The Starter Wife

by Nina Laurin

  She looked around, moving as if in slow motion. She looked me up and down. Her eyes were wide. “How old are you?” she asked. I was a little surprised that it was the first thing she wanted to know.

  “Nineteen,” I said.

  “What do you want from me?” Her voice was different. I’d overheard her countless times by now but always from a distance, and when she addressed me directly, it didn’t sound the same. It was soft and soothing but it cracked a little when she said the last words.

  And when it cracked, I understood everything with stunning clarity. I was the one who had the upper hand. Yes, Trailer-Trash Tracy with her alcoholic mother and runaway sister and bad grades and a roll of fat on her belly, with her cheap clothes and mousy hair, had triumphed over this statuesque, successful, well-dressed woman. She thought she was here to confront me, but really, she was here begging me to put her out of her misery.

  I could not deny her that.

  “I want Byron,” I said simply.

  Instead of lunging for me and trying to claw my eyes out—as I surely would have done in her place—she nodded, absentminded. I see.

  “You’re a teenager,” she said, staring off into space as if hypnotized. “And you want my husband. Why?”

  Because he’s Byron. Because he’s wonderful, and you don’t deserve him. You’re a bad wife, Colleen Alexandra May.

  But it didn’t look like she wanted, or expected, an answer.

  “You think a man will make you happy but that’s a lie. You think this man, the man I’m married to”—I kept noticing that she avoided saying his name—“is what you need to complete you. You’re young, and you’re stupid. It’s all fake, a sham—don’t you see?”

  She sounded like she was close to tears. I took a step away from her. Clearly, she was mad.

  “They’ve only changed on the surface. The last sixty, one hundred years of feminism, equality, emancipation—all horseshit. Deep down, they just want a housemaid, someone comfortably inferior that they can boss around. But you’re not listening to me, are you? Of course you’re not. Or you wouldn’t have jeopardized your whole life just to get this one man.”

  I didn’t jeopardize anything, I thought furiously. And who was she to lecture me anyhow?

  “All this,” she said, shaking her head. “All this for my husband? You can have my fucking husband.”

  I stood there, stunned. She circled the room with the same look of awe on her face.

  “Is this it? Tracy? Is that your name? Will you leave me alone now?”

  It was too good to be true. After all this hard work, she was just giving him away, giving him to me. It was like those Victorian comedies of manners that you hate. The wicked woman goes away, and the virtuous couple are united in their love. And I knew that it would never happen in a million years.

  I had done too much. Gone too far. I knew that she would go to the police if I let her leave this house. She would tell them I stalked her, that I infiltrated her house and sabotaged her life. She would tell them I admitted that I wanted her husband.

  And then everything would be over. She would get to keep you, or leave, and something terrible would happen to me. I would never be with you.

  I could not allow that to happen.

  I always do what needs to be done.

  One of my mother’s empty wine bottles was left on the floor by the couch. I picked it up by the neck. Colleen didn’t have time to react. I hit her across the face as hard as I could. It connected with her cheekbone and temple.

  She fell—she spun around and landed on her stomach and didn’t move again.

  Just like that, Colleen was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I see Byron’s car through the crack in the curtains. He got here fast. Everything can still be saved, I think. All I need to do is make him understand.

  He finds me sitting on the couch. The curtains are still drawn, and the room has that slightly surreal look, sunlight breaking through every crack.

  He closes the door and looks around him. “Where’s Chrissy?” he snaps.

  “Hi, Byron.”

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “She left.” I look up to meet his eye. “She wanted me to come with her but I refused.”

  “Why?”

  I blink, taken aback by the question. “What do you mean?”

  He groans. “Why do you act like nothing is happening?”

  “Because nothing is happening,” I start to explain but he cuts in.

  “What could there possibly be here for you anymore?”

  I answer without hesitating. “Why, Byron, you, of course. My love.”

  “I don’t love you anymore. I thought you were evil but you’re just dense, aren’t you? You don’t understand that I could never, ever love you now.”

  I must be patient. It’s hard for him to understand. It can take a while. I’m okay with that—I waited eight years, and I can wait longer than that, if I have to. Love is worth it. It’s worth all the sacrifices.

  “And that fucking joke of a video you made? Do you think it’ll save you?”

  I smile with just the corners of my mouth. “Byron, darling, I still don’t see the police kicking down the door.”

  “You think anyone will believe that?”

  I don’t answer. I must tread carefully with him now.

  To my surprise, he heaves a sigh and then comes to sit down on the other end of the couch.

  “Why me, Claire?” He winces. “Tracy. What’s so special about me? I’m a college professor without tenure who could barely make ends meet if it weren’t for my famous artist wife. Why not a rock star or an actor?”

  Because you’re you, I want to say. “Because I looked at you that day, at school, and you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” My voice sounds broken but it’s genuine this time. I’m aching to reach out and touch his face. His chin is rough with stubble, salt and pepper with a lot more salt lately. Wrinkles surround his eyes and mouth. He’s getting old. I never noticed over the last eight or nine years. I never thought of him as someone who could get old.

  “But I’m not a thing, Tracy,” he says softly. “People aren’t things. You can’t just move them around like pieces on a chessboard.”

  “Unless you can. And I could! And I did, all for you.”

  “It wasn’t even me you loved, just your idea of me. And I fell short of that idea, didn’t I? You could never have been happy with me anyway. Do you see?”

  Do I? What he said couldn’t be more wrong, and it makes me angry with him. How can he still not understand that my love is deeper than anything?

  He was always my ideal. Except for one thing.

  He still loved Colleen. It was the one failing I could never live with and would never forgive him for. And I couldn’t excise her from his mind the way I excised her from life.

  My gaze wanders, looking for the hammer. But I left it on one of the decorative tables on the other end of the room.

  “You need to move on, Tracy. Move on and get help. Not everything is lost. You could still find someone, someday, whom you can love for real. And someone who will love you back.”

  I sit still like a doll. Those last words out of his mouth ignite something inside me—something that won’t be so easy to extinguish. The fire catches; it leaps from synapse to synapse, engulfing my entire being.

  “Never,” I say, and my voice is hard like glass, filled with resolve. “I will never leave here.”

  “Then you leave me no choice. Emily will testify, and so will Chrissy. You’ll be leaving here in a police car.”

  Finally, I grin, but it feels like my mouth is full of needles. “Chrissy is dead.”

  A shadow flits over Byron’s face. He doesn’t know what to think, whether to believe me, and he’s trying to hide it.

  “You tried to turn my own sister against me,” I say. “But I forgive you. She had to go anyway. She’s the last of Tracy Belfour, and it’s better that she’s gone.”
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  He slowly shakes his head. “You are completely out of your mind. I’m calling the cops.”

  With increasing panic, I watch as his phone appears out of his pocket. He thumbs the screen.

  “No!” I blurt. He doesn’t look up.

  “If you call the police, I will never talk. You will never know what really happened to Colleen.”

  It works. Just like I thought it would. He lowers the phone slowly.

  “Put it on the table.”

  He obeys, every movement careful, like I’m some dangerous criminal.

  “Tell me,” he says.

  I smile and close my eyes. I’m in control again. Everything is going to be okay.

  I open my eyes again to see him literally on the edge of his seat, his eyes intense on my face. Waiting. That’s all he cares about anyway, what happened to his precious Colleen.

  I lunge forward, knocking the phone off the table with a swipe of my hand. It skitters across the floor and under one of the bookshelves.

  And I wrap my hands around my husband’s throat.

  * * *

  Colleen lay dead on my living room floor. There wasn’t even that much blood. It was that simple, in the end.

  I can’t leave her here, I thought. My mom will come back. People will look for her. I have to do something.

  Before the plan had time to fully form in my head, I was kneeling next to her, lifting her up. She was so much heavier than she looked, even though she was so thin I could feel her ribs through the layers of clothes. I stripped off that beautiful coat and held it to my face. It smelled like expensive perfume with that musky tang of real leather. It smelled like money. Like the life that should be mine.

  And then I knew what to do.

  I went to the kitchen to get a pair of rubber gloves and put on my hairnet from work. Then I put on the coat. She was tall and slender, and I was short and still a bit chubby, but the coat fit like it was my own. In her purse, I found a scarf and a hat made of soft cashmere. I put them on, wrapping myself in the scarf up to my chin, the hat pulled low. I also found her car keys. Her car, a silver SUV, sat by the sidewalk in front of our house.

  I knew I had to hurry. I grabbed Colleen’s body and dragged it across the floor, into the kitchen and into the garage we never used. It could hardly be called a real garage, just a ramshackle structure with a dirt floor, but our mom used it to store whatever random things she was hoarding. I put a bunch of old tarps on top of her. It wouldn’t last but it would have to do for now.

  Then I got into Colleen’s car. It was like driving a truck—a fancy truck with beautiful tan leather seats. I drove it all the way to Cleveland.

  Do you realize how much luck and skill I needed to pull it off? At any moment, I expected to screw up. I could have accidentally mishandled the car, gotten pulled over, and everything would have fallen apart right there. I could have been seen, spotted, caught on a surveillance camera. But I parked near the waterfront and used Colleen’s credit card to pay for the parking spot. Then I put her wallet in the glove compartment.

  The waterfront was deserted. In the early spring, it was cold. Rain drizzled in tiny, icy droplets, and the wind whipped my face, penetrating Colleen’s little coat like it was made of tissue paper. But I didn’t stop there. I walked to a secluded spot in the less developed part of the port. There were barely any streetlights, and I couldn’t see any cameras in the vicinity. I stood there for a few moments, looking over the dark water. My heart was beating too fast, frenzied. It wasn’t just the exertion or the adrenaline. It was the anticipation of the life that now lay at my feet. All I had to do was reach out and take it.

  There was one thing to do first. I took out her phone. She had a fancy-model smartphone even then, when they were only starting to become ubiquitous. By today’s standards, they were so easy to unlock. So I wrote an email with my clumsy gloved hands.

  Dear Byron,

  I can’t take it anymore. I don’t recognize myself. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the person you wanted me to be.

  Love,

  Colleen

  I reread it several times. And…this is going to sound crazy but my eyes filled with tears. It felt so real. Like I didn’t write it myself just a few seconds ago but was really reading someone’s final words. The whole story—there was something romantic about it. I hated her for having you and taking you for granted, but at the same time, I envied her. Does that make sense to you? She would get to be the perfect dead wife. Not just an ex or some bitter divorcee—but the woman gone tragically before her time. Her death would erase all her sins and failings, make her perfect in your mind. I envied and respected her for it.

  You see, your life together is not what you remember. It’s only perfect because I made it that way, by killing her. Even those bright, precious memories you owe to me.

  I put the phone in the coat pocket, where I’d already stashed some rocks, and threw the coat into the water. Watched it sink and disappear in the depths.

  Then I walked back to the well-lit streets and took a bus home.

  No one ever knew I was there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  When you love somebody, there is no sacrifice you won’t make. And I love Byron—I think I’ve already proven that, time and time again. Colleen, Melissa, Sarah. Chrissy. Let’s not forget Tracy Belfour, Trailer-Trash Tracy, whose entire existence I annihilated without pity.

  And now it’s my turn. Claire Westcott will disappear.

  Sometimes, love means pretending to attack him so that he turns on me and kills me, in self-defense.

  Go on, Byron. Free your hatred. End all this.

  But to my shock and surprise, I meet no resistance. My hands wrap around Byron’s neck. My thumbs sink into the thin flesh over his windpipe. All I have to do is keep squeezing.

  Why isn’t he fighting back? I need him to fight back. He can throw me off with ease. He’s older but he’s a man, bigger and stronger.

  I can’t do it.

  His eyes meet mine, and it’s enough to make me stagger back. The look in them doesn’t look like him at all. We are both panting, like after a bout of vigorous fucking.

  “Do whatever you want,” he rasps. “Just tell me what happened to her.”

  “No. You’re not going to make it about her again.”

  “It was always about her.”

  “You’re not going to die with her name on your lips.”

  He cracks a pained smile. “Colleen.”

  “Liar!”

  “Colleen, Colleen, Colleen. You lost. Don’t you get it?”

  I stand up, gobsmacked. My legs are unsteady, and I sway a little. Byron stands up in turn. We face each other.

  “I want you to stop lying!” I lose it and yell out the last word, surprising us both. “You love me. You know you do. Just say you love me.”

  “I don’t love you.”

  “Say you love me.”

  “I hate your guts.”

  A shudder courses through me.

  “It’s over,” he says evenly. “It’s time for you to die.”

  “You’ll—”

  If he kills me, Byron will go to prison. As far as the police are concerned, he killed one wife and then another. If anyone ever discovers Melissa, it will only be the cherry on the sundae. Emily’s testimony will count for nothing. There’s Chrissy’s body in the house, the confession video on my phone.

  He nods. “I know. I don’t really care. At least I will know justice was done.”

  He steps toward me. And the look on his face is…maniacal, resolve and relief all in one. I did this to him, I think, incredulous.

  And in the same moment, I realize, as fear fills me, that I don’t want to die.

  I turn around and start to run.

  * * *

  Byron makes it to the front door before I do, blocking my escape. I spin around, my bare feet skidding on the floor, and dart in the opposite direction but he makes no attempt to follow me, to stop me.

  The ha
mmer.

  I see it on the edge of a table and grab for it. My hands shake wildly, and a vase comes crashing down and shatters on the floor. One of Colleen’s.

  My hands grip the hammer’s handle. It’s slippery. Blood? Colleen’s blood. No, Chrissy’s. Colleen was buried deep in the dirt floor of my mother’s garage many years ago, concrete poured over her a short while before I sold the house, a grave forever without a name. It will pass into oblivion along with me.

  I didn’t kill her with a hammer either; it was a wine bottle. Why is everything so confused?

  I can’t do this. Not like this. I put the hammer back down and take one, two, three tiny steps toward Byron, who stands still in front of the door. He waits.

  But he doesn’t look like Byron anymore. His face is an anonymous ripple, blurred out like on one of those true-crime shows. I squint. Sweat drips into my eyes—that must be what’s messing with my vision. I blink it away furiously, and Byron’s face refocuses. But it’s still the wrong face. It’s not Byron, it’s Brandon—that boyfriend of my mother’s, the one who always told me to watch TV with the two of them. He’d sit right next to me and grope my leg.

  Then he cornered me one day, a week before my sixteenth birthday. Mom was in her bedroom, passed out, and Chrissy was out with her popular friends—Chrissy never seemed to be around when Brandon came over, I remember with a rush of confusion. I remember finally understanding why too late as he pulled my jeans down my legs, pinning me facedown on the living room couch, his elbow in my back, its sharp point right between my shoulder blades. I didn’t really struggle, and it was over quickly. He didn’t stick around too long after that.

  Something seemed to flicker out inside me after. Like someone flipped a switch. All my emotions, everything I felt, became gray and flat: joy, sorrow, shame, anger—everything seemed to skim the surface.

  Until I saw Byron in the school gym that day. Then everything became real once more.