The Other Mrs.

by Mary Kubica

  MOUSE

  Not long after they brought Bert the guinea pig home, he started getting fat. So fat that he could barely move. He spent his days laid out, flat on his big belly like a parachute. Her father and Fake Mom told Mouse she was feeding him too many carrots. That was why he was getting fat. But Mouse couldn’t help herself. Bert loved those carrots. He made a squealing sound every time Mouse brought him some. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she kept on feeding him the carrots.

  But then one day, Bert gave birth to babies. That was how Mouse knew that Bert wasn’t a boy after all, but that he was a girl, because she knew enough to know that boys don’t have babies. Those babies must have already been inside Bert when they got her from the pet store. Mouse wasn’t sure how to take care of guinea pig babies, but it didn’t matter because none of those babies survived. Not a single one.

  Mouse cried. She didn’t like to see anything get hurt. She didn’t like to see anything die.

  Mouse told her real mom what happened to Bert’s babies. She told her what those babies looked like when they were born and how hard it was for Bert to get those babies out of her insides. She asked her mother how those babies got inside of Bert, but Mouse’s real mom didn’t say. She asked her father, too. He told her he’d tell her another day, when she was older. But Mouse didn’t want to know another day. She wanted to know that day.

  Fake Mom told her that it was probably Bert’s fault those babies died, because Bert didn’t take care of them like a good mom should. But Mouse’s father said to her in private that it wasn’t really Bert’s fault, because Bert probably just didn’t know any better because she had never been a mom before. And sometimes these things happen for no reason at all.

  They scooped up what was left of the babies and buried them in one big hole in the backyard. Mouse laid a carrot on top, just in case they would have liked carrots as much as Bert liked carrots.

  But Mouse saw the look on Fake Mom’s face. She was happy those babies were dead. Mouse thought that maybe Fake Mom had something to do with Bert’s babies dying. Because she didn’t like having one rodent in the house, let alone five or six. She said that to Mouse all the time.

  Mouse couldn’t help but think that it was Fake Mom who made Bert’s babies die, rather than Bert. But she didn’t dare say this because she guessed there’d be hell to pay for that, too.

  * * *

  Mouse learned a lot about animals from watching them through her bedroom window. She’d sit on the window seat and stare out into the trees that surrounded her house. There were lots of trees in the yard, which meant lots of animals. Because, as Mouse knew from the books she read, the trees had things that animals needed, like shelter and food. The trees made the animals come. Mouse was thankful for the trees.

  Mouse learned how the animals got along with one another. She learned what they ate. She learned that they all had a way of protecting themselves from the mean animals who wanted to hurt them. The rabbits, for example, ran real fast. They also had a way of snaking around the yard, never going in a straight line, which made it hard for the neighbor’s cat to catch up with them. Mouse played that out in her bedroom sometimes. She ran in a zigzag, leaping from desk to bed, pretending that someone or something was coming at her from behind and she was trying to get away.

  Other animals, Mouse saw, used camouflage. They blended right into their surroundings. Brown squirrels on brown trees, white rabbits in white snow. Mouse tried that, too. She dressed in her red-and-pink-striped shirt, lay on her rag rug, which was also red and striped. There she made believe she was invisible on account of her camouflage, that if someone came into the room they’d step right on her because they couldn’t see her lying here.

  Other animals played dead or fought back. Still others came out only at night so they wouldn’t be seen. Mouse never saw those animals. She was asleep when they came out. But in the morning, Mouse would see their tracks across the snow or dirt. That’s how she’d know they’d been there.

  Mouse tried that, too. She tried to be nocturnal.

  She left her bedroom, and tiptoed around her house when she thought her father and Fake Mom were asleep. Her father and Fake Mom slept in her father’s room on the first floor. Mouse didn’t like how Fake Mom slept in her father’s bed. Because that was her father’s bed, not Fake Mom’s. Fake Mom should get her own bed, in her own bedroom, in her own house. That’s what Mouse thought.

  But the night Mouse was nocturnal, Fake Mom was not asleep in her father’s bed. That’s how she knew that Fake Mom didn’t always sleep, that sometimes she was nocturnal, too. Because sometimes she stood at the kitchen counter with not one light on, talking to herself, though never anything sensible, but just a bunch of poppycock. Mouse said nothing at all when she found Fake Mom awake like that, but quietly turned and tiptoed back the way she came from and went to sleep.

  Of all the animals, Mouse liked the birds the best, because there were so many different kinds of birds. Mouse liked that they mainly all got along, all except for the hawk who tried to eat the rest of them, which she didn’t think was nice.

  But Mouse also thought that was kind of how people are, how they mainly get along except for a few who try to hurt everyone else.

  Mouse decided that she didn’t like the hawk, because the hawk was ruthless and sneaky and mean. It didn’t care what it ate, even if it was baby birds. Especially, sometimes, if it was baby birds because they didn’t have it in them to fight back. They were an easy target. The hawk had good eyesight, too. Even when you didn’t think it was watching, it was, like it had eyes on the back of its head.

  In time Mouse came to think of Fake Mom a little bit like that hawk. Because she started picking on Mouse more and more when her father went to his other office, or when he was talking on the phone behind the closed door. Fake Mom knew that Mouse was like one of those baby birds who couldn’t defend herself in the same way a mom or dad bird could. It wasn’t as if Fake Mom tried to eat Mouse like the hawks tried to eat the baby birds. This was different, more subtle. Bumping Mouse with her elbow when she passed by. Stealing the last of the Salerno Butter Cookies from Mouse’s plate. Saying, at every chance she could, how much she hated mice. How mice are dirty little rodents.

  * * *

  Mouse and her father spent a lot of time together before Fake Mom arrived. He taught her how to play catch, how to throw a curveball, how to slide into second base with a pop-up slide. They watched old black-and-white movies together. They played games, Monopoly and card games and chess. They even had their very own made-up game that didn’t have a name, just one of those things they came up with on a rainy afternoon. They’d stand in the living room, spin in circles until they were both dizzy. When they stopped, they froze in place, holding whatever silly position they landed in. The first to move was the loser, which was usually Mouse’s father because he moved on purpose so that Mouse could win, same as he did with Monopoly and chess.

  Mouse and her father liked to go camping. When the weather was nice they’d load their tent and supplies into the back of her father’s car and drive into the woods. There, Mouse would help her father pitch the tent and gather sticks for a campfire. They’d roast marshmallows over the fire. Mouse liked it best when they were crispy and brown on the outside, but mushy and white inside.

  But Fake Mom didn’t like for Mouse and her father to go camping. Because when they did, they were gone all night. Fake Mom didn’t like to be left alone. She wanted Mouse’s father home with her. When she saw Mouse and her father in the garage, gathering up the tent and the sleeping bags, she’d press in close to him in that way that made Mouse uncomfortable. She’d lay her hand on Mouse’s dad’s chest and nuzzle her nose into his neck like she was smelling it. Fake Mom would hug and kiss him, and tell Mouse’s father how lonely she was when he was away, how she got scared at night when she was the only one home.

  Mouse’s father would put the tent aw
ay, tell Mouse, Another time. But Mouse was a smart girl. She knew that Another time really meant Never.

  SADIE

  I step into an exam room to find Officer Berg waiting for me.

  He isn’t sitting on the exam table when I come in, as other patients would do. Instead, he ambles around the room, tinkering with things. He lifts the lids off the sundry jars, steps on the foot pedal of the stainless-steel garbage.

  As I watch, he helps himself to a pair of latex gloves, and I say, “Those aren’t free, you know?”

  Officer Berg stuffs the gloves back into the cardboard box, saying, “You caught me,” as he goes on to explain how his grandson likes to make balloons with them.

  “You’re not feeling well, Officer?” I ask as I close the door behind myself and reach for his file, only to find the plastic box where we leave them empty. My question is rhetorical, it seems. It comes to me quite quickly then that Officer Berg is feeling fine. That he doesn’t have an appointment, but that he’s here to speak with me.

  This isn’t an exam but rather an interrogation.

  “I thought we could finish our conversation,” he says. He looks more tired today than he did before, the last time I saw him, when he was already tired. His skin is raw from the winter weather, windblown and red. I think that it’s from all that time spent outdoors, watching the ferry come and go.

  There have been more police than usual around the island, detectives from the mainland trying to step on Officer Berg’s toes. I wonder what he thinks of that. The last time there was a murder on the island it was 1985. It was gory and ghastly and still unsolved. Crimes against property are frequent; crimes against persons rare. Officer Berg doesn’t want to end up with another cold case when the investigation is through. He needs to find someone to pin this murder on.

  “Which conversation is that?” I ask, as I set myself down on the swivel stool. It’s a decision I regret at once because Officer Berg stands two feet above me now. I’m forced to look up to him like a child.

  He says, “The one we began in your car the other day,” and I feel a glimmer of hope for the first time in days because I now have the evidence on my phone to prove I didn’t argue with Morgan Baines the day Mr. Nilsson says I did. I was here at the clinic that day.

  I say to Officer Berg, “I told you already, I didn’t know Morgan. We never spoke. Isn’t it possible that Mr. Nilsson is mistaken? He is getting on in years,” I remind him.

  “Of course it’s possible, Dr. Foust,” he begins, but I stop him there. I’m not interested in his theories when I have proof.

  “You told me that the incident between Morgan and me happened on December first. A Friday,” I say as I retrieve my cell phone from the pocket of my smock. I open the photos app and swipe across each image until I find the one I’m looking for.

  “The thing is that on December first,” I say when I find it, “I was here at the clinic, working all day. I couldn’t have been with Morgan because I can’t be in two places at one time, can I?” I ask, my words rightfully smug.

  I hand him my phone so he can see for himself what I’m talking about. The photograph of the clinic’s dry-erase calendar where Emma has written my name, scheduling me for a nine-hour shift on Friday, December first.

  Officer Berg looks it over. There’s this moment of hesitation before the realization sets in. He gives in. He nods. He drops to the edge of the exam table, eyes locked on the photograph. He rubs at the deep trenches of his forehead, mouth tugging down at the corners into a frown.

  I would feel sorry for him, if he wasn’t trying to pin Morgan’s murder on me.

  “You’ve looked into her husband, of course,” I say, and only then do his eyes rise back up to mine, “and his ex-wife.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asks. Either he’s a good liar or he seriously hasn’t considered that Jeffrey Baines killed his wife. I don’t know which I find more disconcerting.

  “It just seems like that’s a good place to start. Domestic violence is a major cause of death for women these days, isn’t it, Officer?” I ask.

  “More than half of women murdered die at the hands of a romantic partner, yes,” he confirms. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It is,” I say. “Isn’t that a good-enough reason to question her husband?”

  “Mr. Baines has an alibi. He was out of the country, as you know, at the time of the murder. There’s proof of that, Dr. Foust. Video surveillance of Mr. Baines in Tokyo. His name on the airplane’s manifest the following day. Hotel records.”

  “There are other ways,” I say, but he doesn’t take the bait. He says instead that in cases of domestic violence, quite often men fight with their fists while women are the first to reach for a weapon.

  When I say nothing, he tells me, “Don’t you know, Doctor? Women aren’t always the victim. They can be the perpetrator as well. Though men are often stigmatized as wife beaters, it works both ways. In fact, new studies suggest that women initiate more than half the violence in volatile relationships. And jealousy is the cause of most homicides in the United States.”

  I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

  “Anyway,” he says, “I didn’t come to talk about Jeffrey Baines, or his marriage. I came to talk about you, Dr. Foust.”

  But I don’t want to talk about myself.

  “Mr. Baines was married before,” I say, and he looks skeptically at me and tells me he knows. “Have you considered she might have done this? Jeffrey’s ex?”

  “I have an idea,” he says. “How about if I ask the questions for a change, Dr. Foust, and you answer?”

  “I’ve already answered your question,” I remind him. And besides, I, too, like Jeffrey, had an alibi at the time of Morgan’s death. I was at home with Will.

  Officer Berg rises from the end of the exam table. “You were with a patient when I arrived this morning. I had a few minutes to visit with Emma at the front desk,” he tells me. “Emma used to go to school with my youngest. We go quite a bit back,” and he explains in his usual blathering way how Emma and his daughter, Amy, were friends for many years and that he and his wife were in turn friends with Emma’s mother and father.

  He gets to the point. “I spoke to Emma while you were finishing up with your patient. I wanted to be sure I’d dotted my i’s and crossed my t’s, and it just so happened that I hadn’t. Because when I was speaking to Emma I saw for myself the same thing you just showed me. And I asked Emma about it, Dr. Foust. Just to be sure. Because we all make mistakes, don’t we?”

  I tell him, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  But I feel my body tense up regardless. My boldness start to wane.

  “I wanted to be sure that the schedule hadn’t been changed. So I asked Emma about it. It was a long shot, of course, expecting her to remember anything that happened a week or two ago. Except that she did, because that day was unique. Emma’s daughter had gotten sick at school and needed to be picked up. Stomach flu,” he says. “She’d thrown up at recess. Emma is a single mother, you know; she needed to go. Except that what Emma remembers from that day is it was bedlam here at the clinic. A backlog of patients waiting to be seen. She couldn’t leave.”

  I rise to my feet. “This essentially describes every day here, Officer. We see nearly everyone who lives here on the island. Not to mention that cold and flu season is in full swing. I don’t know why this would be unique.”

  “Because that day, Dr. Foust,” he says, “even though your name was on the schedule, you weren’t here the whole day. There’s this gap in the middle where neither Joyce nor Emma can account for your whereabouts. What Emma remembers is you stepping out for lunch just after noon, and arriving back somewhere in the vicinity of three p.m.”

  It comes as a swift punch to my gut. “That’s a lie,” I say, words curt. Because that didn’t happen. I swell with anger. Certainly Em
ma has mixed up her dates. Perhaps it was Thursday, November thirtieth, that her daughter was sick, a day that Dr. Sanders was scheduled to work and not me.

  But before I can suggest this to the officer, he says, “Three patients were rescheduled. Four chose to wait. And Emma’s daughter? She sat on a chair in the nurse’s office until the end of the school day. Because Emma was here, making excuses for your absence.”

  “That’s not what happened,” I tell him.

  “You have proof to the contrary?” Officer Berg asks, which of course I don’t. Nothing concrete.

  “You could call the school,” I manage to think up just then. “Check with the school nurse to see which day Emma’s daughter was sick. Because I’d bet my life on it, Officer. It wasn’t December first.”

  The look he gives me is leery. He says nothing.

  “I’m a good doctor” is all I can think in that moment to say. “I’ve saved many lives, Officer. More than you know,” and I think of all those people who would no longer be alive if it wasn’t for me. Those with gunshot wounds to vital organs, in diabetic comas and respiratory distress. I say it again. “I’m a good doctor.”

  “Your work ethic isn’t what concerns me, Doctor,” he says. “What I’m trying to get at is that on the afternoon of the first, between the hours of twelve and three, your whereabouts are unaccounted for. You have no alibi. Now, I’m not saying you had anything to do with Morgan’s murder or that you are somehow an unfit physician. What I’m saying is that there seems to be some ill will between you and Mrs. Baines, some sort of hostility that needs explaining, as do your lies. It’s the cover-up, Dr. Foust, that’s often worse than the crime. So why don’t you just tell me. Just go on and tell me what happened that afternoon between you and Mrs. Baines,” he says.

  I cross my arms against my chest. There’s nothing to say.

  “Let me let you in on a little secret,” he says in response to my silence. “This is a small island and stories spread quick. Lots of loose lips.”