by Mary Kubica
ter? She sat on a chair in the nurse’s office until the end of the
school day. Because Emma was here, making excuses for your
absence.”
“That’s not what happened,” I tell him.
“You have proof to the contrary?” Officer Berg asks, which
of course I don’t. Nothing concrete.
“You could call the school,” I manage to think up just then.
“Check with the school nurse to see which day Emma’s daugh-
ter was sick. Because I’d bet my life on it, Officer. It wasn’t De-
cember first.”
The look he gives me is leery. He says nothing.
“I’m a good doctor,” is all I can think in that moment to
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say. “I’ve saved many lives, Officer. More than you know,”
and I think of all those people who would no longer be alive if
it wasn’t for me. Those with gunshot wounds to vital organs,
in diabetic comas and respiratory distress. I say it again. “I’m a
good doctor.”
“Your work ethic isn’t what concerns me, Doctor,” he says.
“What I’m trying to get at is that on the afternoon of the first,
between the hours of twelve and three, your whereabouts are
unaccounted for. You have no alibi. Now, I’m not saying you had
anything to do with Morgan’s murder or that you are somehow
an unfit physician. What I’m saying is that there seems to be
some ill will between you and Mrs. Baines, some sort of hostil-
ity that needs explaining, as do your lies. It’s the cover-up, Dr.
Foust, that’s often worse than the crime. So why don’t you just
tell me. Just go on and tell me what happened that afternoon
between you and Mrs. Baines,” he says.
I cross my arms against my chest. There’s nothing to say.
“Let me let you in on a little secret,” he says in response to
my silence. “This is a small island and stories spread quick. Lots
of loose lips.”
“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
He says, “Let’s just say that yours wouldn’t be the first hus-
band who ever had eyes for Mrs. Baines.”
And then he offers a flinty stare, waiting for some response,
for me to become indignant.
I won’t give in.
I swallow hard. I force my hands behind me; they’ve begun
to shake.
“Will and I are happily married. Madly in love,” I say, forc-
ing my eyes on his. Will and I were madly in love, once. It’s a
half truth, not a lie.
The lie comes next. “Will has never had eyes for any woman
but me.”
Officer Berg smiles. But it’s a tight-lipped smile. A smile that
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says he knows better than to believe this. “Well,” he says, care-
ful with his words. “Mr. Foust is a very lucky man. You’re both
lucky. Happy marriages these days are a rare bird.” He raises his
left hand to show me the bare ring finger. “Married twice,” he
confesses, “divorced twice. No more weddings for me. Any-
how,” he says, “maybe I misinterpreted what they said.”
My willpower isn’t strong. I know I shouldn’t and yet I do.
I take the bait.
“What who said?” I ask.
He tells me, “The mothers at the school pickup line. They
stand in clusters outside the gate, waiting for their kids to be
released. They like to talk, to gossip, as I’m sure you know. For
most, it’s the only adult conversation they have all day until their husbands come home from work.”
It strikes me as a very misogynistic thing to say. That women
gossip, that husbands work. I wonder what Officer Berg thinks
of Will and my arrangement. I don’t ask. He goes on to say, “It’s
just that, when I questioned them, they alluded to the fact that
your husband and Mrs. Baines were quite—what’s the word
they used?” he thinks aloud, deciding, “Chummy. Yes, that’s it.
Chummy. He said that they were quite chummy.”
My reply is immediate. “You’ve met him. Will is outgoing,
easy to get along with. Everyone likes him. This doesn’t sur-
prise me.”
“No?” he asks. “Because the details,” he tells me, “surprised
me a bit. The way these women said they would stand close,
their conversations hushed, whispering words so that no one
else could hear. One of the women had a picture.”
“She took a picture of Will and Morgan?” I interject, incred-
ulous. Not only is she gossiping about my husband, but she’s
taking photos of him—for what purpose?
“Calm down, Dr. Foust,” he says, though it’s patronizing the
way he says it. On the surface, I am calm, though inside my heart
is racing. “She took a picture of her son coming out of school.
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He’d received the principal’s award,” he explains, finding the
photo that this woman shared and showing it to me. Her son
stands in the foreground. Maybe ten years old, a mop of flaxen
hair that hangs into his eyes, his winter coat unzipped, shoe
untied. In his hands he holds a certificate that reads Principal’s
Award, a big deal in elementary school though it shouldn’t be.
Because by the end of the year everyone gets one. But for the
kids, it’s a big deal. The boy’s grin is wide. He’s proud of his
certificate.
My eyes move to the background. There stand Will and Mor-
gan, just as Officer Berg described. They stand close in a way
that makes my stomach churn. He’s turned toward her, facing
her, his hand on her arm. There’s sadness on her face, in her eyes.
It’s plain to see. His torso is bent at the waist so that he slopes into her by twenty or thirty degrees. His face is only inches from
hers. His lips are parted, eyes locked on hers.
He’s speaking to her, telling her something.
What was Will telling her when this picture was taken?
What was he saying that he had to be standing so close to
say it?
“Looks a little suspect if you ask me,” Officer Berg says,
snatching the photograph from me.
“I didn’t ask,” I think aloud, getting angry, unable to stop the
words that come next.
“I saw you,” I remember just then. “I saw you put something
into the Nilssons’ mailbox, Officer. Twice. It was money,” I
say. An indictment.
Officer Berg remains composed. “How did you know it was
money?”
“I was curious,” I tell him. “I watched you. After you left, I
went to see.”
“Mail fraud is a federal crime. It carries a hefty penalty, Dr.
Foust. Up to five years in prison, a steep fine.”
“But this wasn’t mail, was it? Mail goes through the postal
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service. This didn’t. You put it there. Which, in and of itself, is a crime, I believe.”
To this, he says nothing.
“What was it, Officer? A kickback, hush money?” Because
there seems no other logical explanation why Officer Berg would
secretly place an envelope of bills in the Nilssons’ mailbox, and
all at once, puzzle pieces drop into place.
“Did you pay Mr. Nilsson to lie?” I ask, dismayed. “To say
he saw me when he didn’t?”
Because without a murderer, Officer Berg needed only a
scapegoat, someone to blame for the crime of killing Morgan
Baines.
He chose me.
Berg leans against the countertop. He wrings his hands be-
fore him. I take a deep breath and gather myself, spinning the
conversation in a different direction. “How much does obstruc-
tion of justice go for these days?” I ask.
“Pardon me?”
I make sure my question is clear this time. “How much did
you pay Mr. Nilsson to lie for you?” I ask.
A beat of silence passes by. All the while he watches me, sur-
prise turning to sadness. “I almost wish that was the case, Doc-
tor,” he says, lowering his head. “But no. Unfortunately not. The
Nilssons have fallen on hard times. They’re nearly broke. Their
son got in some trouble, and George and Poppy spent half their
savings to help him out. Now there’s talk that the city might
take their home if George can’t find a way to pay his municipal
taxes on time. Poor George,” he sighs. “But George is a proud
man. It’d kill him to ask for help. I keep my donations anony-
mous, so it doesn’t feel like a handout. I’d appreciate it if you
didn’t say anything,” he says.
He takes a step closer to me and says, “Look, Dr. Foust. Be-
tween you and me, I don’t think you’re capable of murder. But
the truth is that spouses don’t always make the most viable ali-
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bis. They’re subject to bias; there’s a motive to lie. The fact that you and your husband both claim you were at home when Morgan was killed isn’t an impenetrable alibi. A prosecutor may see
right through that. Add to that witness statements, and we have
ourselves a bit of a problem.”
I say nothing.
“If you help me, I will do everything I can to help you.”
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
He says, “The truth.”
But I’ve already told him the truth. “I’ve been nothing but
honest with you,” I say.
“You’re certain of that?” he asks.
I tell him I am. He stares awhile.
And then, in time, he tips his hat at me, and he leaves.
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Sadie
At night I find it hard to sleep. I spend most of the restless night awake, on alert, waiting for Imogen to creep into the bedroom.
Every sound worries me, thinking it’s the opening of a bedroom
door, footsteps padding across the floor. It’s not. It’s just the
house showing its age: water through pipes, the furnace quickly
dying. I try and talk myself down, reminding myself that Imo-
gen only came into our room the one time because of some-
thing I’d done. It wasn’t unprovoked. I tell myself she wouldn’t
come again, but that doesn’t come close to allaying my concerns.
I’m also thinking about the photograph Officer Berg showed
to me. I wonder if, in the photograph, Will was consoling Mor-
gan because she was already sad? Or if Will had said or done
something to make her sad?
What power would my husband have over this woman to
make her sad?
In time, morning comes. Will goes to start breakfast. I wait
upstairs as Imogen, just down the hall, gets ready for school. I
hear her moving about before she clomps down the stairs, her
feet heavy and embittered, spiteful.
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Downstairs, I hear her talking to Will. I move into the upstairs
hall to listen. But, try as I might, I can’t make out their words.
The front door opens and then slams closed. Imogen is gone.
Will is standing in the kitchen when I come downstairs. The
boys are at the table, eating a French toast breakfast that he’s
made.
“Do you have a second?” Will asks, and I follow him from
the room where we can speak in private. His face is inexpres-
sive, his long hair pulled back into a tidy bun. He leans against
a wall; he holds my gaze. “I spoke to Imogen this morning,” he
tells me, “about your concerns,” and it’s his word choice that
gets on my nerves. Your, as in mine. Not our concerns. I hope he didn’t approach the conversation with Imogen that same way.
Because then she’d hate me more than she already does.
“I asked her about the photograph you said you saw on her
phone. I wanted to see it.”
He chooses his words carefully. That’s not lost on me. You
said you saw.
“And?” I ask, sensing his hesitation. He drops his gaze. Imo-
gen has done something, I think. “Did she show you the pic-
ture of Alice?” I ask, hoping that Will, too, saw the same thing
I saw. The stepstool standing vertical, far out of reach of Alice’s dangling feet. The half of the night I wasn’t kept awake thinking about Will and Morgan, I was thinking about this. How
a woman could spring five feet from a stool and land with her
head in a noose.
“I looked at her phone,” Will says. “I looked through all the
pictures. Three thousand of them. There was nothing there like
what you described, Sadie,” he says.
My blood pressure spikes. I feel hot all of a sudden and angry.
“She deleted it,” I say rather matter-of-factly. Because of course
she did. “It was there, Will. Did you check the recently deleted
folder?” I ask him, and he tells me he did check the deleted
folder. It wasn’t there either.
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“Then she permanently deleted it,” I say. “Did you ask her
about it, Will?”
“I did, Sadie. I asked her what happened to the photograph.
She said there never was a photograph. She couldn’t believe
you’d make something like this up. She was upset. She thinks
you don’t like her.”
At first I say nothing. I can only stare, struck dumb by his
statement. I search Will’s eyes.
Does he, too, think I made this up?
Tate calls to Will from the kitchen. He’s hungry for more
French toast. Will goes to the kitchen. I follow along. “She’s
lying, you know?” Otto, at the table, gives me a look as I say it.
Will dishes another slice of French toast onto Tate’s plate. He
says nothing. His lack of a reply hits a raw nerve. Because if he
doesn’t believe Imogen lied, then he’s suggesting I did.
“Look,” he says, “let me think on this a little while, figure out
what to do. I’ll see if there is a way to recover deleted photos.”
Will hands me my pills and I swallow them with a swig of cof-
fee. He’s dressed in a Henley and cargo pants because he teaches
today, his work bag packed and waiting by the door for him to
go. He’s reading a new book these days. It’s there, jutting out
from his work bag on the floor. A hardcover with a dust jacket,
the spine of which is orange.
I wonder if Erin’s photograph is inside this book too.
Tate stares sideways at me from the table. Though I’ve tried
to apologize, he’s still mad at me for what happened the other
day with the doll and his game. I decide to pick up a new Lego
kit for him today. Legos make everything better.
Otto and I go. He’s quieter than usual in the car. I see in his
eyes that something is wrong. He knows more than he lets on,
about the tension in Will’s and my marriage, about Imogen. Of
course he does. He’s a fourteen-year-old boy. He isn’t stupid. “Is
everything okay?” I ask. “Anything you want to talk about?”
His reply is short. “Nope,” he says, looking away.
I drive him to the dock and drop him off, searching the wa-
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terfront for Imogen. She isn’t here. The ferry comes and the
ferry goes. When Otto is gone, I step from my car and go to
the ticket window. I purchase a ticket for the next ferry to the
mainland. I get back in my car and wait. When the ferry ar-
rives, not thirty minutes later, I drive onto the vehicle deck and
put the car in Park. I turn it off and leave my car there, walk-
ing walk up the steps to the upper deck of the ferry. I sit on a
bench and stare at the ocean as we go. It’s only eight o’clock.
I have nearly the whole day in front of me. Will, off to work,
won’t know how I’ve spent my time.
As the ferry makes its way across the bay, a sense of relief
washes over me. Our island shrinks in size and becomes just one
of many islands off the coast of Maine. As the mainland draws
near, a city swells before me, with buildings and people and
noise. For now, I push my thoughts of Imogen aside.
The police are looking for a scapegoat only. Officer Berg is
trying to pin this murder on me. In order to clear my own name,
