The Other Mrs.

by Mary Kubica

  As I drive past the vacant house next door to ours, my eyes go to it. It’s dark as it should be; the lights won’t turn on for a while still. Snow accumulates on the drive while others have been shoveled clean. It’s so obvious no one lives there now.

  I’m overcome with a sudden urge to see for myself what’s inside that home.

  It’s not that I think anyone is there now. But my mind can’t get past one thing. If someone had come to the island to murder Morgan late at night, there would have been no ferry back to the mainland. He or she would have had to spend the night here with us.

  And what better place to stay than a vacant home, where no one would know.

  It’s not a murderer I’m looking for as I leave my car in my own driveway and sneak across the snow-covered lawn. It’s evidence that someone has been here.

  I look over my shoulder as I go, wondering if anyone is watching me, if anyone knows I’m here. There are footprints in the snow. I follow them.

  The house next door is a cottage. It’s small. I go to the door first and knock. I don’t expect anyone to answer. But I do it anyway because it would be foolish not to. No one answers the door. And so I press my face to the glass and look in. I see nothing out of the ordinary. Just a living room with furniture draped in plastic.

  I make my way around the periphery of the home. I don’t know what I’m looking for. But I’m looking for something. A way in, conceivably, and sure enough—after a little searching, a few failed attempts, dwindling hope—it’s there.

  The window well cover on the back of the home is not secure.

  I lift it up and it easily gives. I dust off the snow. I remove the whole thing and set it aside, hands trembling as I do.

  I carefully lower myself down into the window well. It’s a tight fit. I have to contort my body in an odd way to get to the window. The screen, when I get to it, is torn. Not just a little, but enough for a whole body to get through. I tug on the window behind it, thinking it won’t give—surely this can’t be so easy—but to my surprise it does.

  The window into the basement is unlocked.

  What kind of homeowner doesn’t secure their home before leaving for the winter?

  I press my body through the window, feet first. I climb awkwardly into the dark basement. My head passes through a cobweb as my feet land on concrete. The cobweb sticks to my hair, though it’s the least of my concerns. There are so many more things to fear than this. My heart pounds inside of my chest as I glance around the basement to be certain I’m alone.

  I don’t see anyone. But it’s too dark to really know.

  I inch across the basement, find the unfinished steps to the first floor. I go slowly, dragging my feet, careful not to make any noise as I climb. At the top of the steps, I set my hand on a door handle. My hand is sweaty, shaking, and suddenly I’m wondering why I thought it was such a good idea to come here. But I’ve come this far. I can’t go back. I have to know.

  I turn the knob, press the door open and step onto the first floor.

  I’m terrified. I don’t know who’s here, if anyone is here. I can’t call out for fear that someone might hear me. But as I creep around the first floor of the home, the reality is hard to ignore. I see no one, but there are signs of life everywhere. It’s dark outside and in; I have to use the flashlight on my phone to see. I discover an indentation in the plastic that covers a living room chair, as if someone sat down there. A piano seat is pulled out, sheet music on the rack. There are crumbs on the coffee table.

  The cottage is a single-story home. I make my way down the dark, narrow hall, tiptoeing so I don’t make a sound. I hold my breath as I go, taking short, shallow breaths only when I have to, only when the burn of carbon dioxide in my lungs is more than I can bear.

  I come to the first room and look inside, shining my flashlight along the four walls. The room is small, a bedroom that has been converted into a sewing room. A seamstress lives here.

  The next room is a small bedroom crammed with ornate antique furniture that’s buried beneath plastic. The carpeting is thick, plush. My feet sink into it, and I feel guilty for wearing my shoes inside, as if that’s the worst of my infractions. But there’s also breaking and entering.

  I leave that room and step into the largest bedroom of the three, the master bedroom. The room is spacious in comparison. But that’s not the reason my eyes do a double take when I step inside.

  The sun has set outside. Only a faint hint of blue creeps in through the windows. The blue hour, it’s called, when the residual sunlight takes on a blue tone and turns the world to blue.

  I shine my flashlight into the room. I see the ceiling fan, the blades of which are formed into the shape of palm leaves. The ceiling is a trey ceiling. And I’ve seen it before.

  I’ve dreamed of this room. I dreamed of myself lying in this bed, or a bed similar to this, hot and sweating beneath that fan, in the crevasse that is still in the center of the bed. I stared at the fan, willed it to move, to push a gust of cold air onto my hot body. But it didn’t because the next thing I knew I was standing beside the bed watching myself sleep.

  This bed, unlike the other furniture in the house, isn’t covered with plastic. The plastic that should be on the bed lies in a heap on the floor, on the other side of the bed.

  Someone has been sleeping in this bed.

  Someone was here.

  I don’t bother with the basement window well this time. I head straight out the front door. I close it behind myself, the light in the living room flicking on as I leave.

  As I run back home, I convince myself that the ceiling, the bed, the fan weren’t the very same as they were in my dream. They were similar, yes, but not the same. Dreams have a way of fading fast, and so the true details of it were likely gone before I ever opened my eyes.

  And besides, it was dark in that cottage. I didn’t get a good look at the ceiling or the fan.

  But without a shred of doubt, the plastic was pulled from that bed. The homeowner covered the bed just like all the other furniture in the home. But then someone else removed it.

  Once in my own yard, I look at my cell phone. It’s dying. The battery percentage hovers at around 2 percent. I put in a call to Officer Berg. He’ll be able to search for fingerprints and figure out who’s been there. God willing, he’ll find Morgan’s murderer.

  I have a minute or two at best before the phone dies. My call goes to voice mail. I leave a quick message. I ask him to call me. I don’t tell him why.

  Before I can end the call, my cell phone dies.

  I drop the dead phone into my coat pocket. I step across the driveway, moving toward the porch. The house, from the outside, is dark. Will has forgotten to leave the porch light on for me. There are lights on inside, but I can’t see the boys from here.

  There’s a warmness about the house. Heat spews from the vents, gray against the near blackness of night. Outside, it’s windy and cold. The snow that’s fallen over the last few days blows about, creating snowdrifts on the driveways and streets. The sky is clear. There’s no threat of snow tonight but forecasters are going hog wild about a storm that’s to arrive late tomorrow. The first substantial storm of the season.

  A noise from behind startles me. It’s a grinding noise, something discordant. I’m not ten feet from the porch when I hear it. I spin and at first I don’t see him because his body is blocked by a formidable tree. But then he steps forward, away from the tree, and I see him moving slowly, deliberately, a snow shovel dragging behind him and through the street.

  The snow shovel is the sound that I hear. Metal on concrete. He holds on to the shaft of the shovel with a gloved hand, scraping the blade across the street. Jeffrey Baines.

  Will is in the house making dinner. The kitchen is in the rear of the house. He wouldn’t hear me if I screamed.

  At the end of our drive, Jeffrey turns and make
s his way toward me. There’s something bedraggled about him. His hair stands on end. His dark eyes are rheumy and red-rimmed. His glasses are missing. He looks nothing like the suave, affable man I met at the memorial service the other day. Rather, he looks like something the cat dragged in.

  My eyes go to the shovel. It’s the kind of thing that’s versatile. It has dual purposes because not only could he hit me over the head and kill me with it, but he could use it to bury my body.

  Does he know I watched him and Courtney at the memorial service? That I was in her home?

  I’m stricken with a sudden terror: What if there are security cameras inside her home? One of those fancy new doorbells with the camera to let you know who’s at your door when you’re not there?

  “Jeffrey,” I say, inching backward. I try not to let my imagination get the best of me. There could be so many reasons why he’s here. So many other reasons than the one I imagine.

  “You’re home,” I say because I’ve only just realized that his home is no longer a crime scene.

  Jeffrey senses my fear. He hears it in my voice; he sees it in my body language. My feet retreat, though it’s inappreciable the way that they do. But still, his eyes drop to them. He sees the movement. Like a dog, he can smell my fear.

  “I was shoveling my drive. I saw you pull up,” he says, and I reply, “Oh,” realizing that if he did—if he saw my car pull into the drive fifteen or twenty minutes ago—he may have seen me force my way into the home next door. He may have heard the voice mail I left for Officer Berg.

  “Where’s your daughter?” I ask.

  He says, “She’s busy with her toys.” As I look across the street, I see a light on in a second-floor window. The shades are open, the bedroom bright. I see the little girl’s silhouette as she bounds around the room with a teddy bear on her shoulders, as if giving him a piggyback ride. The little girl is laughing to herself, to her bear. It only adds to my unease. I think of what Jeffrey confessed, about how she and Morgan weren’t close.

  Is she glad her stepmother is dead? Is she glad to have her father back all to herself?

  “I told her I’d be just a minute. Am I keeping you from something?” Jeffrey asks, running a gloved hand through his hair. He wears gloves, but no hat. I wonder why, if he’s bundled up to shovel snow, he wears no hat. Do the gloves serve another purpose than keeping his hands warm?

  “Will,” I tell him, inching backward, “is inside. The boys. I haven’t been home all day” is what I say, though it’s a pathetic excuse, and I know as I say it that I should have said something more tangible than that, more concrete, more decisive. Dinner is ready.

  But my reply is wishy-washy at best, and it’s Jeffrey instead who is decisive as he says, “Your husband isn’t home.”

  “Of course he’s home,” I say, but as I turn back to the house, I take in the darkness of our home, the lack of movement, the sudden realization that Will’s car isn’t in the drive. How did I not realize when I pulled in and parked that Will’s car wasn’t here? I wasn’t paying attention when I got home. I was too caught up in other things to notice.

  I sink my hand into my pocket. I’ll call Will, find out where he is. I’ll beg him to come home.

  But the nonresponsive black screen reminds me: my cell phone is dead.

  My face must whiten. Jeffrey asks, “Is everything all right, Sadie?” and as tears of panic prick my eyes, I force them back. I swallow against a lump in my throat and say, “Yes, yes, of course. Everything is fine.”

  I lie and tell him then, “It’s been a busy day. It slipped my mind. Will had to pick our son up from a friend’s house. He lives just around the block,” I say, pointing arbitrarily behind me, hoping Jeffrey might assume it will be a quick trip for Will. There and back in a matter of minutes. He’ll be home soon.

  I tell Jeffrey, “I better get inside. Get dinner started. It was nice seeing you,” though I’m terrified to turn my back to him. But there’s no other way. I have to get inside, close the door and lock the dead bolt behind myself. I hear the dogs bark. I see their faces pressed to the windows that flank the front door. But where they are, trapped inside, they can’t help me.

  I hold my breath as I turn. I grind my teeth, steel myself for the agonizing pain of the square blade against the back of my head.

  I’ve barely moved when a heavy, gloved hand falls to my shoulder.

  “There was something I wanted to ask before you go.”

  The tone of his voice is oppressive as he says it. It’s chilling. Between my legs, my pelvic floor weakens. Urine seeps into my underpants. I turn reluctantly back to see the shovel rooted to the ground now. Jeffrey leans on it, uses it for support, tugs on the cuff of his gloves to be sure they’re on tight.

  “Yes?” I ask, voice quivering.

  Headlights veer this way and that through the trees. But they’re in the distance, moving away instead of drawing near.

  Where is Will?

  Jeffrey tells me that he’s come to talk to me about his dead wife.

  “What about her?” I ask, feeling the way my vocal cords vibrate inside of me.

  But as he starts to speak of Morgan, a change becomes him. His stance shifts. He gets choked up speaking about Morgan. It’s subtle, a film that covers his eyes, rather than tears that run from his nose and across his cheeks. His eyes glisten in the moonlight, in the glow off the snow.

  “There was something wrong with Morgan,” he tells me. “Something had her upset. Scared even. She wouldn’t say what. Did she tell you?”

  It seems so obvious, so transparent. I shouldn’t have to be the one to put the idea in his head. But maybe the idea is already there, and he’s only being cunning. Sly as a fox. I think he or his ex-wife had something to do with it. The proof is in her house, in her own confession. But how can I admit to eavesdropping on their conversation in the church sanctuary, to breaking into the other woman’s house and going through her things?

  I shake my head. “Morgan told me nothing.”

  I don’t tell him that I didn’t know Morgan well enough for her to tell me why she was upset. I don’t tell him that I didn’t know Morgan at all. It’s easy to see that communication wasn’t Jeffrey and Morgan’s strong suit because if it was, one would think he’d already know that Morgan and I weren’t friends.

  I ask, “What makes you think she was scared?”

  “My company has gone global recently. I’ve spent a great deal of time overseas. It’s been difficult, to say the least. The time away from home, yes, but more so the difficulties of learning a new language, culture, of trying to integrate into a foreign country, succeed at my job. I’d been under a lot of pressure. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he says, apologetically almost. There’s a hint of vulnerability there.

  I don’t know what to say to him, and so I say nothing.

  I don’t know why he’s telling me this either.

  Jeffrey goes on. “I guess I’m just trying to say that I was overworked, burned out. Completely overwhelmed with work. I haven’t been home much lately. Any time spent at home was often beset with jet lag. But something had Morgan upset. I asked what it was. But she was selfless to a fault. She wouldn’t tell me. She said it was nothing. She wouldn’t burden me with whatever it was. I asked,” he admits, saddened. “But I didn’t ask enough.”

  It strikes me that this isn’t the face of a madman I see.

  This is the face of a grieving widower.

  “I heard on the news that there were threatening notes,” I say.

  “There were,” he says. “Yes. The police found notes in our home.”

  “Forgive me for saying this. It’s not my business. But your ex-wife. Is it possible she had hard feelings about a new woman in your life?”

  “You think Courtney did this? Sent the threats, murdered Morgan.” He shakes his head, says decisively,
“No. No way. Courtney is the type to fly off the handle, yes. She’s rash. She has a temper. She does stupid things.”

  And then he goes on to tell me about some night Courtney came to the island with the sole intent of stealing her own child. She almost got away with it, because she had keys to the home Jeffrey and Morgan shared since it was once her own home. After everyone was asleep, she let herself in, went to their daughter’s bedroom, roused the little girl from sleep. It was Morgan who caught them as they were making their way back outside. Courtney had plane tickets in her possession; she’d somehow already gotten a passport for their girl. She planned to leave the country with their daughter. “Morgan wanted to fight for full custody. She didn’t think Courtney was fit to parent.”

  The day at the memorial service comes back to me.

  My temper got the best of me.

  I was angry.

  You can’t blame me for trying to take back what’s mine.

  I’m not sorry she’s dead.

  Were these words double-edged? Maybe not a confession to murder, but rather a reference to the night she tried to steal her own child.

  “Taking a child away from her mother...” I say, letting my voice trail off. What that is—taking a child from her mother—is motive to kill. Except I don’t say it like that. Instead I say, “If anyone ever got between me and my children, I’d be beside myself.”

  Jeffrey is resolute. “Courtney isn’t a murderer,” he says. “And the threats Morgan received were...” But he stops there, unable to put into words what exactly the threats were.

  “What did the notes say?” I ask hesitantly. I’m not sure I want to know.