ABOUT HER

by Kimberly Adams

  Copyright © 2019 by Kimberly Adams

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or things, living or dead, locales, or events is purely coincidental.

  ABOUT HER

  Editing, Cover Design, and Interior Design by Adams Romance

  A MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER CHILD IS LIKE NOTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD.

  IT KNOWS NO LAW, NO PITY, IT DARES ALL THINGS AND CRUSHES DOWN REMORSELESSLY ALL THAT STANDS IN ITS PATH.

  AGATHA CHRISTIE

  To my husband Ron, for all my butterflies

  Some books are based on a true story;

  This book is based on the worst story.

  VIRGINIA

  Her red hair kept floating to the surface of the water.

  I didn’t mind. I liked it there. I always knew where she was. I didn’t have to stalk her social media sites, or drive by their house, or look at the file on my computer with the photos I’d scoured from the internet and collected into a collage of sun-leathered cherry. She was contained.

  Organized.

  Exactly where I’d left her and exactly where I’d put her.

  Underwater.

  There were fish in the lake that had begun to tear at her skin. Rubbery skin that was bloated and stiff to touch. I liked touching her skin this way. I’d imagined all the ways that I’d have cut her before I’d killed her to make her bleed. I never got to really see her bleed. I wasn’t sure if her blood was still liquified or if it’d congealed.

  When blood touched air, it was thicker. If the heart was no longer pumping the blood through her body, was it coagulated? I wanted to cut her body to see what would happen.

  If it would bleed.

  I decided to cut her face. Her face, just between her nose and her mouth. The place he’d first put his mouth. Maybe.

  Maybe he’d kissed her lips first. Maybe not, since she was a whore.

  Her upper lip to the center of her nose, right between her nostrils.

  One cut.

  Her mouth said his name while her back was arched, and her nails clung to his shoulders. Her mouth swallowed his promises with no regard for his wife and his child at home.

  His family.

  When I reached for her hair, my hand stilled in the sunlight.

  No, don’t cut her up. Don’t play with her. Eventually, she’ll be eaten, and there will be no evidence. Bones will sink. Push her back out to the middle.

  I rocked back on my heels. The dock was unsteady and the waves lapped at the weathered wood. I reached for the oar at my side.

  It was easy to lose myself in her death. To bask in the lifeless body floating in my lake. The same fish that Molly had caught repeatedly with her pink fishing rod nipped and feasted on membrane, a banquet far more appetizing than the nightcrawlers from the beverage store in town.

  Leave no evidence. Protect.

  Not him, though. Not Martin. He wasn’t worth it. He was never worth it.

  But Molly.

  For Molly, who was defenseless. Who never saw her coming.

  Molly, who trusted her mom and dad like any seven-year-old girl should.

  Molly who believed the lies the psychologists told her. Platitudes of blended family bullshit. She was a special girl because she had one more parent who loved her. One more parent to go to her dance recitals, or watch her at cheerleading practice, or teach her how to French braid.

  One more special person in her life.

  Molly knew stepmothers gave stepdaughters poisoned apples, but I promised her that only happened in the movies.

  Pinching my eyes closed at the memory, I gripped the oar handle, screaming inside.

  Molly. Molly.

  I released a throaty sound that helped me lift the oar over my head. I beat her, watching her red blob of a face bob up and down on the surface of the water. I came down a second time with the edge of the paddle, screaming. Crying. Choking on my own hair as a gust of wind caught the blonde strand and flipped it between my teeth.

  I hated.

  ONE

  The sheet of ice-snow aimed sideways at the windshield, shrouding our vision faster than the wiper blades of his old Chevy Silverado could handle. I gripped the side of the door, communicating silently with him. Slow down.

  “It’s never been this bad. Not even that Christmas in Erie.” He let off the gas a bit, coasting through another darkened ditch of snow who-knows-how-many-feet deep.

  “Jake, they closed the road up ahead. There’s a wreck. We should get off here. There’s an exit,” I urged, reading the notifications on the navigation app on my phone.

  “Shit. Just a bunch of houses though. We can’t just sit in the truck, Lizzie. It’s freezing.”

  “Look,” I corrected as we approached an ice-baked sign. “Her Bed & Breakfast. That’s something.”

  “Don’t B&Bs require reservations?” Jake eased off the highway, peering through the darkness. “We can’t just show up, can we?”

  “It’s kind of an emergency situation. And it’s Christmas. Seriously, what grinchy people would turn us away on a night like this?”

  “People who don’t want strangers showing up at their house in the middle of the night.” He sat up straighter, gripping the steering wheel.

  “It’s not like we won’t pay. Come on, it’s worth a try. I’ve had to pee for an hour.”

  Jake sighed a sigh that usually accompanied my highway rest-stop requests. Being a passenger in a car made me nervous, and nervous made me pee. Unless I was driving, I was counting mile markers until the next toilet.

  “Alright. Can you maybe Google a phone number? Call with a heads up?”

  I reached for my phone, shrugging. “No reception. It’s been spotty for twenty minutes.”

  He nodded, maneuvering off the exit ramp. “Tire tracks. Someone else got off here recently. I wonder if they had the same idea we did.”

  “Maybe. The sign said turn right.”

  He did, shaking his head as he pulled onto the darkened road.

  Ten minutes passed before we saw another sign. “Left,” I murmured, though I was sure he could clearly read the same sign.

  “I have no idea where we are. We’ve never pulled off this exit, not in all of our trips back and forth to your parent’s house.”

  “Because there’s nothing here. This B&B is new. I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “This feels like a dirt road.” He crawled over the existing tire marks with the ease of a four-wheel-drive pickup. “The people before us turned here, too. If the owners had a room, it might already be taken.”

  “I’ll sleep on a couch. I just want to wait out this storm a little. We still have almost three hours to drive.”

  Jake squinted, leaning forward. “Is that another sign?”

  “Left again. Maybe an old farm house converted into an inn?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d feel more comfortable taking you somewhere with at least one Yelp review.”

  I automatically glanced down at my phone again and lit the screen. “Ooh. Service. Okay, hold on, I’m searching.” Text messages began sliding through, my notifications dinging incessantly. “Oh, it’s the kids. And my parents. They’re worrying about us. Hold on, let me tell them we’re okay- oh, shit.”

  “Shit is right.”

  He turned right onto a long, dark drive with a l
ooming farmhouse in the distance. “Is that Cal’s SUV?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seriously?” He pulled in next to the red Ford Explorer as I read Cal’s text out-loud. “Lana and I are stopping. The weather is too bad. I talked to the kids. Check in with them when you can.”

  Our three kids were staying with their grandparents in Pennsylvania over winter break while their two sets of parents went back home to Ohio. It made sense that my ex-husband and his wife would be on the same route that we were, but I paid no attention to what time they’d left.

  “Ah, yes. A B&B with your ex-husband and his wife. Just what you wanted for Christmas,” Jake murmured, turning off the engine.

  I pressed my fingers to my temples, attempting to think this one through.

  The weather is bad.

  The four of us, me and my husband, and he and his wife, stranded.

  Together.

  “I hate everything,” I mumbled, and he exhaled at my favorite frustrated sentence.

  “You don’t hate everything, you hate him. We’ll be okay. Come on.”

  I reached for my purse and reluctantly climbed out of the warmth of his truck, sliding down the leather seat into the snow.

  I didn’t hate Cal. I thought back to our neighbor in the house next door growing up when I’d exclaimed that I hated my third-grade teacher after I’d earned my first B, breaking my perfect record of straight As. She’d clucked her tongue and shook her head and said, “Now, Lizzie, we don’t say hate. You say strongly dislike.”

  I strongly disliked Cal. Like, super strongly.

  He’d been my first everything. Boyfriend, if you could call a man of twenty-seven a boy-anything. Virginity-taker. Not that he deserved me. No, it was more about being in the right place at the right time. Eventually someone had to have that responsibility.

  It just so happened that I ended up marrying the jerk.

  “Come in! Oh, you must be freezing, hurry, hurry!”

  A blonde woman burst through the front doorway, clinging to the thick, thigh-length white sweater around her torso. I had only moments to take in the unbelievable structure before me.

  A house, with sharp towers and turrets that reminded me of the Victorian mansions in the movies. Asymmetrical with enormous bay windows. Stained glass panels. A candle in every window with lighted garland, cheerfully reminding me that it was Christmas Day.

  “I’ve got our bags, honey, go,” Jake called. I sent him a thank-you through the biting wind, cringing as the wetness seeped into my boot-like slippers. The quilted footwear should have come with a warning. Not intended for actual use.

  I loved how Jake was super manly. And I say that in the most kill-feminism-good-and-dead way. He was testosterone and muscle all wrapped up in chivalry and consideration. After three years together, I knew that it wasn’t an act. This was him, and I’d hit the jackpot.

  I deserved the jackpot after the jackass.

  “You poor things! I don’t know how you made it through on these roads. They are never plowed. Thank heavens for four-wheel drive,” the woman said, ushering me to the vestibule just inside the house.

  Grand. The only word my eyes could translate as I took in the elegance of the home. It had been painstakingly restored to its heyday, and I was stunned that my internet search didn’t return pages upon pages of this architectural beauty.

  “How ‘bout that for a coincidence?”

  Cal’s voice sounded to my right. It was like a car horn.

  Not a full-bodied, deep horn. More like a polite Japanese car. Meep.

  Jake was a Cadillac.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Yeah, weird. Have you talked to the kids?” I asked, diverting our conversation to our only common denominator. Kids. Three humans. Leah, Clay, and Lilly. L name for the girls like Lizzie. C names for the boy like Cal. Eighteen, sixteen, and twelve.

  Oh, how I’d tried.

  “Yeah, they’re fine. Our parents were worried. I just let them know we’re all fine when you guys pulled in. Not one goddamn tow truck in the entire state of Pennsylvania.”

  I cringed. I hated when he swore, especially in front of strangers. Or women. Or children.

  “Yeah.” I turned back to our host just as Jake entered with our bags, offering her an apologetic smile. “I’m Lizzie, and my this is my husband, Jake. Thank you so much for opening your home to us. We saw the sign off the highway.”

  The woman beamed, her blue eyes sparkling in the refraction of the crystal chandelier above us. “My pleasure! Virginia Townsend. I only just got the sign up on the highway. You’d never believe how expensive those little squares of advertising space can be.”

  I nodded in agreement, thinking it was a little strange for her to talk about money in our first conversation. But I was a professional overthinker. A writer. So, I ran her statement through my anxiety-driven mind and regurgitated the meaning to be tell me you’re going to pay me for staying here.

  “I can give you our credit card now?” I began, reaching for my purse on my arm. She held her palm up flat, shaking her head with wide eyes.

  “Oh, no, no, please. I’m happy to have the company on a holiday. It’s just me, so the holidays can get lonely. Please, accept my hospitality.”

  She spoke with a maturity that exceeded her age. I guessed that she was around fifty, no more than fifty-five, but I was terrible at estimating a person’s age. So much went in to the equation. Smoking, drinking, sex, drugs? Sunbathing without sunscreen? Genetics? I caught Lana’s face in my peripheral. Take Cal’s wife, for example. Thirty-two, but looks ten years older. The expression ridden hard and put away wet crept to mind, and I smirked inwardly before chastising my immaturity.

  “Thank you, that’s really nice of you,” Jake said, cutting me off before I could insist. Jake was the yin to my yang. I’d have insisted on paying, but Jake knew when to accept courteousness and when to pinch a penny.

  I’d give away the shirt off my back, but Jake found free shirts and hoarded them for hard times.

  “There, now, a man who knows how to accept graciously. It warms my heart, especially on Christmas, to help travelers in need.” She gestured toward the stairs. “I already put Cal and Lana in the big room, but I have a beautiful room in the east turret that overlooks the lake out back. I think you’ll love it.”

  Cal and Lana. First name basis already. I smiled, taking my bag from Jake. He tried to grip it, but I pulled harder. He started to protest but I shot him a silent look. I am woman, hear me roar.

  He let go.

  The room was unbelievable. Unique. Like the castle tower in a fairytale. “Wait until the sun comes up and you see this view!” Virginia exclaimed. The walls were 365 degrees of clear glass with no dressing; I could see our reflections in the blackness outside. A single pewter candle adorned the windowsill facing the street, with one wireless LED light meant to look like a flickering flame. “Bathroom just through here with Jacuzzi tub. Feel free to enjoy. Pretend you’re on vacation,” she added with a conspiratorial wink.

  Jake and I both gave her wide, tired smiles. “Thank you so much, Ms. Townsend,” I replied, and she reached to grasp my hands in hers in an old-fashioned way.

  “Please, please. Call me Virginia. If you’re hungry or would like a glass of wine or sherry, feel free to join us in the parlor.”

  I thought of the hundreds of license plates we’d seen on our way to the beach last summer. Virginia is for Lovers. Virginia was all for lovers, it seemed. Virginia wanted us to use the Jacuzzi, like, immediately.

  “Real nice of you. I think I’m ready to get some rest,” Jake replied. There was something about his voice when he talked to strangers that reminded me of a cowboy. Mighty nice of you, ma’am. Mighty nice. It was charming as fuck and I hoped by rest he meant do me because I suddenly wasn’t tired anymore. Or maybe I was. I wanted his dizzying foreplay and then the two or three mind-blowing orgasms I knew he’d deliver. Then sleep.

  “Of course! Breakfast at seven,” s
he said. I realized how much taller she was than me or Jake. Jake and I were both about the same height, him slightly taller when he wore his cowboy boots. But Virginia was at least 5’11”.

  “Thank you,” we echoed in unison as she closed the door behind her.

  I called the kids and my parents, explaining the highway closure and how we planned to be back on the road first thing in the morning. I let them know their dad was staying at the same B&B, which earned me a groan of comradery from my mother.

  “Merry Christmas to you,” she said, as sweetly as possible in front of her grandchildren.

  Jake and I exchanged a smile written in our own secret language.

  No kids.

  Kids are fine.

  Stranded.

  Can’t get to work, sorry, bosses, guess we’re stuck.

  Jacuzzi.

  B&B for free.

  I walked to him and he wrapped his arms around me. “Well, this was a weird night.”

  “Agreed,” I replied.

  “I could go for a beer.”

  “Sorry, darling, but all we have is sherry.” I used my worst soap-opera rich-person accent, and he grinned.

  “You’re telling me you don’t want to go downstairs and mingle?”

  “Ew.”

  He laughed, turning for his bag. “So, comfy pants and TV?”

  I glanced around the room and found a fortyish-inch I hadn’t even noticed. Of course Jake had scoped out the TV. “More sportsing?”

  “A little foosball.”

  “Yay.”

  “I’ll just check the score,” he promised, but I shrugged.

  “It’s okay, I’m really tired after all.” I realized he hadn’t heard my internal dialog earlier as I battled between a good night’s rest and one of Jake’s epic marathon love-making sessions in the Victorian-castle-Jacuzzi.

  I tried to decide if sleep won over sex because we were over the honeymoon, or if I was just forty now and my sex drive was slowing down. I did that often, though. I overanalyzed my decisions with Jake. His actions with me. I wondered if he did that with me, too. I was his third wife, and he was my second husband. It was only natural to pick apart the good, the bad, and the ugly and to thoroughly vet and dissect all of it.