“Are you making that up?” I asked.
He half-shook his head and then nodded, “Does it matter? I have the knowledge, and I can teach you. But if it helps, I do pick up tutoring jobs here. A lot of desperate parents bring their kids to the library, hoping it’d help their kids with a failing grade or to cram for an exam.”
What he said sounded reasonable. “You’ll show me what I need to know? Show me how to browse and navigate securely?” I asked, negotiating. The last thing I expected when entering the library this afternoon was that I’d be taking computer lessons. It was a baby step, but it was a step.
“For the right hourly price, I’ll teach you as much as you need.”
Without another thought, I dug into my purse, producing a fifty-dollar bill that I’d put aside for Michael’s birthday card. The bill was fresh and crisp and smelled like ink. “Just printed,” the teller at the bank had said. I hesitated a moment and then placed it in Nerd’s hands. I cringed when he crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it away in his pocket.
“What’s first?”
NINE
WHEN THE SUN had dipped low enough to reach through the library’s window, I knew that I’d overstayed my time. At best there was twenty minutes of sunlight remaining in the day. I was never late. Never.
“Damn!” I blurted. “What time is it?” I didn’t bother waiting for an answer. The clock on the wall peered at me as if I’d broken a vow. I focused, but I couldn’t find the hour hand, and for a moment I thought the clock must have stopped. But both of the clock hands were pointing straight down, as if indicating where my heart should be. My mouth dropped. I jumped up from the table and gathered my things in a rush. I could feel Nerd staring, curious at my reaction.
Oh to be young and free, I thought with a sentimental recall. There was just no knowing what you have until it is gone forever.
“I’m late. Really late!” I said, blurting the words.
“Library is going to close soon, anyway,” he offered and began to gather his things. He didn’t recognize my urgency. Why would he?
“Do we need to do anything here?” I asked, motioning to my screen. “Should I shut it down?”
“Nothing to shut down, just need to close a few things,” he answered, not bothering to look up. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it.”
He said a few other things about not needing to shut down, but I only heard mumbles as I raced to the large double doors. On my way, I offered a brief wave to the librarian. She stabbed the air with her hand, seeming to be surprised by my attention.
“I hope you find that job,” she said in a breeze as I passed the counter.
“Still looking,” I answered. “I’ll be back in a day or two.” She nodded as I punched at the door’s brass handle. A second set of doors waited on the other side, leaving me momentarily in a quiet bubble to gather my thoughts and tidy my coat. With the sun nearly gone, the day had turned frigid. I put on a hat and scarf. I never liked the autumn chill, preferring the warmer side of cozy whenever I could. The bubble moment also gave me time to think up an excuse for being so late. I hit the second door and tried to clear my mind.
The outside air washed over me like a draft of cool wind. The sidewalks teemed with people hurrying around me. Car horns blared and traffic was stopped up and down Main Street. The sounds and sights were a world away from the tranquil quiet of the library and filled my head with busy congestion. It was the beginning of the evening and the ending of a workday, and everyone was in a rush to be somewhere else.
“Shit,” I mumbled, looking at the rows of bumper-to-bumper cars and thinking that there’d be no point in rushing.
The air had become crisp in the fading day, and the afternoon shadows stretched long, dark fingers to touch the coming night. The sun was about to vanish, and I had no idea how I was going to explain where I’d been.
I wasn’t just a little late, I was more than two hours late. I glanced at my phone and saw that I’d missed a few phone calls from Steve and a half-dozen text messages—all of them asking where I was. My heart jumped into my throat, beating hard. My skull pounded.
I glanced up at the library’s pitched roof, studying the stony, curved shingles, and tried to understand why my stupid phone hadn’t worked inside. The only thing I could think to do next was to go home. I quickly thumbed an apology, tapping the screen, texting as I walked to my car. My phone’s screen told me that my text was delivered and that it had been read. I stood in front of my car door and peered at my reflection. A humid cloud escaped my lips, and I half-expected to see a monster suddenly emerge from the reflection. But it was just me, staring back. I looked good in the outfit I’d selected for my lunch today, and even prettier with my hat and scarf on. With only an orange glow above the hard line of the horizon, the sun vanishing before me, the extra clothes had been a good call.
I leaned into the car window until my warm breath fogged the glass, making my reflection disappear, hiding it from the world. A reservation nagged at my conscience, and I tried to ignore it. I was still innocent and without sin for the moment. The glass cleared, and I saw a fierceness in my complexion I hadn’t seen before. Patient. Poised. The sight sent a chill through me. I searched for who it was that I wanted to be.
Should I ignore the reservations? Could I ignore who I’d become?
My phone buzzed and the shallow vibration made me jump. I’d stared long enough and slipped inside my car. I started the engine, willing the heat to come on as my teeth chattered. I cranked the thermostat on the dashboard until the thin white line sank into the red section. The heat would take a minute, but the idea of it being set helped a little.
Where are you? Steve texted. Are you okay? He didn’t seem mad, but texting could be misleading as far as tone was concerned.
I’m fine, I texted back. On my way home.
My phone said that he read my next text message. I waited for a reply, but there was none. The dread in my gut stayed. He was relieved to know that I was fine, but he would be angry—or worse, disappointed.
The traffic was as bad as I’d expected, but that gave me time to think about what else Nerd had showed me. The Web, as I knew it to be, was nothing more than looking at a storefront. Like walking through a market and seeing what was for sale from the sidewalk. I’d only scratched the surface. Behind the doors, just a few feet from the street, there was so much more going on. In just a short time, he explained more about the Deep Web and showed me different browsers that I could use to access the Web without leaving my fingerprints all over the computer. He’d called it proxy jumping—path hopping across multiple computers, each forwarding requests without leaving a trail. It was more than making just a few simple hops; he prided himself on being able to bounce our traffic over half a dozen servers.
I understood some of what he explained, but he could tell I was becoming lost at times. That feeling of being intimidated by technology sprang forward again, telling me that I’d need to learn as much as I could from him. I nodded like a hungry child when he offered more lessons. But at the same time, I struggled with the idea of trusting him.
Just let him show you, I told myself. After all, who was breaking a law? A conversation is just a conversation. I could be writing a paper, doing research.
It wasn’t as if I was about to bring Nerd along or let him in on the details of my plans.
I turned onto our street. A pretty cul-de-sac with a collection of houses and manicured lawns that was impossibly suburban, impossibly familiar, and everything that Steve disliked because it wasn’t the city. The bricks and lath-and-plaster, which we grew up with, had been replaced by paper shells covered in vinyl siding.
“Must’ve all come from the same factory,” Steve had joked when our realtor brought us to the For Sale sign. “Any flavors available other than plain?” The realtor politely ignored his joking, but I remember giving him a smirk, pleading with him to behave. Our lives had been firmly rooted in the city, and we would have stayed there
forever, but the city we’d once known wasn’t the city that it had become. Steve still spent some of his days there, working across jurisdictions to put away the worst of the worst. After all, criminals know no boundaries. For me, home was wherever my family was. And at the time, pregnant with Michael, the best place for home meant a move out of the city.
I turned into our driveway and tried to peer through the front window to see if Steve’s silhouette was there, waiting for me.
Is it too soon to say that I was shopping for the holidays? I wondered.
I could tell him that I’d lost track of time browsing in one of the newly opened boutique stores off Main Street. He knew that I wasn’t much for browsing in stores, but it was the next best excuse that I could come up with. And I could also tell him how lunch with Katie had gone over on account of her news that Jerry was having an affair. I shook my head. I was never late. I never lost track of time. Some of this was my fault. On the other hand, it could be a good first step toward my other plan. I suppose that I had set a precedent and was now obligated to be on time.
That’s just going to have to change, I considered. Not that it will help me right now.
The round handle to our front door felt as cold as the night air—it sent a chill into me. My stomach felt sour, twisting from the nerves that came with lying. I dreaded the idea of not being truthful with Steve. I held the door handle another moment but didn’t turn it. During my entire drive home, I’d missed something important.
An epiphany.
Soon, there was going to come a time that I was going to have to lie. With murder, I was going to have to start lying to everyone to cover up my work.
This is practice, I told myself as I turned the knob.
As I walked through our front door, the familiar smells of home hit me. Someone had been cooking too, and with the pang of hunger, I realized that I was famished. Steve’s mother was an excellent cook; the smell of tomato sauce and pasta filled our kitchen. Any minute, I was sure to see Snacks racing up to greet me, red sauce covering her front and a tangle of hair bouncing with each step. I’d laugh, loving every second of it.
Steve said nothing as he hurried around the kitchen cleaning up. A heavy blanket of silence sat between us, raising the tension to a nearly unbearable level. I put my things down, plopping them on the table loud enough to be heard, but he ignored me. Normally, I’d try to turn this around, act mad about something unrelated, but I needed the practice. I had to learn how to lie to my husband.
“I’m sorry that I’m late,” I started, having rehearsed my apology multiple times now. “Katie and I had a few drinks with lunch and I needed to walk off the buzz. I just lost track of time.” Not sure where that came from, but I thought it sounded good.
Steve slowed his movements over the sink, then turned the water off and faced me. He didn’t look mad—that is, he didn’t look at all like I imagined he would. During our marriage, I’ve seen Steve get angry, and the memory of those times scared me. He looked concerned instead.
“You didn’t think to text and let my mom know?” Anxious guilt took a hard bite at my gut. I shrugged a shoulder and slowly shook my head. “My mom called me. You’re never late. She wanted to call the hospitals. Where were you all that time?”
“The library,” I answered. His expression went blank. The words were out of my mouth before I could catch them.
Did I not understand how lying even worked?
Steve said nothing. I feared that even the truth was hard for him to believe.
“The library is down the street from the café, and I just needed a place to sit until I felt okay to drive. I picked up a book and got lost in it.”
“A text message?”
“The roof,” I answered, adding some truth to my story. “Phone didn’t work inside the library.”
“I had to leave work early to come home and help,” he said. The words stung like a bee. This was a slip, a bad slip, bringing up something that he knew I was already sensitive about. “My mom couldn’t stay, so I came home to take care of the kids.”
“Oh . . . and is that such a bad thing?” I exclaimed, raising my voice. He did work a lot of hours, and I understood the type of career he had as a police detective.
Steve stopped what he was doing, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Would it kill you to be more involved?”
“I am involved,” he answered, clapping a ladle against the rim of the pot. We’d had this argument before, and we both knew it wouldn’t go very far. “Now tell me what’s really bothering you.”
My mouth had gone dry and I could taste regret. I wished I had something else to add. He stared at me until I couldn’t take it. “I want to go back to work,” I finally blurted. He rolled his eyes and turned back to the sink.
“How?” he asked, sounding frustrated. “I know you want me to go back to school and I appreciate that you want to help, but how can we manage the time? Please tell me that.”
“First you said the problem with school was about the money,” I began. “And now that I want to work for the extra money, you’re saying it is about the time. So which is it?” While the argument was valid, the intent was to distract him from asking more about where I’d been. It worked, but started an argument I wasn't up to having.
Steve raised his hands, pyramiding his fingers. “You’re right,” he acknowledged. “Money is one thing we don’t have; and time is something we have less of.”
“Katie and Jerry manage to do it,” was all I could think to say. I knew before I finished that I’d picked a horrible comparison. Steve knew it too and threw out a snarky laugh. I hated it when he did that.
“Oh, well, there it is. We’ll follow Katie and Jerry’s lead,” he said. He shook his head and laughed sarcastically. “Parents of the year!”
But I did want to make time for planning. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed a lot more time. I sensed that Steve didn’t want to fight any more than I did. I stepped up to the sink to lend a hand with the dishes. A thought came into my mind; I realized how to turn this around and maybe end it.
“Are you laughing at me because I want to do more than just take care of the kids and . . . and you?” His snarky expression disappeared immediately.
“Babe . . .” he began to say, turning the water off and facing me. He took my hands into his—soapy bubbles erupted between our fingers. “I just don’t know how we’d make it work with my schedule.”
Now I did feel true resentment coming on. I felt the pang of jealousy toward Katie and her busy career.
“I know this is my job now, but I’ve got to do something else, even if it is only part time, a couple of hours a day.” Steve leaned in and peppered my cheek with kisses. I could see in his eyes that he was trying to figure out how to make something work.
“We could always get one of them young foreign au pairs. You know, the super-model hot ones, let them live here with us and help out with Snacks,” he offered, and raised his brow playfully.
“Sure,” I answered. “As long as he is tall, dark, and handsome and, you know . . . very well-endowed, like I’m accustomed to!” I laughed, thumping his chest and patting his crotch.
“Or . . .” he began. “How about I ask my mother if she’d be up for the job?”
“Really?” I answered, excited by the prospect. Steve’s mother would be perfect.
“Yes, really,” he answered. “Dad mentioned that Mom was looking to volunteer her free time.”
I hugged Steve, holding him tight. I felt his heart beating against my chest as he cradled the small of my back with his hands. “I love you.”
“Love you too.” He pulled back and looked at me. “So, what book were you reading at the library?”
TEN
PRACTICE WENT ON for another twenty minutes as Steve asked a half dozen of the same questions—albeit with a bit of trickery so that the questions sounded different each time. When at home, he was a husband and a father. He was
my lover and my best friend. But he was also a cop. He was always a cop. Being a cop was in his blood, just like being a killer was in mine.
I watched as my husband spoke to me, and for a moment I didn’t see a cop. I saw the man I fell in love with. I watched as his brow creased and then rose, pushing worry lines across his forehead. I watched as his mouth pursed and then relaxed. I watched as his lips parted to reveal perfectly straight teeth. I watched as his gorgeous sky-blue eyes stayed fixed on me, following me. I felt a sudden weakness and a flutter in my stomach that only came when he looked at me like that. No other man has ever made me feel the way Steve does.
As I listened to Steve’s questions, keeping my answers short and never forfeiting information, some of what Nerd showed me came to mind. The idea of making real money seemed to be moving into the realm of possibility. With Nerd helping me, I could do this. I wanted to do this. From the Deep Web, I would connect with the people who wanted what I had to offer and were willing to pay for it. And they were going to pay a lot. There’d be a time when Steve wouldn’t be a cop anymore . . . one could hope, anyway.
“Amy?” I heard my name and swam up through the dreamy daze of what could be if we had the money and the time, as Steve had reminded me. “Amy?”
“Sorry, are you done being a cop? I want to talk to my husband.”
“Just one more.”
Of course I tensed, but let him ask his last question. Steve wore his cop senses like a coat, putting them on whenever the truth seemed cold. I must have said something wrong in my short answers while thinking about how to pay for law school. It could be that he was trying to find out if I really had been shopping for the holidays—he always figured out what I got for him.
Should have used that excuse instead.
At one point, a nervous laugh found its way to the back of my throat and the fear of it spilling out became so powerful that I began to sweat.
Did he notice? Would he notice?
“And the book?” he asked, wording the question differently. “What was the book you were reading at the library?”
Affair with Murder The Complete Box Set Page 6
