You’re here.
I scroll down, find the following message:
Is this who you’re running from? Because he was here, looking for you.
And then:
Rosa and Stefan are my babies. Twins I left with my mother back in Mexico. Now you.
* * *
Not all that long ago, you told your brother Duke that I was the worst shot to ever pull a trigger. We’d just come from one of our monthly sessions at the gun range, which I always pretended to hate even though they filled me with hope. With power.
“No, the bull’s-eye,” you’d say, berating me for my shaking hands and shoddy aim. “You’re supposed to aim for the bull’s-eye.”
I’d nod and clip an upper corner, folding the paper like a dog ear.
Sometimes, the guys at the range took pity on me. “Keep your body balanced across both feet,” they’d suggest, encouraging my improved stance with a nod. “Keep both eyes focused on the target, and try not to blink at the recoil.”
I’d smile and tell them thanks, my eyes stinging with the stink of gunpowder and disapproval—for the record, yours, not theirs. The more you criticized, the more my shots went wild.
“You are the wife of a police detective,” you’d say after I squeezed out yet another bullet that missed the target entirely. “That paper’s just hanging there. It’s not even moving. How hard can it be?”
I hear your words as clearly as I did all those times you hissed them in my ear, and I wonder what you would say if you were standing beside me now, on this street pocked with potholes on the south side of Atlanta. With a man who calls himself Clyde and a van full of weapons, laid out like prime merchandise across the ratty carpet. A tip from the owner of a downtown pawnshop, after I convinced him I was serious about getting armed.
“That one,” I say to Clyde, pointing to a compact Sig P320.
He picks it up, hands it to me like it’s not a deadly hunk of metal.
I look down the barrel, curl my finger around the trigger, check the slide. The weapon could use a thorough cleaning, but it feels good in my hands. Nice and light. Sturdy. “How much?”
Clyde shrugs. “Two hundred bucks.”
It’s way less than I’d pay in a gun store, not that I could do that with a fake ID. “Do you have another one?”
“Another gun?” He says it like duh, cutting his gaze to the ones spread across the back of his van.
“Another Sig P320.” I hold up the one in my hand. “I’m shopping for twins.”
“You want two Sigs.”
I nod. I want two Sigs.
With another shrug, Clyde leans across the merchandise, digging through a cardboard box by the wheel well. The Sig he pulls out is not identical to the one in my hand; one is black, the other black and silver, but they’re the same model. “Three fifty for both.”
I could bargain, but considering I’m buying two unregistered weapons out of the back of a van, from a guy who is for sure not named Clyde, I peel off three hundred and fifty from my stash and pass it over.
“Do you need some ammo?”
I nod. And then say, “Just one.”
“One box?”
“One bullet.”
Clyde’s eyes go big and wide, and he looks at me like I’m crazy. “You know those magazines hold fifteen rounds each, right?”
I smile at that, resist telling him that I know how to work the gun. “I only need one. A hollow tip.” The kind of bullet that will tear a man in two.
With a shrug, he pulls a box of nine-millimeter bullets from the van and hands one to me. “On the house,” he says, and I drop it in my pocket.
The thing is, after all those years of ridicule at the shooting range, I learned a few things. I learned that the Sig has a much smoother trigger than the .357 you made me practice on, and the compact model fits much better in my hand and the pocket of my bag. That if I focus on the target, not the din of the other shooters at the range or the feel of your hot breath on my neck, I have almost-perfect aim. That my hands don’t shake and my eyes don’t blink, not unless I want them to.
Do you get what I’m telling you?
I know how to shoot, Marcus.
You taught me.
BETH
I’m back in room 313 at the Atlanta Motel, listening to the drone of the police scanner when the phone rings. The sound is sharp, an old-school ring that practically levitates the ancient beige rotary phone on the nightstand. I lean across the bed and pick up the receiver, keeping one eye on the door. “Hello?”
“Yo, this is Terry, down at the front desk. The maroon Buick with Arkansas plates in the lot. Is that your ride?”
I scoot off the bed and scoop up the phone with two fingers, stretching the cord as far as it will go toward the window. The curtains are pulled wide, ugly paisley polyester shiny with age, but the sheers are still tucked tight. I can see out, but as long as I don’t turn on the lights, the only thing anybody outside can see is shadows. The Regal is exactly where I left it, squeezed between two sedans at the edge of the lot.
“Yes. Why?”
“’Cause somebody just busted in the window.”
It’s a trap, your voice whispers in my other ear, and I flinch. I don’t want to hear it, hate that it’s your voice in my head, especially because you’re right.
This is definitely a trap.
“Thanks,” I say into the phone, then drop the phone on the cradle.
I move to the dresser, where the guns lie side by side. The first gun I tuck into the front of my jeans. The barrel is not long, but it’s too obvious, and the metal digs into my hip bone. I slide it around until I find a semicomfortable spot, at the small of my back, and then pull my T-shirt over to conceal it. The other I drop into the pocket of my crossbody bag, which I strap across a shoulder. It hangs heavy and deadly at my hip.
“Never point a weapon at another person,” you once told me, “not unless you’re prepared to pull the trigger.”
I’ve thought about this a lot, Marcus, and I am not you. Anger wouldn’t make me shove my gun in another person’s mouth any more than it would drive me to wrap my hands around another person’s neck and squeeze until the bones break. I can’t so casually take another human’s life, but these past ten months of planning have been anything but casual. This is do-or-die time, you or me. I am more than prepared to pull the trigger.
“Okay,” I tell myself, stepping to the door. “Okay.”
Outside, the catwalk is quiet, nothing but a long, empty walkway littered with cigarette butts and trash. I peer over the railing onto the lot, and I see what I missed through the sheers—glass, glittering like a million diamonds tossed across the asphalt. I study the cars, a dozen at best, looking for one that’s out of place. A generic rental, or your unmarked sedan. Not that you would be reckless enough to park where I could see, but still. I look for it, and then I study the parked cars, searching for movement inside. A pedestrian wanders by on the sidewalk beyond, but otherwise the lot is still.
I move to the stairwell, leaning my head around the bend, half expecting you to jump out and shout boo. But you don’t, and the stairwell is empty. I hold my breath and rush down it, hugging the railing. The bums use the corners as a toilet, and no amount of soapy water can wash away the stink.
At the bottom, I ease across the pavement to my car, glass crunching underneath my sneakers. The heat out here is oppressive, the sun beating down on black asphalt, hot, humid air thick with exhaust from the highway on the other side of the building. Even today, a Saturday, traffic is a constant roar.
I arrive at the Buick, and there’s a hole where the driver’s window used to be. I lean my face into it, and there it is: further proof you’re here. It sits in the middle of the cracked dash, a bright yellow Hot Wheels car. The same toy I held across the aisle at a McDonald’s all those years ago. The one I gave you for your nephew. It sits atop a pink Post-it, the edges wilting in the heat. I reach inside and snatch it from the dash, my heart free-fallin
g at the words slashed across it in dark blue ink.
Dear wife, I found you.
I drop the note and whirl around, my breath coming in raspy gulps, my gaze searching out all the places in the lot you could be hiding. By now I’ve walked this lot a dozen times, and I know where they are. The shadowy openings of the two stairwells, the dark corners by the shrubs, that narrow slit between the dumpsters and the wall. If you’re here, which you are, you’re well hidden. Watching. Waiting.
A door opens at the far end of the building, and I turn toward the sound. Terry, poking her head out of the office. “Want me to call somebody?” she yells.
We both know that by “somebody,” Terry means the police—an offensive word in a place like this one. But my fake ID and lack of valid driver’s license puts me in the same boat as my drug-dealer and hooker neighbors, who skitter into the bushes at the first sign of the law. I shake my head. Terry shrugs like she doesn’t care either way, then disappears back inside.
I stand here for another minute, considering my options. I could go back up to my room, but one way in means one way out, and for me there is no scarier sound than the clunk of a lock sliding into place and you standing in front of the door. I could get into my car and drive somewhere, but that would be only delaying the inevitable, moving the confrontation to a place where I don’t know the layout, haven’t walked the property and picked out all the shadowy corners. I could scream bloody murder, pray Terry makes good on her offer to call the police, and then what? Seven years with you has taught me not to trust someone just because they carry a badge.
I lean a hip against my car. “You can come out now, Marcus.” My voice sounds surprisingly normal, calm even, despite how I’m shaking inside. The fear is visceral and intense, and so is the anger.
Good. Anger is good. I think of Sabine, of my broken bones and heart, of the seven years you stole from me, all while claiming to love me. Anger will give me the strength to do what I need to do.
I hear you before I see you. The dull thud of your shoes on the pavement, that low chuckle I’d recognize anywhere. Last time I heard it was right before you pushed me down the stairs.
You step out from behind a white van, and I’m glad there’s a car behind me, supporting my weight, because I’m not sure my legs would hold me up. You’re just as handsome as ever. Scruffy cheeks, square jaw, dark hair just the right amount of tousled. And just like when I caught sight of you the very first time, something deep inside my head pounds. You’ve brought me so much pain over the last seven years that it actually hurts to look at you.
You come across the asphalt, stalking me like prey. I read once that abusers can pick out their victims by the way they walk. After that I spent more time than I’d like to admit walking toward myself in the mirror, analyzing my own gait. Was it the slump of my shoulders? A telling bounce in my step? What was it that made you pick me? How did you know I would be a willing victim?
I don’t have to pretend to be afraid of you, because I am. A scream builds in my head, but there’s no way I’m giving you that pleasure. You relish my fear. You feed on it like a vampire.
“Your hair,” you say, taking me in. You don’t sound angry but surprised, and maybe a little disappointed. “What did you do to it?”
I run my fingers down the strands behind an ear. “You like it?”
“It’s...different.” You smile, but it’s at odds with your tone. You hate everything about my hair, I can tell, but mostly you hate why I did it—to spite you.
“How did you find me?”
“What, you thought you could fool me with a bunch of twenty-dollar withdrawals? A background check for an apartment you never followed through on? This is what I do, Emma. I find people. I find criminals. You’re not half as smart as you think you are.”
This is the way it always starts, with insults. With a barbed putdown, with your lips curled in revulsion. You say you love me, but this isn’t love. This is you, pushing me down in order to build yourself up. You need my approval; you crave it. You think it will give you back your power.
I press my lips together and don’t say a word.
“Were you listening? Did you hear a word I said? I found the burner cell phones. I traced the check-ins to the boardinghouse, to the church, to here. You made this way too easy.”
“I thought...”
You cock your head and look at me. “You thought what?”
I thought you were a good guy. I thought you really loved me.
“I thought you’d find me eventually.”
It’s not the accolades you were fishing for, but my admission has the intended effect. You step closer, within an easy arm’s reach, and your expression doesn’t change, but your body language does. You shift forward on your toes, the stance a lot more aggressive. This is the part you like best, the part where you’re flexing your muscles and I’m shaking with fear.
Except it’s not fear that has me shaking.
It’s fury. Righteous and determined rage. The gun tingles against my hip, cradled in my lower back, and my fingers itch to grab for one, but you’re armed, too. Your service weapon hangs in your shoulder harness, and that’s only the one I can see. There are more, probably, in your pockets, at your ankle. And I’m not crazy enough to think that I could beat you at quick-draw.
“You shouldn’t have run, Em. You shouldn’t have left.”
I shake my head, because what other choice did I have? Staying would have gotten me killed eventually. Leaving, too. I didn’t see any other way.
“What did you tell everybody? Where does your mom think I am right now?”
“I told her you were at a retreat. That you were mental and needed to get away.”
“And she believed you?”
You shrug, a gesture that’s not quite a yes. “You haven’t been gone all that long. I would’ve come up with something.”
“And Sabine?”
“Sabine.” You spit the word, and your lip curls in disgust. “That bitch was butting into something she had no business with. I did some research on her, you know. She was a board member at the women’s shelter in town. She bragged all over town about how she’s some kind of victim’s advocate, about how she was helping women get away from their husbands. I bet she made you think you were one of them, didn’t she? A victim.”
Did you do it? Did you kill her? The questions bubble up, but I can’t make myself force them out. I see your face, hear the fury fueling your words, and deep in my gut I already know the answer.
“Stop looking at me like that,” you say. “This isn’t my fault, it’s yours. You’re the one who left. This is on you.”
I imagine Sabine’s face when you came up on her in the Super1 parking lot, how scared she must have been. She would have known what was coming, and she would have been terrified.
“So now what?” I don’t sound scared. I sound genuinely curious. “What do we do now?”
How do you plan to kill me? Because I’m not stupid enough to think there’s any other option for you. You can’t cart me back to Pine Bluff like nothing ever happened. Surely by now someone besides your mother has noticed I’m gone. Your friends and family, the ever-watchful Ms. Delaney next door. What have you told them about where I’ve been? Or maybe I’m like that wife of the Scientology leader who’s not been seen in public for more than a decade. If my husband doesn’t report me missing, am I really gone?
Then again, your mother knows what you’ve done to me, and so, I suspect, does your sister. For the longest time, I hated them for looking the other way, for studiously ignoring my bruises and pretending not to see, for not lifting a finger to try to save me. “Why?” I wanted to beat on their chests and demand. “Why do you not tell him to stop hurting me? Maybe he’d listen to you.”
And then I saw your mother’s face at Easter, after I mistook a pack of napkins for your fist and let out that terrible scream, and I realized why she didn’t.
Just like me, your mother has been laboring under the
delusion that I could save you.
I tried. God knows I tried. I thought if I was nice enough, agreeable enough, competent enough, I could return you to the man you were when we met, the one who took out the trash for the wheelchair-bound man in the apartment under us or who helped put down wood floors in the church nursery. But that was the fake Marcus, the sweet and helpful Marcus, the guy you are when you know people are watching. No one can save you, and I’ve paid with bruises and broken bones to come to that understanding.
You wrap a hand around my head and yank me forward so fast I screw up my eyes, expecting an explosion of pain, my nose connecting with your forehead. But nothing happens. I crack open an eye, and your face is an inch from mine.
Your fingers press into the base of my skull, not painful but uncomfortable, a hint of what’s to come. “Now you and I go to your shithole room upstairs. We have a pleasurable—me—and tearful—you—reunion. After that, after we are thoroughly spent—again, mostly me—we take a nap. You will wait for me to doze off, and then you will slip out of bed, write a sad note begging for forgiveness from me and God, and shoot yourself in the head with this.”
In one swift move, you snatch the gun from my waistband. I blink, and it’s gone.
“A Sig. Nice choice.” You check the safety, eject the magazine, look up with a laugh. “You didn’t even load it? Jesus, Em, have I taught you nothing?”
My heart pumps hard and fast, beating against my ribs. If you pat me down, if you reach a hand into my bag, I’m done. I arrange my expression into something scared and defeated, and I do a good-enough job of it that you look pleased. After all, I’ve had plenty of practice.
You heave a disappointed sigh, your breath hot on my cheeks, and slide the gun into your waistband. “I’m going to have to confiscate this thing, as I’m guessing you don’t have a permit. I’m sure you understand.”
Dear Wife Page 26