by Joy Fielding
When did I become so petty? she wonders, pulling into a parking lot across from the public beach. “Petty and paranoid, that’s me.”
Of course, he could be calling because something has come up and he won’t be able to pick up the kids at school or take them to dinner as planned. So she’ll have to phone him at some point.
Just not now.
She gets out of her car and cuts across the already crowded lot toward A1A, the surprisingly calm ocean stretched out majestically before her.
She wonders if Craig is calling because he’s lonely, because he still loves her, misses her, wants to come home.
It’s possible. It’s been three months since he left and neither one of them has been to see a lawyer, so maybe he’s having second thoughts. Would she take him back?
Maggie breathes in the ocean’s heady scent as she crosses the road and descends the wooden steps to the beach. She glances at the young women in bikinis sunning themselves and the young men tossing Frisbees back and forth as she takes off her sandals and walks barefoot in the sand. Surely no one would risk attacking her on a public beach, she thinks, casting repeated glances over her shoulder nevertheless, reassured by the presence of the lifeguard sitting on his high perch and the sound of toddlers playing nearby.
She walks for maybe half an hour before plopping down on the warm sand and watching a group of teenagers trying to bodysurf the small, intermittent waves. She feels the sun on her legs, on her arms, in her hair, and she smiles, her body finally starting to relax, her insides to untwist. The ocean has always been a soothing influence in her life, regardless of what coast she’s on. It calmed her after the death of her parents, her father from a stroke when she was thirty-three, her mother from cancer five years later.
At least they’d been spared the events of the last few years, Maggie thinks, noticing two burly-looking men walking toward her. Instinctively, her hand reaches into her purse, searching for the gun’s handle. But the men, both wearing the skimpiest of bathing suits, don’t even look in her direction as they stroll past.
Maggie shakes her head as she pushes herself to her feet. Had she really thought there might be weapons secreted inside their Speedos?
Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
Okay, Maggie decides. When she starts quoting Mae West, it’s time to go home.
The small cul-de-sac is quiet when she pulls her SUV into the driveway. No one is outside watering the lawn; no one is watching her from a window; no one is squatting behind a stubby palmetto palm. There’s a luxury car she doesn’t recognize parked in front of Mrs. Fisher’s house, but it probably belongs to the old lady’s son. Even so, she checks the license plate to make sure the car isn’t a rental.
She knows something is wrong the second her key unlocks the door. Her hand is reflexively reaching out to silence the thirty-second warning beep that precedes the full-blown alarm when she feels the house’s eerie quiet seep into her pores and realizes that the alarm isn’t on.
How can that be? I watched Erin set it this morning. Didn’t I?
She leaves the front door open as she pulls her gun and her cellphone out of her purse, holding one in each hand as the bag drops to the floor. Don’t be stupid, she tells herself as she tiptoes toward the stairs. You aren’t some girl in a cheesy horror movie, going where common sense dictates you don’t go. Maggie stops, about to call 911 when the realization that she could be mistaken stills her fingers. Is it possible that in the morning rush to get out, Erin had tapped in an incorrect code? She has to be sure before she calls in the troops. She can’t afford to be known as the girl who cried wolf.
Maggie proceeds slowly and cautiously up the stairs, gun in one hand, phone in the other, the first two emergency digits already pressed. But surely if someone has been waiting to ambush her, he would have heard her car pull into the driveway, and she’d be dead already.
Unless he wants to confront her directly. Unless he wants to see the look on her face when he follows through with his implied threats, to let her know he made good on his silent promise, that his will be the last eyes hers see before he closes them forever.
A sudden noise echoes down the hall. Maggie swings around, her phone dropping to the floor as she aims the gun in the direction of the sound and prepares to pull the trigger. “I have a gun,” she warns the intruder, as she was taught to do.
“Maggie?” her husband says, emerging from their bedroom. “Shit! What the hell?…” He drops to his knees. “Are you fucking crazy?!”
“Are you?” she shouts. “I almost shot you, for God’s sake. What the hell are you doing here?”
“You have a fucking gun?! Holy shit!”
They continue screaming expletives at each other until they both run out of breath. Maggie bursts into tears as she collapses to the floor across from him. It is several minutes before either can speak with any coherence.
“I don’t believe you,” Craig says finally. “You bought a gun?!”
“You left. What was I supposed to do?”
“How about see a fucking psychiatrist?”
“I don’t need a psychiatrist.”
“Really? You almost shot me!”
“You broke into my house!”
“I didn’t break in,” Craig tells her. “I have a key. I know the code.”
“Where’s your car?”
“I borrowed one from the lot.”
Maggie pictures the unfamiliar car parked on the street, trying to wrap her head around what just happened. She’d almost shot her husband, for God’s sake. That’s what happened. “What are you fucking doing here anyway?”
“I came to get my stuff….”
“So…what? You don’t call? You don’t ask permission? You just show up?” Maggie demands.
“I tried calling. You didn’t pick up. I left a message….”
Maggie looks toward the phone on the floor beside her. Shit. That’s why he was calling. “Then you should have waited till I returned your call. It’s just a camera and some old cuff links. What’s the big hurry?”
“I need the cuff links.”
Maggie senses his reluctance to say more and raises an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.
“I have a wedding this weekend,” he explains. “Not that I have to justify wanting my personal belongings back.”
“A wedding?” Maggie searches her brain for anyone they know who could be getting married. “Who’s getting married? We don’t know anyone.”
“It’s someone at work.”
“Someone at work,” Maggie repeats, knowing she’s not getting the full story. Craig was never very good at hiding things from her. And he’s a lousy liar, always has been. “Who?”
“What difference does it make?”
“What aren’t you telling me?” she counters. “Remember—you’re talking to a woman with a loaded gun in her hands.”
Craig sighs. “Okay. Fine. I’ll tell you…on the condition that you put the damn thing away.”
Maggie lays the gun on the floor beside her. “Shoot,” she says, hoping for a laugh. “Sorry,” she says, when one isn’t forthcoming. “So, who’s getting married?”
“Actually, I don’t know the couple personally.” Craig hesitates. “I’m kind of…the plus-one.”
Maggie takes a second to let his words sink in. “Are you saying you’re someone’s date?”
“Not really.” Another hesitation. “Well, I guess you could call it that.”
“You have a date,” Maggie repeats, trying to remain calm. “You don’t think it’s a little early to be seeing someone? Unless, of course, you started seeing her before we separated…”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know I would never do that.”
“I never thought you’d leave,” she says, which silences him. “Is it serious?”
“No. It’s just someone at work.”
“Someone at work.” Maggie does a quick mental scan of her husband’s co-workers. “Who?”
“What difference…? One of the sales reps,” he says, his face acknowledging the futility of prolonging the discussion. “You don’t know her. She’s new.”
“Well, then,” Maggie says when she can’t think of anything else to say. So, that’s that. Her husband isn’t lonely. He doesn’t still love her, miss her, want to come home. She pushes herself off the floor, pocketing her gun and pushing her shoulders back as she heads toward Leo’s bedroom. Behind her, she hears Craig scrambling to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
Maggie doesn’t answer as she walks into her son’s room, opening his closet and retrieving the box with Craig’s belongings, then returning to the hall and pushing it toward his chest. “You can leave now.”
“Maggie…”
“Just take the fucking box and get out of my house.”
He doesn’t move. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Really? What way would you like it?”
“You know I still care about you….”
His words slam against the side of Maggie’s brain. What do they mean? That he still loves her? That he wants to come home?
“Will you do me one favor?” he asks.
“What’s that?”
“Will you get rid of the damn gun?”
“No way,” she says. Fuck you, she thinks.
“For God’s sake, Maggie. Think about the kids….”
“I am thinking about the kids.”
“What if it had been Leo and not me just now?”
“It wasn’t.”
“What if it had been?”
An uncomfortable silence follows. If she were still teaching English literature, she would tell her students that this is what would be considered a “pregnant pause.” But then, she no longer teaches English literature. She no longer teaches anything. She is none of the things that once defined her—a confident California girl, a high school teacher, a loving wife. In her place stands this insecure imposter, a lonely woman with fear in her heart and a gun in her pocket.
“Don’t be late picking up the kids,” she says when she can find her voice.
“Maggie, please…”
“You know the way out.” She walks into her bedroom. “Enjoy the wedding,” she says, closing the door behind her.
Chapter Seven
Maggie sits on her bed for the better part of twenty minutes, unable to move. Gradually, she feels the numbness that had overtaken her body start to recede. The soft buzz of the central air-conditioning system gradually worms its way into her ears; sensation returns to her fingertips; she feels the weight of the gun in her pocket pressing against her hip.
I almost shot my husband, she realizes, extricating the gun and burying it beneath the myriad assortment of scarves inside the top drawer of the nightstand. My husband doesn’t love me, she thinks with her next exhale.
He has a date.
He isn’t coming back.
Dear God.
He’s moving on. Without her.
How is that even possible?
Somehow, despite everything that’s happened, the unbelievable strain the past few years have put on their marriage, she always assumed that theirs was an unbreakable bond. Even when Craig announced he was leaving, told her that she was “losing her spark,” and that he couldn’t take it anymore, she thought that they’d somehow find their way back to each other in time.
They’d met at a party during their last year at UCLA. It was the quintessential case of opposites attracting. Maggie loved Craig’s laid-back manner and easygoing charm. Craig loved Maggie’s spunk, her intensity and high ideals. They got married; Maggie got a job teaching high school English; Craig settled into a job selling luxury cars; they had two children.
They were happy.
Sure, they had their share of arguments. Craig sometimes complained that Maggie was too intense, her standards too high, too exacting, while Maggie occasionally accused her husband of being too tolerant, too laid-back.
“Sometimes you have to take a stand,” she told him.
“Sometimes you have to back off,” he countered.
Still, he was happy. She was happy.
She might have been losing her spark, but she never thought she’d lose him.
She walks to the bedroom window overlooking the street, checking the small cul-de-sac for anything out of the ordinary. Anything to stop the memories that are now flooding into her brain.
Because Maggie knows exactly the day everything changed, the precise moment two years ago that altered their lives forever.
It was a Saturday. Craig had taken the kids to the beach and Maggie was enjoying the spa day he’d gifted her for her fortieth birthday. It started with a relaxing sauna, then an even more relaxing massage, followed by a glorious facial and a much-needed mani-pedi. She’d left the salon at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world.
The world, in turn, was preparing to come crashing down on her head.
She was stopped at a red light when she heard a commotion beside her. A Lincoln Town Car had apparently cut off a motorcycle, and the two drivers—one a middle-aged, well-dressed businessman, the other a rough-looking, leather-vested biker—had leapt from their vehicles and were now flailing at each other in the middle of the road, the sun flashing like a strobe light across the tattoos covering the biker’s bare arms. And then another flash—my God, was that a knife?—as the weapon sliced through the smog-filled air to pierce the driver’s jugular.
“No!” Maggie screamed as the biker calmly replaced the helmet he’d tossed to the ground only seconds before, instantly hiding his scraggly brown hair and angry black eyes. He shook his head in Maggie’s direction, as if issuing a silent warning, then mounted his bike and sped away.
The police arrived minutes later.
“I saw the whole thing,” Maggie told them, describing the altercation and giving as detailed a description as she could of the biker—the unkempt hair, the dark, menacing eyes, and the jungle of tattoos covering his arms.
“You told the police you could identify the killer?” Craig demanded when she recounted the events to him later.
“I saw a man murdered,” Maggie argued. “And I saw the person who did it. You’re telling me I should just keep quiet?”
“I’m sure you weren’t the only witness.”
“I’m the only one who saw his face.”
“No, you’re the only one foolish enough to admit it.”
The argument extended into the night and continued over the next days and weeks. They intensified after a man fitting the description Maggie had given the police was arrested, and she identified him in a lineup.
It was then that the intimidation started. Hang-ups on the phone. Anonymous, vaguely threatening messages on social media, the vroom-vroom of motorcycles outside their bedroom windows at all hours of the night.
They called the police, who notified the U.S. Marshals, who visited them immediately, telling them they might qualify for Witness Protection.
“How does that work?” Maggie asked.
It was explained that Maggie, Craig, and their two children would be given new IDs and spirited to a secret location, where they would be provided with a monthly stipend and money to live temporarily, as well as new SSNs, fake birth certificates, and other necessary documents. But, while they would still be liable for any debts they’d previously incurred, they would not be able to buy a car or make any other major purchases because there would be no credit history on their new IDs.
It also meant leaving their relatives and friends and virtually their entire lives behind.
It meant they
would have to lie to everyone about everything.
“It seems as if we’re the ones being punished here,” Maggie observed. “Not the killer.”
The Marshals didn’t disagree.
“We’ll need some time to think this through,” Maggie told them, increasingly torn between wanting to do the right thing and worries for her family’s welfare. Could she really ask them to give up their home, their friends, their names? She assured herself that such drastic measures were unnecessary, that once her testimony put the killer behind bars, everything would be okay, their lives could return to normal.
Except the case never went to trial.
It was dropped because the man she’d identified produced an alibi, however suspect—half a dozen fellow bikers, all looking vaguely alike, all sporting the same tattoos, all swearing they’d been together at the time of the incident. The Assistant State’s Attorney insisted that any half-decent lawyer would attack the validity of Maggie’s identification. How could she be so sure his client was the man she saw when she’d been inside her car a lane away, her windows were closed, the sun was in her eyes, and she’d been scared, possibly even traumatized? Combined with the biker’s alibi, that would likely be enough to create reasonable doubt in the jury’s mind, making it impossible for the prosecution to obtain a conviction.
“Look on the bright side,” said her obviously relieved husband. “It’s over.”
Except it wasn’t.
The charges might have been dropped, but the harassment continued. Their house was pelted with eggs; wherever Maggie went, young men on motorcycles appeared; a dead bird was found in their mailbox.
They called the U.S. Marshals, who explained that, because there would no longer be a trial for Maggie to testify at, the family was no longer eligible for Witness Protection.