The Other Mrs.

by Mary Kubica

  How do I know that the dogs aren’t barking because there’s a murderer in my yard?

  Backlit by the kitchen light, I’m a fish in a fishbowl.

  I can see nothing. But whoever is there—if anyone is there—can easily see me.

  Without thinking it through, I take a step suddenly back. The fear is overwhelming. There’s the greatest need to run back into the kitchen, close and lock the door behind myself, pull the drapes shut. But would the dogs be able to fend off a killer all on their own?

  And then the dogs suddenly stop their barking and I’m not sure what terrifies me more, the barking or the silence.

  My heart pounds harder. My skin prickles, a tingling sensation that runs up and down my arms. My imagination goes wild, wondering what horrible thing is standing in my yard.

  I can’t stand here waiting to find out. I clap my hands, call to the dogs again. I hurry inside for their biscuits and shake the box frantically. This time, by the grace of God, they come. I open the box, spill a half dozen treats on the kitchen floor before closing and locking the slider, pulling the drapes tightly closed.

  Back upstairs, I check again on the boys. They’re just as I left them.

  But Imogen’s door, this time as I pass by, is open an inch. It’s no longer closed. It’s no longer locked. The hallway is narrow and dark with just enough light that I’m not blind. A faint glow from the lamp in the living room rises up to me. It helps me see.

  My eyes go to that one-inch gap between Imogen’s door and the frame. It wasn’t like that the last time I was here. Imogen’s room, like Otto’s, faces onto the street. I go to her door and press on it, easing it open another inch or two, just enough so that I can see inside. She’s lying there, on her bed, with her back to me. If she’s faking sleep, she does so quite well. Her breathing is rhythmic and deep. I see the rise and fall of the sheet. Her curtains are open, moonlight streaming into the room. The window, like the door, is open an inch. The room is icy cold, but I don’t risk stepping inside to close it.

  Back in our bedroom, I shake Will awake. I won’t tell Will about Imogen because there’s nothing really to say. For all I know, she was up using the bathroom. She got hot and opened her window. These are not crimes, though other questions nag at the back of my mind.

  Why didn’t I hear a toilet flush?

  Why didn’t I notice the chill from the bedroom the first time I passed by?

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Will asks, half-asleep.

  As he rubs at his eyes, I say, “I think there’s something in the backyard.”

  “Like what?” he asks, clearing his throat, his eyes drowsy and his voice heavy with sleep.

  I wait a beat before I tell him. “I don’t know,” I say, leaning into him as I say it. “Maybe a person.”

  “A person?” Will asks, sitting quickly upright, and I tell him about what just happened, how there was something—or someone—in the backyard that spooked the dogs. My voice is tremulous when I speak. Will notices. “Did you see a person?” he asks, but I tell him no, that I didn’t see anything at all. That I only knew something was there. A gut instinct.

  Will says compassionately, his hand reassuringly stroking mine, “You’re really shaken up about it, aren’t you?”

  He wraps both hands around mine, feeling the way they tremble in his. I tell him that I am. I think that he’s going to get out of bed and go see for himself if there’s someone in our backyard. But instead he makes me second-guess myself. It isn’t intentional and he isn’t trying to patronize me. Rather, he’s the voice of reason as he asks, “But what about a coyote? A raccoon or a skunk? Are you sure it wasn’t just some animals that got the dogs worked up?”

  It sounds so simple, so obvious as he says it. I wonder if he’s right. It would explain why the dogs were so upset. Perhaps they sniffed out some wildlife roaming around our backyard. They’re hunters. Naturally they would have wanted to get at whatever was there. It’s the far more logical thing to believe than that there was a killer traipsing through our backyard. What would a killer want with us?

  I shrug in the darkness. “Maybe,” I say, feeling foolish, but not entirely so. There was a murder just across the street from us last night and the murderer hasn’t been found. It’s not so irrational to believe he’s still nearby.

  Will tells me obligingly, “We could mention it to Officer Berg anyway in the morning. Ask him to look into it. If nothing else, ask if coyotes are a problem around here. It would be good to know anyway, to make sure we keep an eye on the dogs.”

  I feel grateful he humors me. But I tell him no. “I’m sure you’re right,” I say, crawling back into bed beside him, knowing I still won’t sleep. “It probably was a coyote. I’m sorry I woke you. Go back to bed,” I say, and he does, wrapping a heavy arm around me, protecting me from whatever lies on the other side of our door.

  SADIE

  I come to when Will says my name. I must have spaced out.

  He’s there beside me, giving me a look. A Will look, fraught with worry. “Where’d you go?” he asks, as I look around, get my bearings. A sudden headache has nearly gotten the best of me, making me feel swimmy inside.

  I tell him, “I don’t know,” not remembering what we were talking about before I spaced out.

  I look down to see that a button on my shirt has come undone, revealing the black of my bra beneath. I button back up, apologize to him for zoning out in the middle of our conversation. “I’m just tired,” I say, rubbing at my eyes, taking in the sight of Will before me, the kitchen around me.

  “You look tired,” Will agrees, and I feel the agitation brim inside. I glance past Will and into the backyard, expecting to see something out of place. Signs of a trespasser in our yard last night. There’s nothing, but still, I prickle anyway, remember what it felt like as I stood in the darkness, pleading for the dogs to come.

  The boys are at the table, eating the last of their breakfast. Will stands at the counter, filling a mug that he passes to me. I welcome the coffee into my hands and take a big gulp.

  “I didn’t sleep well,” I say, not wanting to admit the truth, that I didn’t sleep at all.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asks, though it doesn’t seem like something that needs to be said. This is something he should know. A woman was murdered in her home across the street from us two nights ago.

  My eyes breeze past Tate at the table, and I tell him no because this isn’t a conversation Tate should hear. For as long as we can, I’d like to keep his childhood innocence alive.

  “Do you have time for breakfast?” Will asks.

  “Not today,” I say, looking at the clock, seeing that it’s even later than I thought it was. I need to get going. I begin gathering things, my bag and my coat, to go. Will’s bag waits for him beside the table, and I wonder if he stuck his true crime novel inside the bag, the book with the photograph of Erin hidden inside. I don’t have the courage to tell Will I know about the photograph.

  I kiss Tate goodbye. I snatch the earbuds from Otto’s ears to tell him to hurry.

  I drive to the ferry. Otto and I don’t say much on the way there. We used to be closer than we are, but time and circumstance have pulled us apart. How many teenage boys, I ask myself, trying not to take it personally, are close with their mother? Few, if any. But Otto is a sensitive boy, different than the rest.

  He leaves the car with only a quick goodbye for me. I watch as he crosses the metal grate bridge and boards the ferry with the other early-morning commuters. His heavy backpack is slung across his back. I don’t see Imogen anywhere.

  It’s seven twenty in the morning. Outside, it’s raining. A mob of multicolored umbrellas makes its way down the street that leads to the ferry. Two boys about Otto’s age claw their way on board behind him, bypassing Otto in the entranceway, laughing. They’re laughing at some inside joke, I assure myself, not at
him, but my stomach churns just the same, and I think how lonely it must be in Otto’s world, an outcast without any friends.

  There’s plenty of seating inside the ferry where it’s warm and dry, but Otto climbs all the way up to the upper deck, standing in the rain without an umbrella. I watch as deckhands raise the gangplank and untie the boat before it ventures off into the foggy sea, stealing Otto from me.

  Only then do I see Officer Berg staring at me.

  He stands on the other side of the street just outside his Crown Victoria, leaned up against the passenger’s side door. In his hands are coffee and a cinnamon roll, just a stone’s throw away from the stereotypical doughnut cops are notorious for eating, though slightly more refined. As he waves at me, I get the sense that he’s been watching me the entire time, watching as I watch Otto leave.

  He tips his hat at me. I wave at him through the car window.

  What I usually do at this point in my drive is make a U-turn and go back up the hill the same way I came down. But I can’t do that with the officer watching. And it doesn’t matter anyway because Officer Berg has abandoned his post and is walking across the street and toward me. He motions with the crank of a hand for me to open my window. I press the button and the window drops down. Beads of rain welcome themselves inside my car, gathering along the interior of the door. Officer Berg doesn’t carry an umbrella. Rather, the hood of a rain jacket is thrust over his head. He doesn’t appear to be bothered by the rain.

  He jams the last bite of his cinnamon roll into his mouth, chases it down with a swig of coffee and says, “Morning, Dr. Foust.” He has a kind face for a police officer, lacking the usual flintiness that I think of when I think of the police. There’s something endearing about him, a bit of awkwardness and insecurity that I like.

  I tell him good morning.

  “What a day,” he says, and I say, “Quite a doozy.”

  The rain isn’t expected to go on all day. The sun, however, won’t make an appearance anytime soon. Where we live, just off the coast of Maine, the climate is tempered by the ocean. The temperatures aren’t as bitter as they are in Chicago this time of year, though still it’s cold.

  What we’ve heard is that the bay has been known to freeze come wintertime, ferries forced to charge through ice floes to get people to and from the mainland. One winter, supposedly, the ferry got stuck, and passengers were made to walk across yards of ice to get to the shoreline before the Coast Guard came in with a cutter to chop it up.

  It’s unsettling to think about. A bit suffocating, if I’m being honest, the idea of being trapped on the island, cordoned off from the rest of the world by a giant slab of ice.

  “You’re up early,” Officer Berg says, and I reply, “As are you.”

  “Duty calls,” he says, tapping at his badge. I reply, “Me, too,” finger at the ready to hoist the window up so that I can leave. Joyce and Emma are expecting me, and if I’m not there soon, I’ll never hear the end of it. Joyce is a stickler for punctuality.

  Officer Berg glances at his watch, makes an offhand guess that the clinic opens around eight thirty. I say that it does. He asks, “Have a moment to spare, Dr. Foust?” I tell him a quick one.

  I pull my car closer to the curb and put it in Park. Officer Berg rounds the front end of it and lets himself in through the passenger’s side door.

  Officer Berg cuts straight to the chase. “I finished speaking to your neighbors yesterday, asking them the same questions I asked of you and Mr. Foust,” he tells me, and I gather from his tone that this isn’t merely an update on the investigation—though what I want is an update on the investigation. I want Officer Berg to tell me that they’re ready to make an arrest so I can sleep better at night, knowing Morgan’s killer is behind bars.

  Early this morning before the kids were up, Will searched online for news about her murder. There was an article detailing how Morgan had been found dead in her home. There were facts in it that were new to Will and me. How, for example, the police found threatening notes in the Baineses’ home, though they didn’t say what the threats said.

  Overnight the police released the little girl’s 911 call. It was there online, an audio clip of the six-year-old girl as she fought back tears, telling the operator on the other end of the line, She won’t wake up. Morgan won’t wake up.

  In the article, she was never referred to by name, only ever as the six-year-old girl, because minors are blessed with a certain anonymity adults don’t have.

  Will and I lay in bed with the laptop between us, listening to the audio clip three times. It was gut-wrenching to hear. The little girl managed to remain relatively calm and composed as the dispatcher talked her through the next few minutes and sent help, keeping her on the line the entire time.

  But there was something about the audio clip that got under my skin, something I couldn’t put my finger on. It pestered me nonetheless, and it wasn’t until the third go-round that I finally heard it.

  She calls her mother Morgan? I’d asked Will, because the little girl didn’t say her mother wouldn’t wake up. She said Morgan wouldn’t wake up. Why would she do that? I asked.

  Will’s reply was immediate.

  Morgan is her stepmother, he said. Then he swallowed hard, tried not to cry. Morgan was her stepmother, I mean.

  Oh, I said. I don’t know why this mattered. But it seemed it did.

  Jeffrey was married before? I asked. It’s not always the case, of course. Children are born out of wedlock. But it was worth asking.

  Yes, he said, but he said no more. I wondered about Jeffrey’s first wife. I wondered who she was, if she lived here on the island with us. Will himself is the product of divorced parents. It’s always been a sore subject with him.

  How long were Jeffrey and Morgan married? I asked, wondering what else she told him.

  Just over a year.

  They’re newlyweds, I said.

  They’re nothing anymore, Sadie, Will corrected me again. He’s a widower. She’s dead.

  We stopped talking after that. Together, in silence, we read on.

  I wonder now, as I sit in my car beside Officer Berg, about signs of forced entry—a broken window, a busted doorjamb—or blood. Was there blood at the scene? Or defensive wounds, maybe, on Morgan’s hands? Did she try to fight her intruder off?

  Or maybe the little girl saw the attacker or heard her stepmother scream.

  I don’t ask Officer Berg any of this. It’s been over twenty-four hours since the poor woman was killed. The etched lines on his forehead are deeper today than they were before. The pressure of the investigation is weighing on him, and I realize then: he’s no closer to solving this crime than he was yesterday. My heart sinks.

  Instead I ask, “Has Mr. Baines been located?” and he tells me that he’s on his way, though it’s a twenty-some-hour trip from Tokyo with layovers at LAX and JFK. He won’t be home until tonight.

  “Have you found her cell phone? That might give you something to go on?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. They’ve been looking, he says, but so far they can’t find her phone. “There are ways to track a missing cell phone, but if the phone is off or the battery is dead, those won’t work. Obtaining a warrant for records from a telecommunications company is tedious. It takes time. But we’re working on it,” he tells me.

  Officer Berg shifts in the seat. He turns his body toward mine, knees now pointed in my direction. They bump awkwardly into the gearshift. There are raindrops on his coat and his hair. There’s icing on his upper lip.

  “You told me yesterday that you and Mrs. Baines never met,” he says, and I have trouble snatching my eyes from the icing as I reply, “That’s right. We never met.”

  There was a photograph online of the woman. According to the paper, she was twenty-eight years old, eleven years younger than me. In the photo, she stood surrounded by her family, her hap
py husband on one side, stepdaughter the other, all of them dolled up in coordinating clothes and wreathed in smiles. She had a beautiful smile, a tad bit gummy if anything, but otherwise lovely.

  Officer Berg unzips his rain jacket and reaches inside. He removes his tablet from an interior pocket, where there it stays dry. He taps on the screen, trawling for something. When he finds the spot, he clears his throat and reads my words back to me.

  “Yesterday you said, I just never found the time to stop by and introduce myself. Do you remember saying that?” he asks, and I tell him I do, though it sounds so flippant now, my words coming back to me this way. A bit merciless, if I’m being honest, seeing as the woman is now dead. I should have tacked on an empathetic addendum, such as, But I wish I had. Just a little something so that my words didn’t sound so callous.

  “The thing is, Dr. Foust,” he begins, “you said you didn’t know Mrs. Baines, and yet it seems you did,” and though his tone is well-disposed, the intent of his words is not.

  He’s just accused me of lying.

  “I beg your pardon?” I ask, taken completely aback.

  “It seems you did know Morgan Baines,” he says.

  The rain is coming down in torrents now, pounding on the roof of the car like mallets on tin cans. I think of Otto all alone on the upper deck of the ferry, getting pelted with rain. A knot forms in my throat because of it. I swallow it away.

  I force my window up to keep the rain at bay.

  I make sure to meet the officer’s eye as I assert, “Unless a onetime wave out the window of a moving vehicle counts as a relationship, Officer Berg, I didn’t know Morgan Baines. What makes you think that I did?” I ask, and he explains again, at great length this time, how he canvassed the entire street, spoke to all the neighbors, asked them the same questions he asked Will and me. When he came to the home of George and Poppy Nilsson, they invited him into their kitchen for tea and ginger cookies. He tells me that he asked the Nilssons what they were doing the night Morgan died, same as he did Will and me. I wait to hear their reply, thinking Officer Berg is about to tell me how the older couple sat in their living room that night, watching out the window as a killer slipped from the cover of darkness and into the Baineses’ home.