She lifted the glass, took another sip, and nearly choked on it as a car turned the corner and started driving slowly up the street. A Boston police car, blue and white, unmissable even without its strobes on. She held still as it passed in front of the house, and sighed with relief when it continued on down the street—but it didn’t. She gripped the stem of the wineglass tightly, her breath shallow, her heart pounding, as the car turned and came halfway back, this time pulling to the side of the street in front of the next house down. She fought the urge to stand up, to move to another window for a better look. She’d thought there would be more time, but surely this was the moment: the car door would open, the officer would emerge, and shortly, there would be a knock at her door. No time to think, to plan; now it was time to lie.
The car was parked under a tree, shrouded in shadow. She could make out the dark shape of a man—or maybe a tall woman—behind the wheel, but nothing else. She waited for movement, the sound of the car door, a badge glinting as the officer emerged. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Then, a flicker: from within the car came a soft glow as the man inside pulled a phone from his pocket.
She clenched her teeth. She wanted this to be over. Was he just going to sit there, watching? Waiting? For what?
A warrant, maybe, came the answer from inside her own head, and her skin rippled over with gooseflesh. It was a paranoid thought, the product of a guilty conscience—but what if it wasn’t? If they were already suspicious enough to be filing paperwork to search the house, and if they already had enough evidence, enough to show whatever it took to have it approved . . .
“Fuck,” she whispered aloud. She’d already done one quick and cursory sweep through the place, making the bed, scanning surfaces, satisfied that there were no obvious traces of her husband’s recent presence, but if the house were swarmed over with cops, who knew what they might find? She would have to assume the worst, and make use of whatever time she had left.
She forced herself to take another few sips of wine—slowly, with long pauses between to scroll through strangers’ photos on Insta. If the man in the cop car was watching, he’d see a bored housewife, glued to her phone; he might even see the quick movement of her thumb as she scrolled, tap-tapped, scrolled. Little hearts bloomed under the press of her thumb, but the images were a blur. The wine was tasteless on her tongue. Her focus was turned inward, sharpened by urgency and the knowledge that it was all up to her now. It was becoming a familiar feeling, the potent emotional cocktail of fear, exhilaration, determination. She already knew that she would do whatever had to be done. She would take steps to protect what was hers. Her husband. Her future. Her life. She had always been resourceful, but the past twenty-four hours had tapped into something deeper, darker, fiercer. There was another woman inside of her, one with steel nerves and sharp teeth, who had revealed herself at the crucial moment, and taken control. Cunning and vicious, careful and methodical, and ready to do anything—whatever it took—to survive. It was that woman who had been her guide last night, whispering in her ear as she pulled the trigger.
As she wielded the knife.
As she threw the mangled chunk of meat and cartilage into the garbage disposal and carefully flipped the switch with her elbow, on and off.
Afterward, it was the cold, cunning voice of her second self that advised her to step carefully, avoiding the blood, when she ran to the toilet to vomit.
Her thumb stopped moving over the phone’s screen. The memory of last night, her bare feet racing back past the fat drops of blood that traced her path from the bedroom to the kitchen, had faded away; in its place was a more recent one, and the sense that an important detail was buried within. The late-morning light blazing through the windows, her husband stepping into the hallway with his hair freshly buzzed, bits of toilet paper stuck to his clean-shaven face. She understood in an instant, his words coming back to her at once.
“I cut myself.” That’s what he’d said. “It’s going to bleed all day long.”
Bits of bloody toilet paper in the bathroom trash, the stubble from a freshly shorn beard in the sink: this was what she’d overlooked, what would need her immediate attention. She would start in the bathroom, then. Flush what she could, and bury what she couldn’t in the kitchen trash, under this morning’s coffee grounds—and another image flashed through her mind, of two recently used coffee mugs sitting side by side in the sink. Hers could stay, but his would need to be washed, dried, put away. She would change the sheets they’d slept on last night, just to be safe. Polish the surfaces he might have touched. She would wipe away every visible trace of him, of the day’s work, of last night’s horrors. The only marks left would be the ones on her memory.