by Mary Kubica
room, wondering where else Will could hide something from
me if he wanted to. I consider the furniture, the floor register,
a smoke detector. My eyes move to the electrical sockets, where
one is placed evenly in the center of each wall, totaling four.
I rise to my feet, foraging inside the dresser, under the bed,
behind the curtain panels. And that’s when a fifth electrical out-
let catches my eye, tucked behind the heavy drapery.
This outlet is not evenly placed as the others are—in the dead
center of each wall—but disproportionately placed in a way
that doesn’t make sense to me. It’s mere feet to the left of an-
other outlet and, on close examination, looks slightly different
than the rest, though an unsuspecting person would never no-
tice. Only someone who very much believed her husband had
something to hide.
I let my gaze fall to the doorway. I listen, making sure Will
isn’t on his way up. The hallway is dark, empty, but it’s not quiet.
Tate is wound up tonight.
I drop to my hands and knees. I don’t have a screwdriver and
so I plunge a thumbnail into the head of the screw. I turn and
turn, warping the nail, tearing it low enough that it makes my
finger bleed. The screw comes out. Instead of peeling the outlet
cover away from the wall, it opens, revealing a tiny safe behind.
There is no knife, no washcloth, no necklace there. Instead there’s a roll of cash, hundred-dollar bills mostly, which I quickly, ham-fistedly tally up, losing count, landing somewhere well into the
thousands of dollars. My finger bleeds on the dollar bills. My
heart races inside of me.
Why would Will be hiding this money in the wall?
Why would Will be hiding this money from me?
There’s nothing else there.
I don’t replace the contents of the safe. I hide that in my own
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dresser drawer. I drop the drapes back into place. I stand from
the floor, press a hand to the wall to steady myself. Around me,
the world spins.
When I get control of myself, I walk lightly from the bed-
room and down the stairs. I hold my breath. I bite down hard
on my lip as I descend the steps one at a time.
As I approach the bottom steps, I hear Will humming a happy
tune. He’s in the kitchen, washing dishes I think. The sink water
runs.
I don’t go to the kitchen. I go to the office instead, turn the
knob and softly close the door behind myself so there is no au-
dible noise of the latch bolt retracting. I don’t lock the door; it would rouse suspicion if Will found me in the office with the
door locked.
I check the search history first. There’s nothing there. It’s all
been wiped clean, even the earlier search I found on Erin’s death.
It’s gone. Someone sat at this computer after me, got rid of the
internet search just like the knife and the washcloth.
I open a search engine. I type in Erin’s name for myself and
see what I can find. But it’s all the same as I saw before, detailed accounts of the storm and her accident. I see now that there was
never an investigation into her death. It was ruled an accident
based on the circumstances, namely the weather.
I do a search into our finances. I can’t understand why Will
would be hiding so much money in the walls of our home. Will
pays the bills for us. I don’t pay much attention to them unless
he leaves a bill lying around on the counter for me to see. Oth-
erwise the bills come and go without my knowledge.
I to go the bank website. The passwords for our accounts are
all nearly the same, some variation on Otto and Tate’s names and
birthdates. Our checking and savings accounts seem to be intact. I
close the site and look into our retirement accounts, the kids’ college savings, the credit card balance. These seem reasonable too.
I hear Will call for me. Hear his footsteps go up and then
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MARY KUBICA
down the stairs, looking for me. “I’m here,” I call out, hoping
he doesn’t hear the tremor in my voice.
I don’t minimize the screen. Instead I enter another search:
dissociative identity disorder. When he comes into the room
and asks, I tell him I’m trying to learn more about my disease.
We haven’t yet talked about how he knew and I didn’t. It’s just
another thing he’s been keeping from me.
But now that I know about it, there’s a new worry: that I’ll
simply up and disappear at any moment and someone else will
take my place.
“I poured you a glass of Malbec,” he says, standing in the office
doorway with it, carrying it in a stemless glass. He comes fur-
ther into the room, strokes my hair with his free hand. My skin
crawls as he does and it takes everything in me not to pull away
from his touch. “We were out of the cabernet,” he says, which
he knows is my favorite wine. Malbec is decidedly more bitter
than I like, but it doesn’t matter tonight. I’ll drink anything.
He peers over my shoulder at the website I’ve landed on, a gen-
eral medical site that lists symptoms and treatment. “I hope you
aren’t upset that I didn’t tell you,” he says by means of an apol-
ogy. “You’d take it hard, I knew. And you were managing the
condition quite well. I kept an eye on you, made sure you were
fine. If I’d have ever thought things were turning problematic…”
He stops abruptly there. I glance up to face him.
“Thank you,” I say, for the wine, as he sets the glass on the
desktop and tells me, “After everything you’ve been through
today, I thought maybe you could use a drink.”
I could most certainly use a drink, something to calm and
soothe me. I reach for the glass and angle it toward my lips,
imagining the anesthetizing sensation as it slips down my throat
and dulls my senses.
But my hand shakes as I do, and so I put the glass instantly
back, not wanting Will to see how nervous I am because of him.
“Don’t worry yourself over this,” he says. With two free
hands, he massages my shoulders, up my neck. His hands are
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warm and assertive. His fingers worm their way onto my scalp,
through my hair, kneading the base of my skull where I’m prone
to tension headaches.
“I’ve done some research myself,” Will says. “Psychotherapy
is the recommended treatment. There are no medications that
treat this thing,” as if it’s cancer that I’ve got.
I wonder if he knows so much, why he never suggested psy-
chotherapy before. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen therapists in
the past. Perhaps it’s because he mistakenly believed I was get-
ting treatment.
Or perhaps it’s because he never wanted me to get better.
“We’
ll come up with a plan in the morning,” he says, “after
you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”
He withdraws his hands from my head. He steps to the side
of his chair and with a soft spin, he turns the chair so that I’m
looking at him.
I don’t like the control he has over me.
Will waits a beat, and then he drops to his knees. He looks
me in the eye. Says dotingly, “I know this has been a hell of day.
Tomorrow will be better, for both of us.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, and he tells me, “I am. I promise.”
And then he cups my face in his hands. He runs his lips over
mine, softly, delicately, as if I’m easily broken. He tells me I
mean the world to him. That he loves me more than words
could ever say.
From upstairs, there’s a thump. Tate begins to scream. He’s
fallen from bed.
Will draws back, eyes closed. In a moment, he rises up to
standing.
He nods towards the glass of wine. “Just holler if you’d like
more.”
He leaves, and only then do I catch my breath. I hear his foot-
steps on the stairs, his voice call out to Tate that he’s on his way.
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Will
For as smart as Sadie is, she’s also utterly clueless. There’s a lot she doesn’t know. Like how, if I log in to her Google account
from another device—as I do from the bedroom now—I can
see her search history.
She’s been up to no good. Nosing around on the bank’s web-
site. Not that she’ll find anything there.
But she found other things.
It was the blood that gave it away, as I first came into the
bedroom a few minutes ago. Four stray drops of it on the floor,
from the door to the curtains. I went to the bedroom curtains,
looked behind, saw that the outlet cover hung lightly aslant. I
opened the safe. The money was gone.
That avaricious hog, I thought. What has she done with it?
Now that she found the money, it won’t take long for Sadie
to figure out I’ve been robbing Imogen’s trust fund. The girl is
a pest but she’s worth keeping around just for that. I’m slowly
creating my own little nest egg.
According to her search history, Sadie’s also been looking into
Erin and Morgan online. Connecting the dots.
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Perhaps she’s not as clueless as I thought.
I put Tate to bed. He’s glum from the fall. I give him Bena-
dryl, tell him it will help his little noggin feel better. I give a dab more than the recommended dose. I can’t have him awake
tonight.
I kiss the spot on Tate’s head where it hurts, get him in bed.
He asks for a bedtime story, and I oblige. I’m not worried. No
matter what Sadie finds, it will be a moot point when she drinks
her wine.
It’s only a matter of time.
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Sadie
I have to find a way to call Officer Berg and tell him what I’ve
found. He won’t believe me. But I have to tell him anyway.
He’ll be obligated to look into it.
I haven’t seen my cell phone since the morning. The last time
I saw it, it was in the kitchen, the same place our landline is.
That’s where I need to go.
But the idea of leaving the office scares me. Because if Will
could kill Erin, he could kill me.
I take a series of deep breaths before I go. I try to act non-
chalant. I carry my wine with me. I bring a letter opener just
in case, with a sharp-enough blade. I slide it in the waistband
of my pajama pants, worried it will fall.
On the other side of the office door, I’m vulnerable. The
house is oddly quiet and dark. The kids are asleep. No one told
me good-night.
A light glows in the kitchen. It’s not bright. A stove light
only, which I go to, like a moth to a porch light, trying hard to
shake the feeling that Will is behind me, that Will is watching
me, that Will is there.
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If he killed Erin, how did he do it? Was it in a fit of rage, or
was it premeditated? And what about Morgan? How, exactly,
did she die?
I feel the letter opener slipping deeper into my pants. I hoist
it up. My hands are trembling, unsteady, and so the wine spills
as I do, the glass getting cocked too far to one side. I lick the
rim of the glass to wipe it clean. I purse my lips, not liking the
bitter taste of the Malbec. Regardless, I take another sip, force
it down as tears prick my eyes.
A noise from behind startles me and I turn, seeing only the
shadowy foyer, the indefinite dining room. I hold still, watch-
ing, waiting, for movements, for sound. This old home has so
many dark corners, so many places where someone can hide.
“Will?” I say lightly, expecting him to reply, but he doesn’t.
No one does. No one’s there, or at least I don’t think someone
is there. I hold my breath, listen for footsteps, for breathing.
There’s none. A blunt headache lingers, worsening in inten-
sity as the moments go by, and I find myself becoming hot and
bothered because of it. Under my armpits and between my legs,
the skin is tacky. I take another sip of the wine, try and calm
my nerves. The wine doesn’t taste as bad this time. I’m getting
used to the bitterness.
I see my phone on the table. I quickly cross the room and
grab for it, stifling a cry when I turn it over to see that the battery is dead again. It will take a couple minutes for the phone to
charge well enough to use. There is another option, the landline,
which is corded. The only way to use it is here in the kitchen.
I’ll have to be quick.
I walk back across the kitchen. I grab the landline, a dated
thing. Officer Berg’s business card is tucked in the letter holder
on the counter, which I’m grateful for because, without my cell
phone, I don’t have my contacts. I dial the number on the card.
I wait desperately for the police officer to answer, sipping ner-
vously from the glass of Malbec as I do.
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Will
I follow her as she goes from one room to the next. She looks
for me. She doesn’t know that I’m here, closer than she thinks.
She’s monkeying around in the kitchen now. But when I hear
the spin of a rotary dial I know it’s time to intervene.
I come into the room. Sadie whirls around to face me, eyes
wide. A deer in headlights is what she is, clutching the phone
to her ear. She’s scared shitless. Beads of sweat edge her hair-
line. Her skin is colorless, damp. Her breathing is uneven. I can
practically see her heart thumping in her chest, like a scared
little bird. It’s reassuring to se
e that a third of the wine’s been drunk.
I’m on to her. But does she know that I am?
“Who are you calling?” I ask calmly, just to see her grapple
for a lie. But Sadie’s never been a good liar, and so instead she’s a deaf-mute. It’s telling, isn’t it? That’s how I know that she
knows that I know.
My tone shifts. I’m tired of this game.
“Put the phone down, Sadie.”
She doesn’t. I step closer, snatch the phone from her, set it
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back on the receiver. She tries to hold on to it, but Sadie lacks
physical strength. The phone gives effortlessly.
“That,” I tell her, “was not your brightest idea.” Because
now I’m mad.
I weigh my options. If she hasn’t drunk enough, I may have
to coerce her into finishing the wine. But gagging and vomit-
ing would be counterintuitive. I think of another way. I hadn’t
been planning on disposing of a body, not tonight, but it’d be
just the same to make Berg believe she ran away as it would to
make it look like a suicide. A little more laborious than origi-
nally thought, but still doable.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife. I love my family. I’m
quite torn up about this.
But it’s unavoidable, a necessary consequence of the can of
worms that Sadie has opened. If only she’d have left well enough
alone. It’s her fault this is happening.
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Sadie
I feel woozy. Disoriented. Panic-stricken. Because Will is angry,
livid in a way that I’ve never seen him before. I don’t know this
man who stands before me, glaring intimidatingly at me. He
looks vaguely like the man I married, and yet different. His
words are clipped, his voice hostile. He jostles the phone from
my hand, and that’s how I know I wasn’t imagining things. If
I had any doubts about Will’s part in Morgan’s death, they’re
gone. Will did something.
I take a step back for each step he draws near, knowing that
soon my back will be to the wall. I have to think quickly. But
my mind is foggy, thick. Will goes out of focus before me, but
I see his hands, coming at me, in slow motion.
I remember the letter opener just then, tucked away in the
waistband of my pants. I grope for it, but my hands are trem-
