The Housewife(9)

I probably called a hundred times, hogging the phone, a growing chorus of angry women behind me threatening to punch me in the face if I didn’t let them have their turn, before I finally gave up. Then I did the only thing I could think of. I called my mother, for the first time in over five years.

“Debbie died,” she said crisply. “I was going to write.”

The world tilted, and next thing I knew I was on the floor, my legs folded under me, the phone dangling from its receiver. The cord was just long enough for me to reach.

“When?”

“Let me think. A month, maybe? No, wait. Three weeks ago. That’s right.”

Three weeks ago. That meant she died only days after our last call.

I’m so scared, Jo.

“What happened? What did he do? ”

“What are you talking about?”

“Her husband? What did he do to her?” I cried.

“Jesus, Jo. What do they feed you over there? He didn’t do anything. She was depressed, apparently. Anyway, she killed herself. Roy is absolutely devastated, as we are. He barely made it through the funeral.”

For a moment I couldn’t breathe. When I spoke again, my voice sounded like it was coming from far away. “She killed herself?”

“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

I pressed my fist into my eyes. “I don’t understand. Did you talk to her? Did you know she was depressed?”

“Well, frankly, whenever I spoke to her, she sounded drunk. What can I say? She should never have gone to LA. She should have stayed here, with us. Married someone local. You girls always thought you were too good for us, and look at you now. You’re in jail and she’s dead. How’d that work out for you?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m not at your beck and call, Jo. I was going to write but things have been busy around here.”

I was upright again by then. I put the phone in its cradle.





5





Obviously Deb didn’t kill herself. Under that beautiful, shiny exterior, Deb was the strongest, fiercest person I knew. And I couldn’t get her last words to me out of my mind. He scares me. I’m really scared.

Over the last few weeks of my incarceration, I read everything online I could find about her death. It was an obsession. I learned that Roy had an alibi—he was with a client at his office at the time of her death—and that Marie, the housekeeper, had found her dead at the bottom of the stairs. Deb had shot herself, and she’d been dead for hours. Marie had also been excluded from the list of suspects because it had been her day off and she was with her brother all day. The security cameras—front and back—hadn’t recorded any activity until Marie came home, hours after the time of death. The case had been ruled as a suicide.

He did it. Dr. Roy Davies had killed my sister. I knew it in every fiber of my being. And the thought that he was living his life, that he’d gotten away with it, filled me with a rage so pure, I felt like I was possessed.

The first thing I did after I got out was change my name legally from Joanne Adams to Jodie Smith. I liked the name Jodie, and it was close enough to Joanne that I figured if I ran into someone from my past—as unlikely as that would be—they’d assume Jodie was a nickname.

The second thing I did was dye my hair blond.

And then, I moved to LA.

I knew what Roy looked like from the wedding photos Deb had sent me, and also because he had been on the Sophia Sanchez Morning Show a handful of times, talking about relationships, which incredibly, and without irony, was his specialty. I’d wait outside his office, dressed in shabby clothes and a beanie. I knew where he got his clothes dry-cleaned and that they would deliver his laundry back to him. I went there, pretending to be his assistant, and managed to wangle his home address out of the nice woman behind the counter. I went to his house and checked it out from the outside.

It took me five seconds to figure out I’d never get inside without help.





I found out that he would attend the gala for orphaned children at the Hilton because his publisher kept an Instagram page for him, and Roy was going to make a large donation in memory of Deborah. I found out who was catering for the event and applied for a job as a waitress—servers, they called it. I’d been doing some waitressing to earn some money so I knew what to do. Armed with my fake, glowing résumé, I applied for and got the job.

I didn’t spill my tray of oysters Mornay on Roy’s tuxedo accidentally. I wanted an excuse to give him my number, and all I could think of was to offer to pay for the dry cleaning. Then I was going to tell him that I was new in town, I was looking for work, and I was an excellent cook and also an excellent cleaner, lawn-mowing person, pool-cleaning person, and dog-walking person, and while my waitressing skills might seem, at first glance, unsatisfactory, I was actually very cheap and would gladly offer my services at half the going rate for those lavish parties Dr. Davies hosted at his incredible house.

It should go without saying that I never entertained the possibility of walking through the front door as Mrs. Roy Davies. In fact, for a split second that day when we were both crouched on the floor picking up bits of oysters Mornay, I thought I’d messed up. The way he looked at me, like he couldn’t take his eyes off me… I was sure he’d recognized me, that Deb had shown him my photo.