are on the court, and Kekona is working on her serve. Again. She thinks if she can just serve one ace after another, she doesn’t need to play the rest of the game. In theory, she is right. In reality, no one can do that. Not unless her opponent is a five-year-old.

  “Owen could go anywhere to kill women, but they think he’s back here?” she says.

  “If by ‘they’ you mean the police, then no, they haven’t said anything about Owen Oliver. It was just some reporter’s question.”

  “Pfft.”

  “I’m not sure what that means.”

  “It means that’s ridiculous. Owen got away once. He has no reason to come back.”

  I shrug. “Because it’s home?”

  Kekona rolls her dark eyes. “Life is not a horror movie.”

  She is not the only one who feels this way. Anyone who didn’t live through it the first time thinks it would be ridiculous for him to come back. They see this as Kekona does, like a choice that makes no rational sense.

  But those who did live here, and are old enough to remember, believe Owen has returned home. Especially the women.

  They remember what it was like to be scared whenever they were alone, indoors or out, because Owen snatched his victims from almost anywhere. Two disappeared from inside their own homes. One was in a library, another in a park, and at least three had been in parking lots. Two of these had been caught on security video. The footage was old and grainy; Owen looked like a big blur dressed in dark clothes and wearing a baseball cap. The videos have been on the news all day, all over again.

  Today, I have a tennis lesson with Trista, Andy’s wife, but as I walk through the clubhouse I see her in the sports bar. She is watching the news on one of the big screens. Like her husband, she is in her early forties and couldn’t pass for younger. The ends of her hair are too blond, her eyes are always rimmed in black, and she has a deep, disturbingly natural tan. She is alone and drinking red wine at one o’clock in the afternoon. The bottle sits on the table.

  I guess we are not having a lesson today.

  From a distance, I watch her, unsure if I should get involved. Sometimes, my clients tell me more than I want to know. I’m like the hairdresser of exercise.

  But I have to admit, it can also be interesting.

  I walk up to Trista. “Hey.”

  She waves and points to an empty chair, never taking her eyes off the TV screen. I have seen her drink plenty of times at parties and dinners, but I’ve never seen her like this.

  At the commercial break, she turns to me. “I’m canceling our lesson today,” she says.

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  She smiles, but it doesn’t make her look happy. It occurs to me that she might be upset with Andy. Maybe he has done something wrong, and I don’t want to get in the middle of it. I start to get up from the chair when she speaks.

  “Do you remember what it was like back then?” she says, pointing at the TV. “When he was killing?”

  “Owen?”

  “Who else?”

  “Of course. Everyone from here remembers.” I shrug and sit back down. “Did you ever go to The Hatch? A bunch of us used to drink there on Saturday nights, and all the TVs were tuned into the news. I think that’s where I—”

  She takes a deep breath. “I knew him.”

  “Who?”

  “Owen Oliver. I knew him.” Trista picks up the bottle and refills her glass.

  “You never told me that before.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Not exactly something to be proud of. Especially because I dated him.”

  “No way.”

  “I’m serious.”

  My jaw drops. Not an exaggeration. “Does Andy know this?”

  “No. And don’t even think about telling him.”

  I shake my head. No way would I tell him. I am not about to be the bearer of that news. “But how did you—”

  “First, have some of this.” Trista pushes the bottle of wine toward me. “You’re going to need it.”

  * * *

  • • •

  TRISTA WAS RIGHT. The wine dulled the horror of the story she told.

  She met Owen Oliver when he was in his early thirties. She was a decade younger with a degree in art history and a job at a collections agency. That was how they met. Owen worked in billing at Saint Mary’s. When the bills weren’t paid, they were turned over to the collections agency.

  “It was a scum job,” she said. Her voice slurred from the wine. “I called sick people and demanded money from them. So that was me. Scum. All day, I felt like a scummy person who did scummy things.”

  Owen told her she wasn’t. They first spoke about someone named Leann, who owed the hospital more than $10,000. After calling Leann seventeen times, Trista had become convinced the number was wrong. The only person to answer the phone was a man who sounded about ninety and had an obvious case of dementia. Leann was a twenty-eight-year-old woman who lived a
lone. Trista called over to the billing department of Saint Mary’s to check the phone number. She wasn’t supposed to contact the hospital directly, but she did it anyway. Owen had answered the phone.

  “Of course I had the right number. Owen told me Leann was an actress.” Trista heaved a big sigh. “I was so embarrassed I didn’t even ask how he knew that.”

  They talked. She liked his voice, he liked her laugh, and they agreed to meet. Trista dated Owen for six months.

  “We both liked to eat and drink, and would rather watch sports than play them. Except sex. We had a lot of sex. Good but not great. Not earth-shattering. But”—Trista held up a finger and waved it around—“he did make earth-shattering cinnamon rolls. Made them from scratch, too. Rolled out the dough, spread melted butter over it, and then added this cinnamon-and-sugar mixture . . .” For a second, she stared at nothing. She was slow to come back. “Anyway. The cinnamon rolls were good. There was nothing wrong with the cinnamon rolls. There wasn’t really anything wrong with Owen, either. Except he was a medical billing clerk.”

  Trista looked down at the table and smiled. Not a real smile—one that is filled with loathing and aimed at herself. She lifted her head and looked me full in the eye. “I broke up with him because I was never going to marry a thirty-three-year-old medical billing clerk. There was no chance in hell. And if that makes me a snob, so be it, but hell if I was going to be poor my whole life.” She threw up her hands, surrendering to whatever insults I may have wanted to sling at her.

  I said nothing. Instead, I lifted my glass, we toasted, and we drank.

  Trista talked about Owen Oliver Riley for almost two hours.

  He watched sports. Hockey was one of his favorites, although the closest professional team is hundreds of miles away. Owen always wore jeans. Always, unless he was in the shower, in bed, or near a pool. But he couldn’t swim. Trista suspected he was afraid of the water.

  He lived in a house on the north side of town, the same area Millicent and I lived when we first got married. The north side isn’t a bad area, but it is older and more run-down than the southeastern side, where Hidden Oaks is located. Owen had inherited the house when his mother died, and Trista described it as “cute enough, but almost a shack.” This wasn’t surprising. A lot of houses on the north side are small cottages with porches, elaborate woodwork, and little dormer windows. Inside, most are outdated and falling apart. Owen’s was no exception.