She bit her lip. The traffic oozed forward, unhurried as ever. But Adrienne’s car didn’t feel like an oasis anymore. For just a little while, she hadn’t been thinking about her husband.
Now all she could think was that she had left him alone for much too long.
A phone began ringing from inside the house as she fumbled with her keys. There was no reason for the door to be locked, and as Adrienne’s key finally slid home and unseated the dead bolt, she suddenly imagined—or was it something more, something like hope?—that she would find the place empty, her husband gone.
Instead, she pushed the door open and saw him standing motionless at the end of the hall. The ringing phone was on a table set against the wall, and he was standing in front of it, mouth open, watching it go off. She watched in slow motion as he extended a hand, took a step.
“Are you crazy?” she yelped, and he whirled around at the sound of her voice, stumbling backward as she rushed into the house. “What the hell are you doing?”
“It keeps ringing,” he said. He sounded bewildered. “It rang before. I thought maybe . . . maybe it was you.”
“Why the fuck,” she said, and grabbed the receiver instead of finishing the sentence. She lifted a finger to her lips as she brought the phone to her ear. She was out of breath; her “hello” came out in a little gasp. She cleared her throat.
“Hello?” she said again, and then, “Is anyone there?” even as the bottom dropped out of her stomach and she understood that there would be no answer. The call disconnected with a soft click.
It was happening now, then.
She’d been foolish to imagine that they had more time.
She put the phone back on the table and turned to her husband, still standing beside her with the same confused, vacant expression on his face—waiting, like always, for her to tell him what to do. She fought back the urge to reach out and shake him.
“They’re coming,” she said. “The police.”
He gaped. “What? How do you—”
“You have to leave. Now.”
“Oh,” he said, and though it was just one syllable, something about the way it slid out of his mouth made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She looked at him again, at his face, at the way he was standing, and felt a wave of disgust crawl over her.
“Oh my God. You’re high.”
He flinched, veering down the hall away from her.
“Don’t yell at me,” he moaned, and now she did take hold of him and shake him, hard, her nails digging into his shoulders.
“I thought you got rid of that shit. I told you to get rid of it. What were you thinking?! Of all the times—”
He wrenched away from her, his eyes wild. “I was freaking out in here!” he cried. “What was I supposed to do? You were gone for hours, and I was starting to—”
“Of course I was gone for hours!” she shouted. “Do you have any idea what I went through today? What I went through for you? All you had to do was sit still long enough for me to . . .” She cut herself off, shaking her head. “And where the fuck did you even . . . never mind. There’s no time. Get your shit and get out. Now.”
He glared at her and she glared back, and a terrible realization flashed unbidden into her mind: We’ve been here before.
Christ, it was true. So many times. How could they have come so far, only to end up like this? Last night, she had made a horrific choice that would change their lives forever—only nothing had changed at all.
His voice had the snap of a petulant child’s. “Fine,” he said. He pushed past her and disappeared into the bedroom. She called after him.
“Get your clothes from last night.”
“There’s still blood on them.” He sounded scared, but she couldn’t worry about that now.
“That’s why I don’t want them in the house when the cops come. There’s still a suitcase in the Mercedes; you can wear what’s in there if you need something. Take the car, drive out of town, find a place to spend the night. Not the Ritz. Someplace shitty. Pay with cash. Only cash. You understand? And get rid of that shit. I don’t want it in the car, either.”
There was the sound of a toilet flushing, of water running. He reappeared, still frowning, and muttered, “Yeah, okay. What are you going to do?”
“What we talked about. It’s not me they’re looking for. I’ll take care of it, and then . . . and then we’ll go.”
“Where?”