The Housewife(43)

I slam the laptop shut and pull the thumb drive out, except I pull it too fast and it flies out of my hand. I bolt to the safe and slam its door shut. It doesn’t lock. It just bounces open.

I hear it again, the creak of a door.

Please, God. I can’t think of the code right now so I punch in random digits and press the Enter key. The safe makes a whirling sound, like a cog turning.

Locked.

I hold my breath and listen. Nothing.

I tiptoe to the door and open it by a hair. Silence. Once I’m sure it’s safe, I slip out of the room and lock the door after me, my heart pounding. It’s fine. Everything will be fine. As long as the door is locked, I’m in the clear.

I’m about to go back upstairs when again, I notice the shift in the air.

I tiptoe to the back of the house. The back door is closed.

I pad into the kitchen and turn on the light. Everything looks normal. I’m about to flick it off again when I notice the cupboard door ajar.

The one with Deb’s shelf.

I open it. Everything seems the same, except for the jar of cookies.

It’s empty.





26





So, Marie roams the house at night. She kind of looks like a vampire, now that I think of it, with her slick black hair and her perfect eyebrows and her black outfits. And she lied to me about being a diabetic. I wonder why? Because she’d rather be a diabetic than accept food from me, that’s why. She probably thinks I’ll spit in it first.

If she’s out there, gliding silently down corridors, then I can’t go back to Roy’s office. So instead, I get back in bed and scrunch my face up against the pillow so as not to wake Roy with my sobs. I haven’t cried for so long; I don’t even know how to do it anymore. Is it normal for it to hurt this much? For my lungs to burn like that? I’ve got so much snot coming out of my nose it’s like I’m blowing out slugs. Even my rib cage feels too small for this grief, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t take a breath .

I feel like I’m drowning.

When it’s over, I lie there, waiting for my breath to return to normal. Then I think of all the ways I could kill him, and I keep hitting the same roadblocks: He will be dead, but revered. He will be remembered as a tragic figure, a kind man who devoted his life to fixing other people, only to marry one depressed woman followed by her psycho sister. They’ll make podcasts about him and produce a limited series about his murder. Meanwhile, I’ll be in jail, reading about him in magazines and seeing his photo from his book jacket on TV, and at some point, they’ll execute me because Roy would have been my fourth killing by then, and I think everyone will agree that that’s too much.

And then there’ll be nobody left to remember to love Deb, but plenty of people who’ll remember and love Roy, for years and years and years, because no man should have to go through so much in one lifetime.

I lie there, staring at the ceiling, watching the light change, and come up with a plan. I’m going to take the thumb drive, find the letter, and I’m going to give both to the police. It’s a simple plan, except for one problem—other than the fact I have neither of those things in my possession, I mean.

If I go to the police, they will figure out who I am at some point. They’ll know Deb was my sister and that I was in jail for years. And I never told Roy either of those things. And Roy will say that sure, the video looks bad, but he was trying to help her professionally. And everyone will believe Roy because that’s how things are in this world.

All that to say, it’s me they’ll arrest. Not Roy .

No. Somebody else has to do it.

And I know just the person.





I texted Erin after our coffee the other day to thank her, and I said I’d like to do it again sometime. She texted back saying the same, and I meant to follow up, but I’ve been busy.

So this morning, while Roy is in the shower, I text her.

Hi, Erin. Are you free today? It would be nice to catch up.





I had to rewrite the text a few times because I kept changing my mind. Was Hi, Erin too casual? Should it be Dear Erin? Does anyone say Dear these days? In the end I decided to keep my tone light and friendly, the way my sister taught me. You don’t need to tell people everything all at once, she’d say. You can listen, ask questions. Which is another way of saying it wouldn’t hurt to keep my mouth shut once in a while.

I study my face in the mirror, pull at the skin under my eye, on the corner of my mouth, on my top lip. I can’t stop seeing Deborah’s ravaged face in my mind’s eye. Roy’s idea of punishment, obviously. Some kind of sick, perverted punishment. But whatever he did to her, he’s doing it to me, too. My guess is that he wants us to be ugly because he doesn’t want us anymore, and he doesn’t want anyone else to desire us. In Deborah’s case, it was because he was screwing another woman while accusing her of screwing the gardener, and in my case, well, because he’s tired of me.

My face looks the same as yesterday, I think. I sigh, wondering how he does it, and how long do I have before he turns my face into some kind of…I don’t know, potato?

Not long, judging by Deb’s face in the video.





Roy is in his office, working on his laptop, getting ready for the day ahead. I bring him a cup of coffee, scanning the floor for the thumb drive. I wonder if he found it. Maybe he thinks he dropped it accidentally when he put a file away.