by David Bell
I saw a lot of names. A few of the names made a roiling nausea rise in the pit of my stomach.
Mom. Dad. Uncle Jake.
I’d managed not to think of this unpleasant truth until it stared me in the face, but Jennifer had a life. She had family, friends. Maybe siblings or nieces and nephews. Those people had perhaps just been informed of her death, a grim-faced detective delivering the news in a matter-of-fact voice. A mother crumpling to the floor. A father punching a wall in the rage of grief.
Was I just going to stand by, knowing what I knew, and not say anything?
I decided I had to come clean in the morning. I’d tell Amanda everything. And then I’d call the police.
What choice did I have?
My eyes were tired and bleary. My body felt worn out from the late hour and from the night of craziness. It seemed hard to believe I’d lain in our bed and not been able to sleep. If I went up there again and settled in next to Amanda, I imagined myself sleeping for two days straight.
I rubbed my eyes. My vision cleared, and I caught another name and recent messages. Kyle.
Kyle. A guy? The other guy?
I skimmed their messages and couldn’t deny he sounded like a boyfriend. A jealous boyfriend.
Just two weeks earlier:
Kyle: I don’t care. We can be together.
Jennifer: I’m working on it.
Kyle: So it’s over with Blake?
Jennifer: It really is . . .
And then the rest of the messages came from Kyle. With no response from Jennifer.
Well?
Is it really over?
Why were you texting him?
Why aren’t you answering me?
And finally, just one day earlier:
We need to settle this. I need to know where I stand. Now.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Light started to leak in from behind the curtains. I’d been through an insane number of texts, including many more between Jennifer and Kyle, and found little else of interest. If my eyes had been bleary and tired earlier in the night, by the time I heard Amanda’s footsteps above me they felt like they’d been scrubbed with a Brillo Pad.
I stood up from the desk, my back creaking like a rusty gate. Any thought of work or the day’s demands had rushed out of my mind like blowing sand. When I had been twenty and pulling an all-nighter before a college class, I could manage it. I knew when the class ended I could return to my dorm and crash into bed. Facing an eight-hour day at work with real responsibilities seemed impossible. Especially with so many unanswered questions swirling around me.
I grabbed my phone and jumped from one social media platform to another, looking for any information about Jennifer’s death. Twitter and Facebook. The local newspaper and TV stations. Nothing. I almost threw the phone in frustration.
A second later I heard Amanda’s steps in the kitchen, accompanied by Henry’s gooing and gurgling.
“Ryan? Are you up?”
I went out and saw Amanda in her robe, her hair mussed by sleep, sliding Henry into his high chair. Once he was in, he started thrashing his arms around, his mouth a near perfect O of desire and hunger.
“Why are you up so early?” she asked. “And after you were up so late dealing with Blake.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
Henry held his arms out to me like he was Superman, then started banging his fists against the high chair. I went over and kissed him on top of the head, which calmed him a little.
“You never have trouble sleeping,” she said. “Unlike your son.”
“Maybe I had too much caffeine.”
I felt jittery and caged up. Amanda started taking things out of the refrigerator, and I kept getting in her way. I couldn’t concentrate on anything around me.
“Do you need something?” she asked, a polite way of asking me to move.
“I’ll be right back.”
I went to the office and sent e-mails to the appropriate people at work telling them I wouldn’t be in that day. I claimed to be under the weather but didn’t offer any details. I didn’t need to, not really. One of the benefits of being a VP at a small company. And it was a good time to miss work. We’d recently completed a large project I’d been in charge of—a giant social media campaign for Rossingville’s minor-league baseball team, the Roadrunners—so I’d stored up enough goodwill to miss a day. I could check my e-mail and be available by phone if anyone needed me.
When I came back out, Amanda was in a chair next to Henry, spooning yogurt into his mouth. He lapped it up happily and only half of it went across his cheeks.
Amanda gave me the side-eye. “Are you going to get yourself something to eat? Or maybe do something useful, like make coffee?”
“Sure. I’ll make coffee.”
I filled the coffeemaker to the rim and turned it on. I needed all of it. It was nice to have a simple task to perform. Then I didn’t know what to do with myself.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “You’re pacing like I’m in labor all over again.”
“Why was your phone next to the bed last night?” I asked.
“My phone?” She said the word like it was something foreign she’d never heard before.
“Yeah. It was on the bedside table. You never do that. You always plug it in across the room.”
“That’s why you seem agitated? My phone?”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“I don’t know. I just fell asleep that way, I guess. Do you know how tired I am at the end of the day? I’m lucky to get my clothes off before I pass out. What’s really on your mind?”
“I don’t think I’m going in to work today.”
Amanda turned completely away from Henry and gave me her full attention. “You’re not going in to work today? You? Missing a day of work? What’s wrong?”
I barely heard her. I was scrolling through my phone again, checking for news. Finding nothing, I did something I almost never did anymore. I went out to the living room and clicked on the TV, thinking I might find breaking news there that they didn’t have online yet. It was almost six, and I knew a local morning show came on right then.
I waited while the hosts—a young blond woman and a chipper young man—chattered through some opening inanities about the weather and the blooming flowers and the approach of Easter. I wanted to yell at the screen and tell them to hurry up, that we didn’t need the happy talk. Just the news.
Then they transitioned, and the blond woman’s face switched from shining happiness to grim seriousness. She started talking about a suspected homicide in town, her brow furrowed as she related the facts.
“The suspected victim was twenty-seven-year-old Jennifer Bates, a resident of the Kingston Manor subdivision. . . .”
Jennifer’s face flashed on the screen, a vacation snapshot that showed her with a gigantic smile.
I heard the noise. The gasp. To be honest, I thought it came from me. I thought I’d made the noise when I saw her face and heard her name. Seeing it and hearing it on the news made it much more real even than touching her still body in her house. Seeing it on the news meant other people knew she was dead too. It meant I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. I hadn’t dreamed it.
“Ryan?” Amanda said behind me.
“Hold on.”
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t know when she had come into the room. Was she the one who had gasped?
The story ended with the blond woman telling us that if we knew anything we should call the local police. As of now, she explained, they had no suspects and no motive in the crime.
Then she started talking about a classic-car show, something coming to town during the upcoming weekend.
Amanda crossed the room and muted the TV. She turned to face me.
“Where’s Henry?” I asked.
“I
can see him. He’s going to town on his teething ring. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I was watching the news,” I said.
“You never watch the news. Not on TV anyway. Why are you watching it today?”
“We should check on Henry.”
She leaned back. “I can see him. He’s happy. You know that woman, Ryan. That’s Jennifer Bates. You know her. Ryan . . .” She shook her head. “Ryan, do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Henry started whining in the kitchen.
“There, see. He’s not fine,” I said, hoping to change the subject away from me.
He couldn’t stand it when we—and especially Amanda—were out of his sight for any length of time. And he liked to let us know it. He awkwardly banged his hands against the high chair, rattling his plastic bowl.
Amanda hesitated for a moment, her eyes locked on mine, and then she turned and went out to the kitchen to tend to Henry. But I knew the conversation wasn’t over. I turned the TV off and followed Amanda.
She stood at the counter, pouring milk into a cup. She brought it over to Henry and gave him a drink. He calmed down then, stopping his banging. Amanda straightened up and looked at me.
“What’s going on, Ryan?” she asked, emphasizing every word. “You’re out last night playing the world’s quietest basketball game. You’re talking to Blake outside. Late. You’re up all night. You say you’re not going to work. And now you have the TV on because someone you know, someone who was almost a client, has been murdered.”
Her words were accusatory and upsetting enough. But she placed a special emphasis on a few of them. She had said “almost a client” as though those words carried some kind of additional meaning, something both she and I knew. And that set me off-balance.
“Wouldn’t you think it was disturbing if someone you knew got murdered?” I asked.
“Of course. But how well did you really know this woman?” she asked. “As I recall, she wanted your firm to bid on a project for her nonprofit. They wanted some kind of updated marketing approach, right? Print and social media? The usual? And you gave them the bid. And they went with somebody else because you guys were too expensive. So that’s it. That’s not a big deal. How well could you even know someone from that?”
“We had to meet a couple of times,” I said. “With her and several of her coworkers.”
But it seemed strange to me that Amanda remembered Jennifer at all. Sure, I talked about work at home. We talked about it a lot. But in the big scheme of things, my interactions with Jennifer Bates and her company would have been small. Insignificant. We bid on jobs from companies all over town, all over the county and even the state. Would Jennifer’s company have even rated a mention with all the other stuff going on in our lives?
I started to understand that something else was at play.
“I think we need to sit down,” Amanda said.
I didn’t argue. Thank God Henry was only six months old. Amanda and I could discuss just about anything we wanted to in front of him, and he wouldn’t have any idea what was going on. As long as we didn’t yell or curse—since he was acquiring language skills right then—and as long as the milk and apple juice kept flowing to his mouth, he’d be content.
So I sat down across the table from Amanda, with Henry in his spot to my right.
“I know, Ryan,” she said.
“Know about what?”
“I know about the messages that woman sent you on Facebook.”
The overhead light bore down on me. Even Henry, pausing for a moment from his destruction of the teething ring, turned his wide eyes and rosy cheeks my way, as if curious to hear my response.
I certainly couldn’t lie. I’d had my fill of that. I couldn’t do it anymore.
“How did you know about that?” I asked.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Amanda spoke in a calm voice as usual. She didn’t lose her cool or yell. She didn’t sound panicky or frantic. “We tell each other everything. Or at least, I thought we did. Why didn’t you tell me this woman was coming on to you?”
“Is that why you remember her name?” I asked. “I can’t believe I would have ever mentioned her around here.”
“Tell me what happened, Ryan,” she said. “Why was she writing to you?”
“How did you find out? Did you check my messages? I didn’t think you ever snooped around on my devices.”
“I wasn’t snooping.” Her words came out more sharply, like nails from a nail gun. “Do you want to know how I saw them? It was about a week before Henry was born.” When she mentioned his name, Henry turned her way. Maybe he thought his parents were having an important discussion about him. I hoped he thought that. “You remember how big I was then. I was like the side of a house. It was hell going up and down the stairs. I was miserable.”
“I know. I remember.”
“Well, I was down here one night. And you were out. I think you were playing basketball. Again. Anyway, I realized my phone was upstairs. Rather than waddle up there, I decided to use your computer to check my work e-mail. It was my last chance to feel like a normal working person for a while. I was wrapping stuff up before Henry was born.” She tapped her fingers against the table. “You’re right. I wouldn’t snoop on your stuff. You have a lot of work things on there. I don’t want to disrupt any system you have for organizing things. It’s the same reason I don’t want you logging on to my devices.” She cleared her throat. “But I saw the messages. One of them came through and dinged while I was on the computer. I saw what she said to you about hoping your relationship went beyond the professional. Or something like that.”
“That means you saw something else,” I said. “You saw that I never wrote back. That she wrote to me a few times, but I didn’t reply. That was it. I ignored her, and she went away.”
“But you didn’t tell me about it,” Amanda said. “Why not?”
“You just explained why,” I said. “You were about to have Henry. And you were stressed and uncomfortable. And you were ambivalent about quitting your job. I didn’t want to add anything else to your shoulders. I didn’t want to pile on.”
Amanda said nothing. She appeared to be absorbing everything I’d told her. She stood up and used a napkin to wipe milk off Henry’s face.
When she was seated again, I said, “You of all people should know about people flirting with you and coming on to you whether you want them to or not.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“You’re really bringing that up?” Amanda asked.
“It seems relevant. Doesn’t it?”
The year before, while Amanda had still been working her grant-writing job, one of the guys from the IT department started showing a great deal of interest in her. He manufactured excuses to come by her office and tinker with her computer or printer. He happened to bump into her during the lunch hour at nearby restaurants and coffee shops. He invited her out for happy hour.
“What was his name?” I asked. “Steve?”
“What’s your point, Ryan? Some guy hit on me at work. So what? Do you know what it’s like to be a woman in this society? When I was eight months pregnant and walking into the grocery store in sweatpants and a maternity top, two different guys whistled at me. That’s what it’s like for women to navigate a world of men. At least Steve never whistled at me. He was polite. And when I gave him the cold shoulder, he backed off. End of story.”
“Just like Jennifer,” I said. “I ignored her, and she went away.”
“But I told you about Steve.”
“And I wasn’t eight and a half months pregnant when he asked you to coffee.”
Amanda cocked her head. “That was the last time you heard from this Jennifer? When I was as big as a house?”
She had me there. And I couldn’t deny it. Even though I didn�
�t know how she knew.
“Somehow you know she wrote to me again?” I asked.
“Yeah. And you didn’t tell me about that either. And now all of this.” She waved her hand in the air, a gesture that seemed to be intended to encapsulate Jennifer’s death, my all-nighter, my skipping work, and anything else odd that had transpired in the last twelve hours.
“She wrote to me once more. Just a couple of days ago. And I don’t know what made her do that out of the blue. I hadn’t seen her or talked to her. But I didn’t respond to that message at all. In fact, when I got that message two days ago, I finally unfriended her on Facebook. I didn’t realize we were still friends then. She friended me originally when we were doing the bid for her.” My mind flashed back to the night before, standing over Jennifer’s body and receiving the friend request. Then the other friend request right before Blake had showed up. I was no closer to understanding those requests than I was to understanding anything else. “How did you know about that if you’re not snooping around on my computer or phone?”
Amanda sighed. She looked over at Henry, who bobbed his head between the two of us. “I looked last night. I hadn’t looked since the first messages came. Since that night I was pregnant. I feel gross doing that. But last night . . . you were gone. It was weird. It was weird when I called the basketball game. It was weird the way you left. And I’m sitting here, feeling a little isolated, to be honest. You’re basically working two jobs, and I’m working none. It feels like your life is going by like a speeding bullet. The job, the bar, the sports. And I’m here lactating and changing diapers. So I snooped. I couldn’t help it.”
“You know I would never . . . I wasn’t.”
“I know that. And I’m as disappointed in myself as anything else. That’s not who I am. But then . . . what the hell is going on? You’ve been acting awfully strange, last night and this morning. And you’re glued to the news about that woman being killed. And she was after you. What am I supposed to make of that?”