Such a Good Wife

by Seraphina Nova Glass

  “You’re a crazy, fucking bitch.”

  “Yep.”

  “Semen? I used—”

  I stop him abruptly and tell him about using a syringe so it would be found inside me. His jaw drops so dramatically it’s almost cartoonish. He slinks into the chair again, frozen with utter shock and outrage.

  “What?” he says, almost in a whisper. “I didn’t do anything to you. Why would you do this? That’s not proof, by the way, psycho. We had sex, that’s all that proves.”

  I click on my carefully edited video and show him on my phone. It recorded fifty-four minutes of us from when he arrived with the wine to when we left, but I edited it down to a perfect forty-one seconds of him hitting my face and strangling me while I beg him to stop. The rest of the video doesn’t exist anymore.

  “They’ll know you edited that,” he argues.

  “Nope. There are safe apps that automatically start recording when you press a panic button. They come with key fobs, so I could have pressed it at any time to start the video. See where it starts, right when I move my hand from the nightstand to my face. It looks like I may have reached over right when the recording started.” It doesn’t matter that I didn’t do it this way. Just that it’s possible is good enough. The other pieces of evidence don’t really need explaining after that. He sees the photos of all my injuries, snapshots I took of my hospital band and the documents I signed in the hospital, the police report.

  “Why would you...I didn’t do shit to you.”

  “But you did to Lacy.”

  “Lacy—wha? What?”

  “By the way, I gave her a copy of all this, so if you’re thinking of doing anything crazy, you’ll be even more fucked,” I snap, using the insurance policy I quickly thought about when he walked in.

  He looks so defeated and pathetic, I almost feel sorry for him. The way he shakes his head in slow disbelief and lowers his tone as he says, “Why would I do anything to you? Oh my God.”

  “It’s all here. Every detail has been covered.”

  “What do you want? Why? Because of Lacy? You act like I’m some abuser, some maniac. She hits me all the time, does she tell you that? She provokes a fight, I’m not out there looking for trouble. Jesus, Melanie. Fuck!”

  But I don’t feel for him. He’s a bigger liar than I am. He doesn’t know that I not only saw it with my own eyes, I was also the one holding her hand in that hospital after he left her for dead, thinking his coveted position in the community could keep him safe.

  “So that’s what you want? You want me out of Lacy’s life? You don’t think there were easier ways to go about that? Fine. That’s fine, I was already done with that cow anyway.”

  “That’s part of it, but that’s not why we’re here.”

  “Then fuckin’ tell me why we’re here!” He stands and walks to the opposite wall, punching his fist through the cheap drywall.

  “There’s one more thing,” I say, and push the printouts of all his communication with Valerie toward him on the table. His eyes scan it, trying to make sense of these messages and why they’re in my possession.

  “How did you get this? What the hell is going on?”

  “I want you to clear me and my family from your Luke Ellison investigation.”

  “You—” He starts to say something, but I stop him.

  “Talking to the murdered man’s wife before his death doesn’t look good for you. That, along with all of this—” I swipe my hand across the papers. “You made plans to meet on the night of the murder just before they say it happened.”

  “You think I...? You...” He stares at the messages with parted lips, then he sighs deeply.

  “All this so your affair with Luke isn’t outed?” he asks, of course not having any idea that if they keep digging, they’ll find a lot more than an affair.

  “Yes.” I start to snatch up all my evidence and stuff it into my bag, keeping it away from him.

  “You said you and Collin had an arrangement. Why would you do all this to—”

  “I lied. I said that so you wouldn’t question me sleeping with you or be suspicious of it. It worked. Finding out about an affair would kill him, and it would destroy my kids’ lives, and you just can’t let it go.”

  “That’s what the other night was about? Are you kidding me?”

  “Listen. You need to clear us from the investigation. Rule it a suicide. They said foul play was suspected. Not confirmed. You’re the lead investigator. There was alcohol in his system, and he fell straight down, not as if he were pushed, and there is no weapon. I saw that all on the news already. So you can clear me and my family from any association with him, and in a week or two, you can close the case and rule suicide, can’t you?”

  “For fuck’s sake. I don’t think you killed anyone. You are taking this way too far.”

  “It’s not about that,” I lie. “My life will be over if Collin finds out about Luke, and if you don’t shut it down and take my name out of it, and make sure your little partner Davis is on board, it won’t be my affair that makes headlines. You’ll be the one on the front pages of all the newspapers, unemployed and a registered sex offender. Fucking try me.”

  He doesn’t move for a few minutes. The room is soundless except for our ragged breathing. I stare at his back and he goes to the bed and puts on his belt. I don’t know what he’s going to do next. I hold up the video on my phone again, the sound of his slap and grunting playing to his back.

  “Or, I could just upload this to Instagram right now and let the chips fall as they may.”

  “I can’t believe you’re this fucking crazy. I didn’t do SHIT TO YOU!” He smashes in the TV mounted to the wall with his hands and rips it violently until it hits the floor with a crash. He comes up within inches of my face, nostrils flaring. He pushes me, hard, against the wall. I can’t cower. I don’t know what he’ll do, but I look directly in his eyes.

  “There’s nothing you can do. I’ll keep your name off of it, if you do the same for me. Send me the report once it’s done, proving I’m cleared, then that the investigation is dropped. No foul play.”

  “If you leak all of this after I do that, you’re dead. That’s a promise.”

  “I won’t. Why would I rock the boat? I want this over.”

  He pushes off the wall, away from me, and grabs his keys off the table. Just before he opens the motel door to leave he screams, “You’re a fucking sociopath!” Then he pulls the door open so hard it cracks the drywall when it hits the inside wall with a violent impact.

  “All of this really happened. You really did all of this. It’s just that you did it to someone else. So I’d say you’re getting off pretty lucky. Oh, and if you go after Lacy, the deal’s off. I’ll ruin your life.”

  He slams the door behind him, and I lock it before collapsing on the floor in front of it, trembling violently. It’s done.

  33

  As someone who has always thought my life as a suburban wife would never amount to anything anyone would want to read about, now I have a story, and it’s a story that I can never tell anyone. Even if the writing group does start back up when Jonathan is back on his feet, I have a story I can never write down.

  A week after my meeting with Joe, he sent me a copy of the report that says Luke Ellison’s death has been ruled a suicide. I didn’t tell Collin once I got the report. He can’t wonder how I knew before it was public, so I wait, and a few days later, the tight-faced local reporter announces the news on channel five.

  I’m still going to have to see Joe Brooks around town, and the thought makes me feel nauseous. But he can’t tell my secret without implicating himself, especially now that he’s rigged the investigation. So we’re in an uneasy, unspoken truce.

  I watch Collin absorb the life-altering declaration from a casual disclosure on TV. I am chopping cucumbers for a salad and sneaking crum
bles of cheese down to Ralph on the floor below me when I see him get the news. His hand flutters to his mouth and every muscle in his back releases.

  “Dad, what’s wrong?” Ben stops his coloring to ask from his seated place on the floor near the coffee table. Claire makes a sound from her wheelchair, and Collin sees her reaching for her cup of water and kneels to help her.

  “Nothin’, bud.” Collin turns to look at me with a well of tears filling his eyes.

  I close my eyes and sigh, a gesture of solidarity, all we can manage in front of the kids. My phone vibrates across the kitchen island, and I wipe my hands on a tea towel and push Decline, seeing that it’s my mother, whom I have no interest in talking to in this moment, but something familiar flashes in Collin’s eyes as he sees me dismiss a call and slide my phone in my apron pocket. Suspicion?

  But he only smiles at me, and I cock my head and smile back but with a question in my look, as if to ask, What is it? He just turns back to the television.

  We look at each other over steak and peas at dinner, exchanging glances mixed with hope, tenderness and something else. Some foreign expression—a mutual knowledge that we are forever trapped under the weight of the secrets we keep, along with a fear that some faraway day, some cold case investigator might reopen the case. It may never entirely go away. We can’t be certain.

  Collin mentions a vacation to Panama to the kids without asking me first, but I know it’s a chance to ask around about work and look at bungalows. “Just a week on the beach. I think we’ve earned it,” he says, as they cheer in delight. Then I suggest an outing for ice cream and we all pile into the car.

  We don’t look at one another as we make our way to the Dairy Queen a few miles away, the kids chattering, happy, blissfully unaware of how deeply we have fractured their lives. We quietly drive into the slim stripe of purple horizon, which bleeds like ribbons of wet paint into the crimson clouds, burning low behind the setting sun.

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  THANK YOU SO MUCH to my parents, Dianna Nova and Julie Loehrer, who are always unconditionally supportive. A special thanks to my incredible husband, Mark Glass, who has had nothing but faith in me throughout my writing journey and always has a kind and encouraging word whenever I second-guess myself.

  Thank you so much to my sister, Tamarind Knutson, and brother-in-law, Mark Knutson, for their support and to all my dear friends back home in Minneapolis. Even though we have been long-distance friends for years, their excitement and support for my first book was humbling and definitely noticed.

  A special thanks to those who went out of their way to support me, Theresa Ford, Shelly Domke and Justin Kirkeberg.

  Thank you so very much to my absolute dream agent, Sharon Bowers, who has always guided me in the right direction while helping me learn the ropes. Thank you to my magnificent editor, Brittany Lavery, who always takes the time for me and makes my work the best it can be.

  I’m so grateful to Anne Healy and Kim LaFontaine, who have been friends and mentors to me and have allowed me to work remotely in order to pursue my publishing career. Thank you to all my colleagues at the University of Texas at Arlington, as well.

  I can’t leave out my Boston terrier, Spaghetti, as he surely makes the long days working alone from my home office...eventful.

  Also by Seraphina Nova Glass

  Someone’s Listening

  ISBN-13: 9781488078101

  Such a Good Wife

  Copyright © 2021 by Seraphina Nova Glass

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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