But the pumpkin. How did a piece of smashed pumpkin get on the bottom of my wife’s shoe?
Even if Eve had been wearing shoes when we buried her, which she wasn’t, it’s very clear she didn’t rise from her grave and walk back home with a piece of pumpkin wedged on her heel. That means that somebody else placed the shoes in the middle of my kitchen, so that I would see them and panic.
And it would have to be someone who knows what we did last night.
Could Addie have done this? It seems unlikely she would be capable of such a thing, and yet I did abandon her in the middle of nowhere last night. Perhaps this is her childish retribution. Although it doesn’t seem like her style. Addie is an impulsive teenager, and the idea that she would sneak into my house and plant a pair of Eve’s shoes on my kitchen floor seems preposterous to me.
There’s another possibility.
I am painfully aware that in the last few years, I have not been able to fulfill my wife’s sexual appetites. And of course, the thought occurred to me that she had taken a lover to fill in the gap. The old Eve—the one I fell in love with—would never contemplate such a thing, but I believe the woman I was married to would be capable of it.
So if she was having an affair with another man, is it possible she could have confided in him? And he somehow discovered what we did to her and now hopes to seek vigilante revenge?
Any of these possibilities leaves me incredibly uneasy.
I pick the pumps off the floor and wash the heels under the steaming hot water from the sink. One thing is clear: whoever left these shoes in my kitchen hopes to frighten me, and yet they are reluctant to involve the police. If somebody had incriminating information about me, that detective would have snapped a pair of cuffs on my wrists before the lies left my lips.
No, I am certain I have the upper hand. As long as I am careful, nobody will find out what I have done.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Sixty-Seven
ADDIE
WHEN MY MOTHER calls me downstairs, there’s a slight tremor in her voice.
I have spent most of the afternoon lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling, too paralyzed to take a stab at any of my homework for the weekend. At some point, I heard my mother emerge from the bedroom and go downstairs, but I kept my own door closed. I can’t face her.
I climb down the stairs, vaguely aware of the fact that my T-shirt has a stain over the breast pocket, and my hair feels like a rat’s nest. I freeze midway down the stairwell at the sight of the unfamiliar woman in a trench coat standing in the middle of our living room.
“Addie,” my mother says. “This is Detective Sprague. She’d like to ask you a few questions.”
I knew that I would eventually get questioned by the police, given I was with Mrs. Bennett in the principal’s office only yesterday, but I didn’t expect it quite so soon. I don’t even know how they figured out she was gone so quickly. Since it’s the weekend, the only person who could possibly have reported her missing is…
Nathaniel.
“Hello, Addie,” the detective says as I slowly walk the rest of the way down the stairs. She is small, but the features of her face look like they’re carved from stone, and her hair is pulled back into a super tight bun behind her head. Even though she’s tiny, she’s frightening. “I need to talk to you for a few minutes, if that’s okay with you.”
“And I’ll be here the whole time,” my mother adds.
I look between the two of them. I don’t see any possible way to say no, so I nod.
“So, Addie…” Detective Sprague’s dark eyes study my face. She is the type of woman who looks like she could see through my lies even better than my fourth grade teacher used to be able to. “The reason I’m here is that your math teacher, Eve Bennett, disappeared sometime between last night and this morning.”
My throat feels like the Sahara desert, which we incidentally learned about last month. “Oh. What happened to her?”
“Well, we don’t know,” the detective says patiently. “But while doing some research into her disappearance, we discovered that you have had a few run-ins with Mrs. Bennett.”
I can feel my mother staring at me, unaware of this turn of events. I’m not entirely sure what to say, especially in front of my mother.
Deny everything.
“Um,” I say, “like, I was having some trouble in the class, so it wasn’t great, but we weren’t enemies or anything.”
Sprague’s lips twitch ever so slightly. “No, I wasn’t suggesting that you’re enemies. But she did tell the principal that she caught you snooping around outside her house two nights ago.”