A Woman Alone

by Nina Laurin

  And that name. The name caught my attention even before he did, took me back to high school English lit where the teacher made us pick poems apart to the bare bones. I hated it—it ruined their beauty, made the magic evaporate.

  Ironically, the original Byron never had a romance that wasn’t thoroughly dysfunctional—ranging from mildly unhealthy to downright unhinged. Back when he was courting me, it didn’t raise any red flags.

  Then again, neither did the first wife.

  I make my way downstairs and start the espresso machine. Byron is particular about his coffee beans while I could drink any swill from a filter—the way he puts it. The truth is I find the fancy espresso too bitter, too sour, like sandpaper on the palate. But today I’m feeling especially foggy so the caffeine buzz seems worth the tongue torture. And those exotic beans do deliver the buzz—can’t complain about that.

  While the machine hisses, I get my laptop from the little office Byron set up for me upstairs, the one I almost never use. Whenever I can, I sit outside or down in the living room in front of the giant bay window, basking in the natural light. That’s what I do now, pulling up my pajama-clad legs and balancing the sleek Mac on my knee. I check both my email accounts, the personal one and the one I use for writing-related contacts, even though no one ever emails me on either. My friends, the few who still keep in touch, prefer to text, and the last batch of queries I sent dates back months. Some agents still have my manuscript but let’s face it—it’s not going to happen.

  The cliché should make me sad. I admit I cringed a little all these months ago when I first wrote my bio for emailing literary agents. Back then, I was full of optimism and hope, with Byron leaning over my shoulder to peek at the screen and then kissing my temple and working his way down to my neck. Here’s what it says, in clunky third person that’s apparently industry standard: Claire Westcott has a degree in English and creative writing from Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in the campus newspaper as well as several small literary publications. Presently, Claire writes full-time. She lives with her husband, a professor of literature at Mansfield Liberal Arts College in Ohio.

  This is a fancy way of saying I’m one of those women. Those girls my evolved, progressive classmates at Ohio State sneered at: the boring white women who married a man who can support them while they write their irrelevant little stories. I know I’m not exactly in the zeitgeist, but Byron loved to tease me about it, calling himself the Leonard to my future Virginia Woolf, a man destined to fade in his famous writer wife’s shadow.

  I didn’t remind him how that story ended. I wasn’t thinking about it at all in happier times.

  Now, as I open the second inbox, it dings, a sound that now fills me with dread rather than anticipation. Looks like one of my queries has netted a response, months later. I scan the form letter shallowly when the ding repeats itself. Two in one day? But the ding is from my personal inbox this time.

  There’s no subject line, and the address is gibberish. I really shouldn’t click on it—it’s probably a virus—but my hands are faster than my mind today. As I rush to hit the Back button, the image downloads, and my hand freezes over the touch pad. It knocks the wind out of me. I stare at it, my eyes drinking in every pixel, but there is no explanation.

  I’m looking at a close-up of the emerald in my ring. My replacement ring? The real thing? But it’s…impossible.

  Then I see the name of the sender, and it takes everything I have not to slam the laptop shut and hurl it away from me, as far as possible, like it’s a venomous spider nestled in my lap.

  COLLEEN.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Colleen may have died but she never left.

  The fact that we live in her house is hard to forget. Just like the fact that we live off her sizable savings, which went to her husband when she died since she had no other family. Byron never directly said so, but I know that’s how he’s able to support his future Virginia Woolf while maintaining our lifestyle, all on his generous but not exactly millionaire’s salary at the college.

  I haven’t worked in two years but I get new clothes every season, and every eight weeks, I get my roots bleached and carefully toned to a perfect wheat blond and then streaked with corn-silk highlights. I drive an hour to the good salon in Columbus while everyone I know goes to the local place, run by a middle-aged woman with a bouffant hairdo who charges about a third of what the Columbus place does. Sadly, she’s also a firm believer in wedge cuts for anyone over twenty-two.

  So I drive and sit in that chair for hours, holding my head straight and smiling while my hair is pulled and tugged and slathered with chemicals, and then I hand over the family credit card. Another three hundred of Colleen’s dollars, plus tip, changes hands invisibly. No crass cash.

  I try to convince myself there’s no reason to feel guilty. It’s not like he left her for a younger woman or threw her out on the street or dumped her with three kids and no alimony, or any such sordid story, all too common in this town. She died. He grieved but then moved on. Selling that monolith of a house, in such a market, would have been insane. So would moving away from a perfectly good job with the prospect of tenure looming on the horizon. Byron repeated that to me hundreds of times. Everything makes sense.

  Rationally, that is. What I feel is anything but.

  Some days, after a not-so-great day in the Westcott household, I drive to the local mall and buy things I don’t need, hideous clothes I’ll never wear, tacky pink makeup. I tell myself it’s my petty revenge against Byron, but really it’s my revenge against Colleen, as if wasting some of her money can make up for the thousand little humiliations I suffer.

  Eventually, I know the savings will run out, and I don’t plan to make Byron support me forever. My novel is pretty much dead in the water. The next novel, the one I’m supposed to be writing while my husband is at work, is clearly never happening. So now I’m looking for work—starting to. I’ve set up profiles on the big job-search sites and made a separate email address. I haven’t sent out any CVs yet.

  That’s what I was going to do when I got the email from Colleen.

  That, of course, is utterly insane. Every part of it: that Colleen is alive, that Colleen has my ring, and that Colleen just sent me an email from a dummy address. If that email wasn’t sitting right there in my inbox, I’d think I was going out of my mind.

  I put my laptop aside carefully and get up. There’s no sun flooding in through the bay window today. The glass is speckled with rain, droplets and silvery streaks. I peer through them with mistrust, convinced—my skin crawling with the feeling—that someone on the other side is watching me, observing me like a fish in an aquarium.

  Then I go back to the kitchen where the cup of coffee sits under the little tap of the machine, still steaming, but just barely. I’ve lost all taste for coffee. Adrenaline woke me up better than espresso could, and the thought of gulping down that gritty, bitter nonsense makes me shudder. I dump it in the sink and then go have a shower. I wash my hair, blow-dry it with the round brush, and put on makeup—the good stuff for special occasions, the expensive foundation and mascara, hoping that, if I look like me, I’ll feel like me. Tough. I feel like the same jittery mess, but with makeup on.

  From here, I decide to tackle it head-on. There are ways of figuring out where an email came from. IP address and such. I can google it. At least I could try. To get my real, rightful ring back, of course. Only to get my ring back from whoever stole it.

  Not because I think it could actually be…her.

  With a decisive intake of breath, I sit on the living room couch, back straight, knees together like I’m in elementary school, and open my laptop. I don’t look at the email…yet. I google how to find out where an email comes from and spend another ten minutes blinking helplessly at walls of text studded with unfamiliar terms.

  Okay, then. I’ll just do it step by step, figuring it out as I go. I click on my inbox, realize it’s the wrong one—still open on my form rej
ection. I just didn’t connect…

  With an impatient sigh, I click the red cross, and the writerly inbox disappears. I’m looking at my personal email now.

  A message from Byron sits at the top, dated back three weeks. Below it, one from my sister, from three months ago. I’d promised myself I’d reply. I really did. But then I dreaded it, put it off, then forgot, and then gave up altogether because it would just be even more awkward after all this time. Below that, a couple of generic messages from those discount sites for Columbus that I keep track of, as if we really needed 48 percent off a meal at a restaurant chain or a knockoff Apple Watch for $199. Byron hates those sites, despises the very idea.

  Frustrated, I scroll through the emails. They’re going back six months now, seven, ten. Back to the top—nothing. I check the other folders. Nothing. Nothing in Trash or Spam.

  It’s gone like it was never there.

  A little laugh bubbles out of me. Clearly, I’m going crazy. Ha ha. Imagining emails that never were.

  My thoughts churn. I should have taken a screenshot, I should have saved the image—should have, should have, should have. How do I retrieve a lost email? Google has plenty of answers but they all apply only to emails that ostensibly existed.

  Remembering that I have a phone, I run to get it from the charger in the bedroom. No new notifications. I write a quick text to Byron, who should be on his lunch hour by now: Bon appetit! Love, xoxoxoxo and a couple of emojis. It’s cheesy but right now all I want is to hear from him, even if it’s just a two-word text.

  It’s better than asking, Hey, by the way, are you absolutely sure your first wife is dead?

  About the Author

  Nina Laurin studied Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal, where she currently lives. She arrived there when she was just twelve years old, and she speaks and reads in Russian, French, and English but writes her novels in English. She wrote her first novel while getting her writing degree, and Girl Last Seen was a bestseller a year later in 2017.

  Nina is fascinated by the darker side of mundane things, and she’s always on the lookout for her next twisted book idea. Learn more at NinaLaurin.com.

  Also by Nina Laurin

  Girl Last Seen

  What My Sister Knew

  The Starter Wife

  PRAISE FOR NINA LAURIN

  “This addicting thriller rachets up the suspense until the very last page.”

  —Woman’s World on The Starter Wife

  “Laurin, with her knack for psychological suspense, here portrays the effects of obsession in chilling detail as the facts of Claire’s life are revealed. A spine-tingler.”

  —Booklist on The Starter Wife

  “The Starter Wife reminded me of the powerful novel Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.”

  —Missourian

  “Nina Laurin’s psychological suspense thrill ride will have you ripping through its pages at warp speed as you dig for the truth about a fateful event that drove two twin siblings apart.”

  —PopSugar.com on What My Sister Knew

  “What My Sister Knew is a thriller built on shifting sands; just as one feels solid ground under his feet, the earth cracks open, and the reader falls into the abyss where nothing and no one is trustworthy. No suspense fan should miss this book.”

  —NYJournalofBooks.com

  “Nina Laurin delivers an action-packed, mind-bending ride. Just when you think you’ve discovered the truth, a new secret is revealed, making you question whether there really is a line between good and evil.”

  —Wendy Walker, bestselling author,

  on What My Sister Knew

  “Every good thriller has a shocking plot twist. Girl Last Seen has many. Author Nina Laurin’s eerie novel will stay with you for days, months, even years to come.”

  —HelloGiggles.com

  “Fast-paced and hard-edged, it is a heart-stopping thriller that had me guessing to the very end.”

  —Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author, on Girl Last Seen

  “Girl Last Seen hooked me so quickly I might have whiplash. Don’t miss this smashing debut!”

  —David Bell, bestselling author