Such a Good Wife

by Seraphina Nova Glass

  I’m frozen where I stand, wondering if there’s evidence of me here. I go into his office and rifle through his desk drawer. Did he ever write down my name or number? Did I leave anything behind in past visits—clothes, an earring? I don’t see anything, but I’m trembling, not thinking straight. I look in the bedroom, in the bedside table drawers, in the bathroom. I was careful. Then I spot a condom in the small trash can by the bed. Shit, maybe it’s impossible to really be careful anymore. I’m letting myself spin out of control. I take a deep breath, tears streaming down my face as I try to lull the building panic. I take a tissue and pick up the soiled condom like I’m collecting the remains of a smashed insect. I shove it in my pocket. I run, shakily, down the wooden staircase and head for the side door I came in.

  His phone! He only called me on the burner number, but I can’t take any chances. I grab his phone and put it in my bag, and then I do another thing I shouldn’t. I rub my prints off the door handle and shut it. I am tampering with the scene of an accident, a suicide or—and I can’t fully let my mind believe this—potentially a homicide. I run back to my car. I didn’t even stay with him. I’m a monster.

  I take the back roads down to the bay. I’m driving too fast over railroad tracks and dirt roads with the windows down, trying to outrun my pain. When I finally reach a secluded area of the bay, I sit in my car and make the call. I have to, I can’t leave him lying there all alone. I use the burner phone so it’s untraceable and call 911. I’ve never called before, I’m scared.

  “911. What’s your emergency?” the voice asks.

  “Uh, I don’t—I heard a noise—It just, I think someone should...do a welfare check.” I mask my voice using an accent—a thick drawl.

  “What’s the address of the emergency, ma’am?”

  “It’s 806 Holland Lane.”

  “Okay, hon. Did you see anyone, is anyone hurt? What sort of noise exactly?” the operator asks, and I stumble over my words. I say the first thing that comes to mind. I wasn’t prepared for any of this. It has to be something that would get them out there, that’s all I’m thinking in the moment. Poor, sweet Luke, alone, hurt. Not hurt. Dead.

  “I don’t know, just like a fight maybe. A scream, I think, or something.”

  “And what’s your name, ma’am, are you there now, you a neighbor?”

  My name? I panic and hang up without another word.

  The beep of my car door opening echoes into the nothingness around me. I walk down to an abandoned dock and grip the weathered rail to control a surge of nausea. I take his shattered phone out of my bag and hold it together with the burner phone. The water is glassy and still, but just beyond the horizon, it holds away four million miles of a ferocious, consuming sea. I throw them both into its depths. For a moment, the moonlight allows me to watch them feather their way down until they’re gone beneath the dark water.

  I want to scream until I’m hoarse with his name stuck in my throat, but I cannot spend another moment here. I need to appear normal and calm when I go home. I need to make up a lie about Lacy and some terrible thing she confided in me to explain my red face and swollen eyes. There is no way to hide that at this point.

  The police should be there by now. An ambulance will follow. The media, probably. No one dies under strange circumstances in this town. Heart disease and the occasional car wreck are all that happens around here. Will they show his body, the way he looked like he was sleeping—if only there weren’t so much blood. As I drive home, I have bouts of light-headedness that make me feel like I’m not really there, like standing up too fast and seeing black for a moment. This can’t be happening. I don’t even know where to direct my manic thoughts to try to calm myself down because I don’t know what happened. My mind is trying to create any scenario to hold on to, to try to make sense of this. I feel a fist of pain in my chest. I want to go home and hold my kids and kiss my husband and pretend that none of this ever happened, and at the same time, I don’t know how I can go home. I feel the weight of my sin pressing down on me, and I feel I might collapse under it. There was a flash, a brief second where I thought about slipping quietly off the end of the dock and into the glistening water, all the way under until only the slice of moon, thin as a fingernail clipping above me, and the tree shadows that it brushed across that glossy surface were left.

  But I can’t. I need to protect my family. They can never know that I knew Luke Ellison.

  13

  WHEN I PULL INTO the garage at home, I can already hear Ben inside, I know he is in mid-meltdown over something. I sit in the car a few minutes and study my face in the rearview mirror. I use my sleeve to wipe away the smear of mascara under my eyes and take a few deep breaths, telling myself to act normal, think of your family. When I come in through the garage and follow the wails to the living room, I see Collin holding Ben, who is slumped over in his lap, crying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Daddy,” over and over. This is not an unfamiliar scene. Sometimes, when Ben gets violent, he becomes tearful and repentant when he realizes he’s hurt someone. Collin gives me a look, saying it’s under control.

  “Hey, bud. You okay?” I ask Ben.

  He runs to me and puts his arms around my waist, still saying he’s sorry.

  “It’s okay, bud,” Collin says. “Why don’t you go brush your teeth and put your pajamas on.”

  “Okay,” Ben sobs, and runs off to his room.

  “What happened?” I ask, seeing the cut on Collin’s lip.

  “He got frustrated with a math question.”

  “Oh no, you okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine. A kid in his class called him dumb, so he was determined to work out the problem himself and...yeah. Didn’t go well.”

  “Oh, honey...”

  “It’s okay, I handled it. He’s fine. What happened to you? You look...Mel, you look terrible, no offense. Have you been...crying?”

  “I’m fine now. Lacy is going through a rough time. The things that Joe is getting away with, what he’s done to her. It’s eating me up. I wish I could do something. Sometimes you just need a good cry. It’s beyond infuriating, ya know.”

  “Do you want me to do anything—talk to Joe, or...”

  “No! No, I promised. I just—we don’t need to talk about it. I’m exhausted.”

  “Me too.”

  “Thanks for taking care of things tonight,” I say. Collin comes over and gives me a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

  “Of course. You hungry?” he asks, and I suddenly remember the condom, wrapped in a tissue, in my pocket. I back away from him, terrified that somehow he’ll feel a bulge or slip his hands into my back pockets the way he does sometimes, sweetly, to keep me close after a hug.

  “I’m just really tired. I’m gonna run a bath.”

  I put my purse down and dig in it a moment, to look like I backed away abruptly for a reason, that I’m looking for something. He doesn’t notice. It’s just me being paranoid. He just walks to the kitchen.

  “Okay, I’ll bring you a glass of wine.”

  “I’m sure you could use one yourself after all that,” I say, attempting lightness.

  “Oh yes.”

  He smiles and I see him grab a bottle from the rack and dig in the drawer for an opener. Out of his sight line, I rush into the bathroom and run the water for a bath. I take the condom from my pocket and flush it down the toilet. I sit with my head between my knees at the edge of the tub while steam rises from the scorching hot water. I have to keep it together.

  Collin gives the door a light tap before coming in to lay a glass of red on the bathtub ledge for me. I used Ben’s bubblegum-scented bubble bath and it’s filled the room with a candy smell. He makes a scrunched-up face when it hits him.

  “Cabernet and bubblegum. Delicious.”

  He kisses me on the forehead. I force a little laugh at his joke.

  “I’m gonna catch the e
nd of the Saints game.”

  He heads off to the media room, and I’m so relieved I don’t have to put on a show anymore tonight. I don’t have the strength.

  I imagine Luke with medics surrounding him. A coroner, his brother being called to the scene. What happened? Would he have killed himself? Why? That doesn’t make sense. He had plans of Italy, and...no. Jumping from the second floor. If his head hadn’t hit the concrete the way it did, he may have only broken a leg, if that. I know in my heart that’s not what it was. That leaves accident. Did he get drunk? Did he have some fit of rage or frustration in the house? A lovers’ quarrel with another lover, maybe?

  In many ways I knew everything about him down to his upcoming dentist appointment and favorite childhood memory. In many ways I didn’t know him at all. Would anyone be out to hurt him? If he was sleeping with Lacy, am I a total idiot to believe there weren’t others? A famous romance writer could be fucking every housewife in town and one may have gotten possessive, jealous.

  I think about DNA, if his house were to become a crime scene. Even if mine is all over the sheets, the glasses, on everything, I have never even had a speeding ticket. I would not be in any database for them to check against. I am in disbelief that a thought like this is even crossing my mind. Getting out of volunteering for the fall bake sale was my biggest focus before all of this started and now I’m wiping fingerprints from a potential crime scene.

  I need to make it my full-time job to figure out what happened to him, so it’s never even suspected that I knew who he was, so it doesn’t come back to me. I wasn’t there. I never met him. They cannot find one reason to ask for a statement, or for DNA, or even find my name in their mouths.

  I remember that I still have his novel that he signed for me. When I get out of the bath, I pull on a light robe and tiptoe downstairs. Collin is in the living room in front of the football game. He’s occupied on his phone, so I walk quietly into the front sitting room where I usually write and pull open the credenza where his book sits, no book jacket, just a naked, nondescript green cover, shoved in the back and covered by magazines.

  From inside the basket full of sewing supplies, next to a La-Z-Boy, I pull out the pages I’ve worked so hard on writing—finally I had something I felt was worth writing about—but it describes every seedy detail of this affair. I thought that someday in the future, maybe years from now when this was long behind me, it could be a good novel. None of it true, I could say, just my imagination, of course. Just fiction. I would sell it as steamy romance. No one would ever know what it was based on. Now, fictionalized or not, it can’t exist anymore. I’m glad I wrote it on paper and left no trace of it in the computer.

  I creep back across the wood floor and grab my gym bag from the mudroom. I cram the book and my manuscript into the bottom of the bag, underneath sneakers and a protruding yoga mat. Then I go upstairs and hide the bag in the back of our closet until tomorrow...when I can take it outside and burn the book and the manuscript to ash.

  14

  A COUPLE DAYS GO BY, and I catch Collin looking at me now and again, when I am obviously somewhere far away, zoning out; when I don’t know that I’m standing at the kitchen sink, staring through the window, my hands once drying dishes, now at my sides, a towel in one and mug hanging by the handle in the other, still. My mind replaying the moment I saw Luke’s lifeless body.

  A text pings on my phone. It jolts me back into the present, and I stab a finger at the screen to read it. The writing group has been canceled this week. Mia has sent a group text. I sigh, annoyed at all the texts that will filter in from everyone else, and then I think about Jonathan. How uneasy he made everyone, how much he hated Luke. Why was group canceled all of a sudden? I feel a surge of something that I can’t name until I’m abruptly interrupted.

  “Want some help with those?” Collin pretends not to notice my distance most of the time, but he also doesn’t want the kids to notice, I’m sure. He startles me as he takes the dish towel from my hand. He takes a clean dinner plate from the dishwasher and dries it.

  “Oh. No, you don’t have to...”

  But I see he’s already taken the mug from my hand and put it on the counter. “Thanks.”

  “Are you feeling okay?” he asks, and I know he senses I’m not. I know he sees the bags under my eyes from crying every time I’m alone, but he’s kind. He’s also becoming concerned, I can tell.

  “I’m just really tired. I’m just not sleeping well, sorry.”

  “This Joe Brooks stuff is getting to you. Maybe you should just, like, do what you think is right even if it pisses off...” He pauses, forgetting her name.

  “Lacy.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s really unfair that you’re put in this position.”

  “It’s not about pissing her off, it’s putting her in danger. And she has a little kid. If Joe is capable of what I saw him do...and that’s with people just feet away inside the bar. It was totally risky. He could have been caught...what would he go and do to her in private? He thinks he’s God, I guess. I can’t be the reason he flips.”

  Collin puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in, kissing my head.

  “Well, why don’t you go and get a little rest. We can order in tonight if you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  I take him up on his offer. I go up into our bedroom and lie across the neatly made bed. I watch the ceiling fan swirl above my head and force myself not to cry. I try not to think of Luke, the back of his skull concave against the pool deck. His arms were sprawled out on either side, his hands limp. I spent time studying his hands, kissing each finger on afternoons in bed together. I quickly try to think about something else so I stay in control, so I don’t sit at the dinner table with my children with a red nose and puffy eyes. A light rap on the door, and Rachel pokes her head in.

  “Mom?” she whispers, probably instructed by Collin not to wake me. I sit up quickly, turning to her.

  “Yeah, honey.”

  “Dad said to see what you wanted to order for dinner.”

  “What do you want, sweetie?” I ask, and she looks shocked. I can tell she doesn’t know if she can suggest junk food.

  “Umm, can we get pizza?”

  “Sure,” I say quickly, and I see her eyes widen.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, go ahead and order. Don’t forget to get half sausage for Grandma Claire on one.” Rachel runs out the door before I change my mind. I hear her tell Ben that I said yes, and he makes a squeaky, delighted noise. Maybe I am too much of a stickler about health food. In Claire’s day, she ate like a queen and drank red wine every day. Rich foods, no regrets. She was a spitfire, a free spirit. We used to be so close, and I miss her.

  We have an impromptu movie night with our pizza. I wheel Claire over so she can be seated at the end of the couch and see the TV. Ben brings her a plate with her favorite sausage slice on it. He’s in a happy mood tonight and that has made the mood in the house happy too. It makes life so much easier. Rachel is flopped, long-legged, on the love seat, scrolling on her phone while she eats. Ben sits on the floor against the coffee table, gobbling away and flipping channels, trying to find something we’ll all agree to watch, while Collin and I are on the couch, my feet tucked under his leg as I lean against the arm of the couch with a blanket over my legs, picking onions off my slice. I don’t deserve him.

  When Ben stops at Toy Story 2, Rachel yells out a “no way, come on. Nightmare on Elm Street is on two channels, can we...” She stops when I give her a look. She knows that Ben is too young.

  “Just sayin’. It’s Halloween almost. Something scary.”

  “What about Ghostbusters?” Collin tries to offer a neutral selection.

  “If it’s the one with women, then fine.” Rachel puts down her phone, readying herself for this very important argument. Collin is clueless.

  “Huh?”

/>   “Uh, hello. The new version with Melissa McCarthy?” Rachel, my budding feminist.

  Collin shrugs. I pick up Ben’s Ninja Turtle costume that I’m working on, and click on the side-table light. I need to finish his belt, which has the letter D embossed in the front because he insists on being Donatello.

  “Go to On Demand, Ben,” Rachel orders, excited for her female Ghostbusters screening. Ben flips around, trying to find the right buttons, and he lands on the local news. Suddenly, Luke’s face is in high-def on a seventy-inch television right in front of me.

  I go pale. I don’t move, I don’t look at Collin. We get news out of New Orleans and there are ten stories like this a day. In a second, Rachel will yell at Ben to go to channel 1000 for On Demand and it will be gone. I can’t let them see my face. My heart thrums, my ears ring.

  “Eeew. Change it,” Rachel says, looking up from her phone.

  Ben throws her the remote and it falls between the wall and the side of the love seat, unreachable.

  “Guys, come on.” Collin stands and helps Rachel fish it out while Ben dances around behind him, like a basketball player blocking a shot, ready to steal the remote back when it’s retrieved.

  I can’t take my eyes away from Luke’s face. The news anchor cuts to a reporter on the scene. Janelle Johnson is standing in front of Luke’s house with a microphone, reading a teleprompter. I catch her comment midsentence.

  “It’s here in the backyard of his rented home that police found him. The well-known romance writer keeps a residence here part-time to be near family, and police are baffled by the crime.” They cut to Luke’s brother, Julian, who holds a toddler on his hip. The camera crew lights shine on him in the otherwise dark street shot with police tape flapping in the background. He’s holding back tears, his voice breaking.

  “We’re devastated. We just want to know what happened to my brother. He was the greatest guy on earth.”

  I’ve never seen a photo of Julian before, but I know so much about him and now, here he is. He has Luke’s square jaw and hazel eyes.