The Starter Wife

by Nina Laurin

  The word, coming from my cultured husband, is like a slap.

  “What do you think you’re doing, taking a nap with the oven on?”

  “What?” He must see the genuine confusion on my face, because for a moment, his angry expression softens. Only for a moment.

  “The stove top and the oven are on. And whatever was in there is now coals. If I’d gotten here ten minutes later, it would have caught fire. And meanwhile, you decided to take a doze? What the hell were you thinking?”

  His hair is disheveled, he’s wearing his work shirt but no jacket, and there’s a towel scorched with burn marks slung over his arm.

  “I turned it off,” I say, my voice muted and hoarse. I remember it clearly, which is more than I can say about everything that came after, but still. This part I do remember, and I’m not lying. I remember turning off the stove. Yes, the stove. And the oven? I’d turned it off before that. Once I finished baking the lava cakes. Didn’t I?

  He sees my hesitation before I have the good sense to hide it. Anyway, I’m far too drunk and disoriented to make sense. His shoulders sink. “For fuck’s sake, Claire.”

  Before I can say anything in my defense, he disappears back into the kitchen. I follow on his heels.

  It’s hard to breathe in here because the smoke is so thick and black. The lava cakes I’d made—or rather, what’s left of them—are in the sink, charred remains fused permanently to the baking dish. The slow cooker is open, dried-up remains of stew stuck to the bottom.

  “I don’t know how—” I start, but he spins around.

  “I think I know how. How much did you drink? That bottle was nearly full yesterday. Now there’s not even half a glass left.”

  My gaze travels from his furious expression to the bottle of cheap wine that stands on the counter like an accusation. He’s right; it’s almost empty. Except when I poured myself a glass, it wasn’t. I could swear it.

  But what can I possibly say in my defense? Someone broke into the house while I was asleep, poured a full bottle of wine down my gullet, and turned on the stove? Even I realize that’s ridiculous.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” His voice snaps with irritation. “Is there a problem I should know about? What exactly do you do here by yourself all day when you’re supposed to be writing?”

  I’m aghast. Bringing my failed manuscript into this? It’s adding insult to injury. Mean and unnecessary. “I’m cleaning and cooking,” I say slowly. “For you.”

  “I can damn well see that.”

  “Look, I don’t know what happened,” I bleat. I glance at the clock. It’s nearing ten p.m., and what I should be asking is why he’s coming home so late, but how can I, faced with this mess? “I swear. I was tired and dozed off. And maybe—” I’m scrambling here, making things up. “Maybe I thought I turned the stove down to minimum but I actually cranked it to maximum instead. I was distracted. I can help you clean.”

  “Just go to bed,” he growls. “Please.”

  That’s about all I have the energy to do. I go upstairs and collapse onto the bed fully dressed, burying my face in the satin pillow, breathing in the smell of detergent and fabric softener and his shampoo that suddenly seems completely alien, unfamiliar, and evil.

  * * *

  I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’ve done. It was a bold move to drug her wine. But if she actually ever cooked with it, I never would have. I would never risk any of that ending up in your food. But I know she nips into the stuff all day long. I sniffed it before I mixed in the crushed pills, and it was so sour and disgusting. She only pretends to have good taste around you, to fool you. Deep down, I suspect she’s trash. Like me, perhaps, you could say. But don’t worry—not for much longer.

  Anyway, it’s not even the worst thing I’ve done.

  I hope you’ll forgive me one day. Something tells me you will.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The next day, I feel good, relatively speaking. I fell asleep pretty much instantly and woke up naked, tucked neatly under the covers—which almost brought tears to my eyes except, when I examined the bed, I could have sworn that Byron didn’t sleep in it. There was nothing, no note. The only reminder that any of that was real are the charred dishes sitting by the sink, filled with an inch of nauseating, soapy water.

  When I peer into the living room, I see bundled-up sheets and a pillow on the couch. Just like I thought. Yet for some reason, the sight still causes near-physical pain.

  When I remember what I have planned for today, I groan inwardly, and I’m this close to writing her a message to cancel. The last person I want to talk to right now is Byron’s one-time sort-of girlfriend. But at the same time, I know I can’t do that. I set this thing in motion, and for the first time, it occurs to me that I might not be able to stop it.

  I’m not even sure I want to stop it. Not after yesterday.

  It’s not that I think Byron had anything to do with what happened to Colleen. But the more I replay the scene in my mind (and I do, many, many times over, pausing over each little detail), the more the eerie mental image becomes vivid. This same scene, eight years before. Husband yelling accusations at his furious, frustrated wife, who doesn’t know what to say.

  I don’t know what to think. I need to know more. And that’s why I need Isabelle Herrera.

  We agreed to talk on the phone since she now lives in Minnesota. I googled her, of course. Her Facebook is locked under privacy filters so I had to get creative. Luckily, she friended my dummy account back after a few hours. Her profile picture is of her with a group of friends, her face out of focus. Isabelle appears to have a nice, comfortable life, a husband, but all of it is somehow quaint, too mundane, as if she is making the most generic choices on purpose. As if, unlike most people, she is trying to be unremarkable.

  She calls me at noon sharp, like we said in our emails. My phone says No ID Available, but I know it’s her, good and punctual.

  I pick up, my heart doing backflips. My hand is sweaty when I bring the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?” says a pleasant voice, lower pitched than mine but velvety somehow. Still, all that smoothness can’t hide how nervous she is.

  “Isabelle?” I ask, unnecessarily.

  “Yes, it’s me. I’m on my lunch hour. You must be Claire?”

  I tell her that yes, this is me. Byron’s wife, I almost add, in a petty moment of jealousy.

  “I’m happy to talk to you.” Something in her voice tells me it’s exactly the opposite, and her little nervous laugh confirms the lie. “I mean, you must not be that happy to talk to me. But believe me, I have nothing bad to tell you. I haven’t so much as spoken to Byron in years. I live in Minneapolis now, and I’m quite happy here.”

  Good for you, I think.

  “Oh, it’s not that,” I say, with an awkward laugh of my own. “I wanted to know— My friend Derek—” I’d rehearsed this in my head about a thousand times over but when I desperately scramble for the words, they’re gone. “He told me you knew something about Byron and…and his first wife.” I can’t bring myself to say her name, like she’s Bloody Mary.

  There’s a silence on the other end, soft breath and softer static. The silence lingers, and it gets heavier with every millisecond.

  “If that’s what you’re thinking, he did not cheat on his wife with me,” she says in a low, half-whispered hiss, and I wonder if she’s not alone. I know she works in the office of a telecom giant, a twenty-story tower in the downtown center. Where did she hide away on her lunch break? Are her coworkers eavesdropping?

  “I never thought that,” I reassure her. Truth is I thought all that and more. But that’s not how I’m going to get this skittish woman to take my side. “I just— You knew them both. You were close to them when they were married. I just wanted an insider perspective.”

  “Wait a minute.” Suddenly her voice is sharp, angry. “Are you press?”

  I’m taken aback by the question. “What? No. I’m—”

/>   “I wouldn’t put it past some so-called investigative journalist to pose as his wife,” she hisses.

  “I’m Claire,” I say levelly. “We got married two years ago. I’m not a journalist. Why would you think that?”

  A heavy sigh. “Shit,” she mutters under her breath. “Sorry. It just makes me jumpy, you know?”

  I don’t know what to say so I let out an empathetic hmm and then let a pause linger, waiting for her to follow the natural impulse to talk it out.

  “I mean, when she…after she went missing, they called me into the police station and made me give a statement. It was the first time I’d ever been in a police station. Can you imagine?”

  So that’s it, I think. This is what Derek was really telling me about. Those campus rumors started with her.

  “That’s awful,” I say. I’m really thinking it, if perhaps for different reasons.

  “Then you probably already know,” she says with firm resolve.

  “Know?”

  “That I was the one who…how do I put this? Oh God, I sound like I’m on a bad crime show. I was the one who alibied him. Byron.”

  I inhale deeply.

  “Yeah. So, just on the off chance you are a journalist, for the record, it’s true, and I’m not taking it back—I was with him the day she disappeared, all day, and he didn’t do it. God, just listen to me.” Another shaky chuckle. “I have no particular reason to defend him either; I have no horse in this race. I haven’t seen him in years and never will again.”

  The cold certainty of her words sets me on edge.

  “I just wanted to know,” I blurt, “what they were like. Together.”

  She huffs. “If Derek told you that story with the glass, then you probably have a pretty good idea.”

  “He’s the one who suggested I talk to you,” I say.

  “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. You probably think I’m some despicable slut, the other woman, the kind of girl who sleeps with married men. And you probably won’t believe me but here’s the thing: We never slept together.”

  “I never said—”

  But she interrupts me.

  “We might have. Eventually. But we were just flirting, okay? If he cheated on her, it was only emotionally. We’d eat lunch together, go get coffee. We had fun. We understood each other. He wasn’t happy with her, at least not anymore. He told me they used to be so happy before but she’d…she’d changed. She was having some problems. He was happier with me but he wasn’t going to cheat on her. I don’t think so.”

  “I know,” I find myself saying. “He’s not like that.”

  Her chuckle is the answer. For a while she doesn’t say anything.

  “I don’t know if I’d say as much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Another sigh. I can tell she’s wrestling with her conscience.

  “Look, Claire,” she says forcefully, and I know which side won. “I know no wife wants to hear this about her husband, and you’re free to just hang up on me. Either way, I don’t care. And maybe he’s changed, and I hope so for your sake, but back then, Byron wasn’t a good man.”

  She catches her breath after this tirade. I’m holding mine, just barely. “Brilliant, yes, damaged, certainly. But a good guy? No. I think that’s what drew me to him originally. I’m like that—well, I used to be. Attracted to fixer-uppers.” A self-deprecating laugh. “But he could be so selfish it was scary. One moment he’s the most caring, understanding, empathetic man in the world, and he gazes at you with those blue eyes like he alone can understand you. And the next, it’s like you don’t exist. And if it’s ever between him and his comforts and you and your needs, you will never win. He could be cruel when he wanted, and in contrast to that other him, it stung even more.

  “At first, I could relate to him, the whole thing with his wife being on drugs, and he even thought she was cheating on him—but then I realized how callous he was about it. Like, as soon as she stopped meeting his needs, she became disposable. That’s not love…you know? I don’t have anything concrete to use as an example, I don’t even remember the exact things he said, but it was just…a feeling. A strong feeling. That’s when I started to pull back, without realizing it yet.”

  “What exactly happened?” I whisper. My left hand is clenching and unclenching, and my feet tap on the floor.

  “The evening she disappeared, we went for drinks with some others from the faculty, and after everyone left, we stayed behind. We drank and flirted all night, and then we kissed in the parking lot. We were both too drunk to drive home so we shared a cab—or tried to. He ended up at my place. I know people were talking shit after but nothing happened! He was drunk and fell asleep on my couch. That’s all. And in the morning, he realized Colleen never made it home either.

  “But let me tell you something, Claire.” I decidedly don’t like the way she says my name. “If I hadn’t been with him all night, if I hadn’t seen him myself, I don’t know what I would have said if the police asked me whether Byron was capable of doing harm to Colleen. I don’t know.”

  “But you were there,” I say pointedly.

  “I was there,” she echoes, her voice hoarse and bitter. “But all I can tell you is this. I’m not the only one who saw that side of him. Look up his other girlfriends. I did. I’m not going to repeat what Sarah Sterns told me—you can ask her yourself. And when I tried to get in touch with Melissa Donnelly, here’s what I found. Melissa supposedly moved away to the West Coast somewhere, but the fact is she hasn’t been seen or heard from in four years.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It takes me the better part of an hour to compose an email to Sarah Sterns. I keep backspacing, the cursor devouring word after word, gobbling whole sentences. And what can I possibly say to her, anyhow? Hello, I’m Claire Westcott, and I’m trying to figure out if my husband is an undercover sociopath. Could you help me?

  That makes me sound pathetic. And Claire Westcott isn’t pathetic. Claire Westcott always has manicured nails and her clothes never clash and she makes the perfect beef bourguignon. Claire Westcott has a perfect life with her perfect husband.

  In that moment, I find myself hating Byron with an anger as fierce as it is petty. I hate him for making me look like this in front of complete strangers, his ex-girlfriends no less. For making me feel like this, all because of a woman who died nearly a decade ago and who, for all intents and purposes, sounds horrible.

  I exhale, letting my hands rest on either side of the keyboard, and let myself think of our first meeting, almost three years ago. On the first two anniversaries of that date, I got twelve roses and a dinner out. Something tells me the third one will come and go unnoticed, and pride won’t let me bring it up.

  For our second wedding anniversary, he gifted me with a bracelet, made reservations, everything proper—to anyone observing from the outside. Only I could feel the shift in him; only I could feel the cold between us. Or worse yet, not even cold—just emptiness, a vacuum. Where our minds used to be one, there was now a chasm.

  I stared at him from across the table of the chicest tapas restaurant in Cleveland, sucking my stomach in to avoid straining at my silk shift dress, my high-heeled shoes pinching my toes, and I might as well have been looking at a painting of my husband, not the real him. I had no idea what was going through his mind. His conversation was polite and generic. It was like an awkward second date neither of the parties really wanted, except for the replacement emerald ring on my finger and the real gold bracelet in the velvet box in front of me. I feigned the reaction he no doubt expected while inwardly I wondered why he’d suddenly splurge on a thing like this. He drove us home and said he was too tired to have sex.

  I got my answer about the bracelet a few days later. Looking at old photos of Colleen, I saw an identical one on her wrist. He regifted Colleen’s bracelet to me—a bracelet she probably only wore that one time. It’s delicate and beautiful and precious, all things she would have hated.

  That sou
nds tacky as hell, not at all like Byron to repurpose gifts to an ex—except it’s different, isn’t it, because she’s not really an ex. They never got divorced—she died. She will never be the ex-wife.

  I close my eyes, turning the replacement ring on my finger, over and over and over again.

  Byron and I met at an open house event at Mansfield College. I was considering going in for my master’s or maybe earning another degree that had better job prospects than my creative writing one. I wasn’t in my best mood that day: The novel I was frantically submitting to anyone with an email address brought in rejections by the shovelful, all the short story submissions I mailed to every literary magazine in existence vanished into the ether without a response, and the next novel I’d begun writing to take the edge off waiting had stalled, victim of the hundred-page slump. I was twenty-four, with an honors degree and supposedly a whole future ahead of me, but that future became foggier with every not-so-reassuring email that landed in my inbox.

  At Ohio State, I managed not to make a single real friend in all my four years there. I didn’t have cute tattoos of birds and feathers, and I wasn’t interested in happy hour at the local student pub. I felt like I was going through the motions, turning in assignment after assignment, essay after essay produced with almost mechanical fervor, vigorously proofread, references ironclad. I wasn’t the life of the party but I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. I was the darling of the teachers. Claire is brilliant, Claire is capable, Claire always turns in the most polished work. Claire is the one of the whole bunch who actually has prospects in the field.

  But the others graduated and moved on to different things, some jumping into their master’s degrees right away, some moving on to work at small publications, and my “prospects” never materialized. I wondered if I’d wasted the so-called best years of my life by not barhopping with the other girls in my classes, by sticking to the straight and narrow because I thought it might get me somewhere. But returning to the huge, impersonal, overcrowded campus of Ohio State felt like crawling back with my tail between my legs, and, at least until recently, I had my pride.