The Starter Wife

by Nina Laurin

  Before the term started, I officially changed my name to Claire Greene. Trailer-Trash Tracy was now gone for good. For the next four years, I got into my new role: Claire Greene, the creative writing student. New name, new haircut, new look—I was a different person, even though I didn’t quite feel like one yet.

  And in the meantime, I had to keep up with you. And, Byron, you didn’t make it easy.

  Isabelle Herrera cleared out on her own. After the whole debacle, after having to alibi you for the police, after the rumors about the two of you started circulating, she couldn’t just go on flirting with you like nothing happened. She may have wanted to, no doubt. But she’s one of those people who feels an overwhelming need to be the good guy—or girl—and hitting on the man whose wife just died in a suspicious suicide is the opposite of a good girl.

  There was also Sarah Sterns. It wasn’t hard to get rid of her. I found out about her late, but not too late, and could excise the cancer before it sunk in its tendrils. Without too much bloodshed. I even felt a little bad for her. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know you were taken. And I no longer judge you for having sex with her that night. I understand that it had been a while and a man has needs. Why shouldn’t she fulfil them, as long as she leaves the picture afterward?

  But at the time, I was furious. Don’t be angry—I was overworked at school and exhausted, and I couldn’t wait much longer. I wanted to be with you. I thought it should be me, in your house, in your bed.

  I sent you the message in the morning, calling you to the college. But soon enough you’d discover there was no emergency and come back, and she was in no hurry to leave. She sat around, drinking your coffee and going through your cabinets like she belonged there! But one phone call and she was out. And then I made sure she didn’t contact you again.

  I realize that extraordinary luck played a part in all of it. But I took it as my due. As more signs from above that what I was doing was good and right, and we belonged together.

  I would make you so happy. Happier than any other woman ever could. Colleen or Sarah. Or that Melissa character.

  I feel a little bad about what happened to her. But she left me no choice.

  And I always do what needs to be done. Especially when it comes to you, my love.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I end up falling asleep on the couch. In fact, I only realize I’d managed to nod off when I open my eyes and the room is filled with thin morning light. Sitting up, I blink my dry eyes, disoriented, and then it all comes back, like a crushing weight settling onto my shoulders. He knows. He knows the truth, and everything I’ve done has been for nothing.

  No. I have to keep myself under control. This isn’t the time to do something rash and stupid. Like slash every single painting in the house to ribbons and wreck the furniture, no matter how much I want to.

  I pace the room and then start cleaning up to get my thoughts in order. It feels weirdly normal and soothing: I pick up the stray coffee mugs, start the dishwasher, sweep the floor, clean the kitchen counter.

  I open the sliding door and go out onto the deck. It’s morning, and the sun has come out, but there’s that autumn chill in the air. The plants in the boxes are looking out of shape. Time to cut them to the root so they can grow back next spring. And leaves litter the deck and the yard. It needs cleaning. So I go get the pruning shears and the broom and get to work.

  “Everything must be perfect,” I say out loud. “For when he comes back. Right, Melissa?”

  Melissa doesn’t answer, of course. She hasn’t answered anyone since that email I sent from her phone about moving away. I think the revenge is fitting, really. She got to watch us being happy all these years, having our morning coffee all summer long right above her.

  She pretty much asked for it. I tried to resolve this peacefully but she was having none of it. I remember her tacky acrylic nails and shudder. I missed three days of school because she’d clawed my face with them, the witch.

  Everything about her was so tacky. I don’t know why men go for these appalling women. Especially Byron. They met on a dating site—the only way their paths could ever cross. She was a hairdresser. Reminded me of my sister, but worse.

  From the start, I’m sure he saw nothing in her besides sex—a fun, little fling without a future. But she—she got ideas. Sank those acrylic talons in and wouldn’t let go. I went to have my hair trimmed by her and then got her fired from the salon, but still, she wouldn’t leave.

  I did what had to be done, like always.

  Once the deck is swept, I go back indoors. Upstairs, I collect all the clothes lying around, put them into the hamper, and take it to the laundry room. I sort everything, fill up the washer, and start the cycle.

  When I go back to the living room, a cold breeze ripples through the house, and I freeze in my tracks. The little hairs on my arms stand on end as gooseflesh races across my skin.

  The front door is open a crack. My sister is standing there, her hands on her hips.

  “Hi, Tracy,” she says.

  * * *

  Understanding dawns. “Byron sent you,” I say.

  She flinches. “He didn’t send me. But we spoke.”

  I should have remembered to lock the door.

  “We spoke about you at length. I told him—”

  “About Tracy Belfour,” I say, and my mouth twists.

  “I told him the truth,” she says levelly. “Tracy, you really need to hear me out.”

  “If you want me to listen, maybe use my real name.”

  “That is your real name. Claire Westcott doesn’t exist. You’ll have to face the facts sooner or later. It’s all fake.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you. Get out of my house.”

  “It’s not your house. It’s Colleen May’s house.”

  I swallow hard. It won’t be easy to get rid of her but lashing out will only make it worse. I have to make her think she’s getting somewhere. That I’m listening.

  “Is that what you came here to say?”

  “Tracy, you need to admit that something’s wrong and get help. It’s not too late.”

  It is definitely too late. She must know that. And I realize that I can’t get her on my side. She won’t listen to reason. There’s only one thing left to do.

  “Chrissy, please.” I let my voice tremble, blinking like I’m about to start crying. “You don’t know the half of it. You don’t understand what’s going on here. He called you and told you things but he’s lying! My husband is trying to get rid of me. He’s trying to kill me like he killed Colleen!”

  “Tracy,” she murmurs. She covers her eyes with her hand.

  “Please. He just wants me to sound like the crazy one. But he has a mistress, a young mistress—a student from the college named Mia—and they’re trying to get rid of me.”

  “You’re unwell.”

  “Because he drugged my food,” I sob. When I look up and meet her gaze, she’s unmoved. Her eyes are hard and dark.

  “You really thought I didn’t know anything?” she snaps.

  I stop sobbing. Even the tears stop like I turned off a faucet.

  “What?”

  “You really thought I was blind,” she says with a shaky, disbelieving laugh. “Why do you think I left? Because of Mom? No. I left because I couldn’t watch you anymore, mired in your weird fucked-up little obsession. It was fucking scary, Tracy! I thought you were going to drag us all down with you into your madness. I wanted no part of it. So I left.”

  “Chrissy—”

  “I just didn’t realize how far you’d go,” she says, shaking her head. “Remember when you sent me the invitation to your wedding?”

  Do I ever. I sent it out of spite more than anything else. And because I knew she would never accept.

  “That was the first I’d heard from you in years. And suddenly there’s this kitschy-as-hell wedding invite in my mail, with a name I never heard before in my life, but the picture is of you and that professor o
f yours. If you meant to shock me, to show off—congratulations, you succeeded. But then I looked you up. Claire Westcott. And I found the story of Colleen.”

  I close my eyes.

  “I didn’t want to believe you had anything to do with it. I did my best to put it out of my mind, and for a while, I succeeded. I didn’t even contact you for my part of the inheritance, the life insurance, my half of the house. I said to hell with it. I just didn’t want to be anywhere near you. Then one day a background check company contacted me on behalf of Byron Westcott.”

  “No.” I open my eyes, my fists clenched at my sides. He can’t have done it; he can’t have betrayed me to this extent, gone behind my back like that. He—

  But he did. Of course he did.

  It’s all fake, Tracy, every last little bit of it.

  “At first, I refused to talk to him. But he emailed me saying he found his late wife’s missing ring in your stuff. The ring she lost months before she died. So we talked on the phone, and then we met. I told him the truth, and he did the same.”

  I’m this close to losing it. And when I lose it, bad things happen. She must realize it, if she knows as much as she pretends she does.

  “So what are you going to do?” I ask, my voice toneless.

  “I’m going to ask you to get help.”

  Silence lingers between us, and again that fucking clock ticks in the background.

  “Look, Byron wanted me to talk you into confessing to killing Colleen but you know what, Tracy? You’re my sister. I still care about you, in spite of everything. We can just leave.” She’s pleading. I can’t tell how honest she is. “Just get your things. We’re going to my place. You can stay there for as long as you need. But you have to get help. I’ll find you someone to talk to, to get over this…obsession. Then you can get a divorce and move on with your life.”

  I have to wonder if I’m hearing correctly. I shut my eyes. When I open them again, she’s still there, same hopeful look on her face, forehead scrunched up, eyebrows forming a little dome over her eyes. Are her eyebrows tattooed on or something? They must be. It’s so Chrissy.

  “Move on…with my life?”

  “Yes. You can get any man you want. One without a wife. You’re beautiful, you’re young, you’re smart. You have a college degree. You can start over. Leave Byron Westcott be.”

  I breathe deep. Leave him be. Like nothing happened.

  “But he loves me.”

  “He doesn’t love you. Not anymore.”

  Bitterness teems in my chest. I can taste it. I need to make all this go away. I gulp and then give a curt nod.

  “You’ll do it?” Chrissy asks, hopeful.

  “We leave and never come back, right? And no police.”

  “Absolutely no police. You just made one teenage mistake—that’s all. No need to get the police involved.”

  So she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about the rest of it. I think of Melissa, buried under the deck. It was just being built back then. Byron left her alone in the house while he went to pick up some papers he forgot at work. I rang the doorbell, and she opened the door like she owned the place. She stood there, at this same front door—my front door—in this hideous negligee thing, and she was smacking gum, her headphones in her ears. I came in and told her Byron had a girlfriend and was playing her. She was supposed to leave—any woman with any self-respect would have. But she didn’t want to. Even her name was tacky. Why are the ones with the bad hair extensions always called Melissa?

  I strangled her with those stupid pink headphones, the cord wrapped around her throat. It’s harder than it sounds. My hands were bloody. But then it was done, and she was in the hole in the earth, and the next day they poured concrete on top of her, and that was that.

  I look at Chrissy, who seems relieved. And what would happen if I were to refuse? I think. You’ll go to the police and tell them everything? Turn me in?

  But all she has are her crazy theories. A ring and an almost decade-old death, not even a body.

  Except she knows. She knows I’ve pursued Byron since I was sixteen. She knows I followed Colleen, that I spied on her and Byron. She can fill the gaps in Byron’s case.

  It cannot happen.

  “Chrissy,” I finally choke out, “I’m coming with you.”

  “I knew it.” She smiles. “I knew you’d come to your senses. Pack your things, and—”

  “I’ll be quick. You can wait for me in the car. I’ll be right out.”

  She turns around to go.

  Mistake.

  My gaze darts to the side, to one of the decorative tables, where I notice it. No, I lie—I had noticed it some time ago, the moment I found her standing in the door of my house.

  Our house, because Byron and I are one, and nothing she can say or do can change that, nothing—

  I pick up the hammer, the one I used to break the lock of the basement door. With two leaps I’m behind her, and I swing it, and it lands with a sharp crack on the back of Chrissy’s skull.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  A gurgle escapes from her lips, and Chrissy drops at once, without another sound. I step over her. The front door is still open a crack, and a breeze works its way in, chilling the room. I can’t have that; it’s bad for the baby—

  Stop. No. There is no baby. First, I have to solve this. Make it go away.

  I shut the door and turn the lock this time. Then I crouch next to my sister. There’s blood on the back of her head, and she’s immobile. Is she breathing?

  Who am I kidding? She’s gone. I cracked her skull.

  I get up and grab hold of her ankles. Her boots are cheap, fake leather trimmed with fake fur. I drag her across the floor without resistance. Once or twice I think I see her move or hear a faint moan. But maybe it’s my mind playing tricks on me.

  Damn Byron. All I ever did was love him. Why punish me like this?

  I drag Chrissy down the stairs to the basement—all she needs is a little push, and she topples to the floor at the foot of the staircase, next to the boxes of Colleen’s things. Dead things belong together.

  I will deal with her later. I pat her down and find her phone in the pocket of her jacket. She sure loves pleather. She has one of those old Android phones that unlock with a pattern you have to trace instead of a code, and when I tilt the screen, I can see the greasy tracks of her finger clear as day. I try the pattern twice before I get it right.

  She’s been texting Byron. He’s Mr. Westcott in her phone. It’s hard not to cringe. First, it’s Dr., and second, how dare she. They’ve been talking for some time now. I don’t have the patience to scroll up to the beginning of the texts. He’s been diligent about deleting their conversations from his phone, but then again, my sister never was particularly bright.

  As I read the last exchange of texts, anger boils within me. It was an act from the start. The whole “let’s just go away together” thing. Totally fake. A ploy.

  That fucking bitch—she belongs with Melissa. But Byron’s betrayal hurts more than I anticipated. The pain is sharp, almost more than I can handle. I need to sit down on the living room couch for a minute or two and catch my breath. I’m still sweaty from the altercation and from dragging Chrissy’s body to the basement.

  Then I pick up the phone again. Mr. Westcott, I type. She’s crazy. She’s going to kill me! Please come!

  Then I send the message, and I wait.

  * * *

  It was a wine bottle, in the end.

  I still don’t know how she spotted me. Or how she knew where I lived. I must have gotten reckless. I sensed that victory was within my reach. Colleen was being driven closer and closer to the precipice every day. It was only a matter of time.

  You think I’m some kind of evil genius, a mastermind. You think I planned everything meticulously from start to finish but I’m ashamed to say I had to improvise. This was one of those instances but my luck—my extraordinary, magical luck—was on my side again. It was fate. It was God bringing
us closer together.

  Maybe it was after I’d followed her to and from the abortion clinic downtown, watched her go in and out, all pale and sweaty. I was so caught up in my own rage and excitement that I might have followed her too closely. She must not have been as out of it as I thought. She must have noticed the nondescript old car trailing her. Or it could have been any of the other times.

  And then she must have followed me home. The tables turned, the watcher being watched. She acted stupid though. What happened is her own fault in a way. She should have called you or called the police or something. But instead, she went to ring the doorbell.

  My mom was out. She had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon, and as I knew well, she’d stop at the pub afterward for a drink that always turned into ten drinks, and for all I knew, she wouldn’t come home until the next morning. This was only the beginning of my luck.

  When I saw Colleen there, I could have freaked out. Instead, I calmly went to open the door. She invited herself in.

  I remember it all very clearly. How could I ever forget?

  She looked around, incredulous. I read it all on her face. It was surreal to her. Incomprehensible.

  She stuck out incongruously in our shabby living room, with its disintegrating seventies couch, the old TV, the beer cans. She was showing wear and tear on her face, traces of the last several months. The hollows under her eyes were deep and blue, the lines around her mouth etched dark and sharp. But she was wearing bright lipstick, and her glossy brown hair had recently been dyed and cut, nicely and expensively. Her coat alone cost more than every item of clothing I owned. I remember looking at it, wondering whether it was made of real leather. Seething with envy. And something else. Shame. I was ashamed of the place I came from, the house where I grew up. How could someone like me ever compete with her? And she saw all that and doubtlessly thought the same thing. For that, I hated her even more.