The Loyal Wife

by Natalie Barelli

  She gnaws at the side of her thumb. The gun is on her lap. Slowly, I stand and extend an arm toward her. “Maddie.”

  “Stop! Listen!” she yells.

  “Okay, I’ll sit down again, all right?”

  She nods, the tears dripping from her chin.

  “I was going to drop the car off back home, then wait the rest of the night in a diner and go back to New York the next day. But then I saw that I’d lost an earring, and I didn’t know where. I was so frightened. What was going to happen to me? If someone found my earring? They’d know it was me, wouldn’t they? So I went back, to look for it.”

  And then she looks at me, wild-eyed and crazed, and in a loud whisper she says, “But she wasn’t there.”

  No. She wasn’t. She tells me she spent hours looking for Charlene, but she couldn’t find her. It was like a nightmare, something out of a horror movie. She left finally because what else could she do? God. We must have crossed each other, so close.

  “I took Dad’s car to a car wash and then back to the house. But I still had her bag. So I took my bike, the one you thought had been stolen, and I went to her place and took all her stuff, left a note and some cash. I stayed in a cheap motel on the edge of town and waited. Then I used her plane ticket and went to Austin. And now, almost two years later, she appears again! It’s like I’ve gone crazy. She was gone, and now she’s here!” She leans forwards and her whole faces distorts into a grimace. “I haven’t slept for two years, Tamra. I can’t eat. I can’t think. I can’t study. I look over my shoulder all the time. I see her on every street corner. I hear her voice in my head.”

  “Listen, it’s okay, we’re going to talk to the police, and—”

  “No!” She jumps, comes at me so fast, I fear she’s going to hit me. “You’re the one who’s going to get blamed for this Tamra. Everyone thinks you did it, anyway. You’ll go to jail forever. I’ll tell them that you killed her, that you told me everything.” She hands me the gun, her arm shaking. Slowly, like she’s a dangerous animal, I reach for it and gently take it from her. I let out the breath I’ve been holding.

  “You have to kill yourself, Tamra. Otherwise you’ll go to prison forever.”

  Except she’s completely, certifiably crazy.

  “Hurry up!” she yells.

  “Mike—I mean, your dad and I, we’re over, anyway. You got what you wanted, so you can let me go.”

  “No! I want you to kill yourself! And you’re doing it here, in this house, because you’re really upset! Because you think Lauren is having an affair with my dad!”

  “How do you know that?”

  She cocks her head at me. Like I should know the answer to that.

  “Because I wanted you to leave us. I thought if you believed that they were having an affair behind your back, you’d go away.”

  “If I believed…”

  “The blue panties, I took them. I put them in his pocket. And whenever she came by the house, I made sure to leave a note for you to find afterwards. Actually the first one, and this is funny okay? She’d left it on your windscreen. I just had to tear a bit off at the end, it said girlfriend I think, whatever. Anyway, it was perfect! After that I just imitated her handwriting!”

  The first one. Thinking of you. I’ve got your back. Love you

  The notepad. The pale yellow paper. I remember now, the bottom corner was torn off. Love you girlfriend. That’s what it would have said.

  “Every time Lauren came around, I’d make a big deal about how much I liked her,” she says now. “I couldn’t care less about Lauren, but it was worth it, just to see your face. Then I’d tell her that you were complaining about her. Saying mean things, like she thought she was better than you, because she had her own real estate business.”

  Oh God. I remember a conversation we had, when she offered to help me get my real estate license.

  “Oh, and those flyers all over town? I made them! I didn’t really put them up everywhere because if someone recognized me… that wouldn’t work, would it. But I dropped bundles of them here and there. At Lauren’s house, then I dumped some in the lobby where that journo bitch you seem to follow around all the time...”

  She’s crazy. She’s off her fucking rocket. I’ve heard enough. “Listen to me! I—”

  I didn’t hear the door, but suddenly, Mike’s here, like an apparition. He’s standing in the doorway and his voice booms into the room when he shouts, “Tamra!”

  Madison spins around. “Daddy?”

  “Oh thank God, Mike—” I want to rush into his arms, but he’s wrapped them around Madison who is sobbing on his shoulder.

  “I was so scared, Daddy!”

  “Give me the gun, Tamra.” He’s white as a sheet. His eyes wide and swimming in a mixture of fear and sadness. “She tried to kill me,” Madison yells.

  “No no no, Mike, listen to me. It’s not like that!” I extend my arm towards him. He shoves Madison behind him. This is all wrong. I want to show him I mean well, I shove the gun in his direction. Small gestures, with my hand, but it looks all wrong. “Take it!” I want to wipe the fear that’s like a cloud over his face. But then Madison darts towards me and suddenly she’s got the gun.

  “It’s not what you think,” I say again, but it’s too late. The noise roars in the room. I bring my hands to my ears.

  I’m on the floor. My head hurts. The rug is almost against my eyeballs. I have a surreal impression of falling into nothingness, and then Charlene Donovan appears, floating above me.

  What have I done?

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I was told later that the cops arrived within five minutes. This is a nice neighborhood, so normally at this time of night, they don’t have much to do. Thank God, I say, because that saved me.

  When I woke up in the hospital two days later, they had a policeman outside my door. In case I ran away, apparently. That would be funny, if it hadn’t been so tragic. I could totally see myself running down the road with bandages flying out of my head. It wasn’t a serious wound, they said. I wanted to ask them, have you ever been shot in the head?

  Mike hadn’t been to see me, the doctor said, but who could blame him. He still believed me to be the villain at that point. I told the cop about the video camera behind the flower arrangement in the corner. I prayed to God that it had worked. And that it was still there. It was, and it had.

  I’ve been told that Madison lost it when she found out she’d been recorded. But all I could think about was Mike. I was scared that he might hate me. That he might hold me responsible, somehow, because after all, I was, wasn’t I? Madison did all that because she hated me. And then I covered it up, because I loved him.

  It’s all pretty fucked up.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Madison only got eight months. It doesn’t seem like much, but it was a first offense and technically, it wasn’t murder. ‘Hit and Run’, they called it. Thanks to me, I might add. I’m the one who testified that it was an accident. I was there, after all.

  I got two years. Hiding the body turned out to be way more serious than hitting it, go figure. But I’m not complaining. I could have gotten a lot more. The strange thing is, I didn’t mind jail. I’d learned so much at the homeless women’s center that I was able to help lots of women there. I studied, and I became a counselor. For real, this time.

  Madison got out of prison and into treatment, thank God. She was diagnosed with various conditions, including bipolar, anorexia obviously, color me surprised, and I didn’t remind Mike what I’d been saying for months, that something wasn’t right. She wrote me a letter almost every day after she was released. She wanted me to forgive her, she said. All these letters contained a heart-felt variation of her regret and self-loathing for what she did, and what she tried to do to me. “I already know, Maddie, you’ve told me. I don’t have room anymore for them.” I’d very happily burn them in the trash in fact. Like I didn’t make mistakes. “Just call me,” I said to her once.

  “Bu
t it’s not the same. I want you to know. I want you to have it in your hand.”

  Lauren found it harder to forgive Maddie. She still doesn’t trust her, and they’re working on that. But she, too, has received a letter a day, telling of her sorrow for the pain she’s caused.

  I spent my seventh wedding anniversary in jail. When Mike came to visit me, he brought the present that was meant to be a surprise. It was our prenuptial agreement, amended to show that if we ever divorced, we would split everything down the middle. That’s what he had been working on with John Moller. I am entitled to fifty percent of all the wealth he had accumulated over the years. He wanted to show me that he believed we would stay together forever.

  It’s taken a lot for us to begin to heal, both together and separately. I learned so much, about myself. That I couldn’t believe, not truly, in my gut, that someone like Mike would love me for who I am. I saw an angle everywhere. If I’d talked to him about what I’d seen that night, heck, we’d be in a whole other story. But I chose to lie, and pretend, because otherwise, I’d lose him. What’s funny is that he did the same. He never told me that he had waited for Charlene to claim her money, that half a million bucks we went through so much to get. That’s when he became anxious. He thought she had changed her mind, maybe wanted to sell her story. He called the doctor at the clinic who told him Charlene was never there, but then again, that’s what he’d paid him to say. Then he found out she went missing, and because that had happened far away from here, he figured it had nothing to do with him anymore. Maybe she’d pulled a scam in her home town and she’d been caught. I asked him why he never told me all that.

  “Because I was afraid of losing you. I had made such a monumental fuck up. I’d slept with another woman, I’d dragged you into the whole mess after that. We needed to move on. Before I found out she’d disappeared, I really thought if she was going to pull some other trick on me. I thought it would be too much for you. I couldn’t bear it if you left me.”

  Of course he never ran for governor in the end. He couldn’t. Lauren told me he was almost catatonic for the first few months. Poor Lauren. There was no affair with Mike, obviously. Dwayne had left her for some woman he’d met at an insurance seminar. Apparently, Crystal was madly in love with him and thought he walked on water, and Dwayne liked that—what man doesn’t—then regretted it five seconds later. By then it was too late. Crystal had moved with him to the Ballantyne, Lauren never wanted to see his face again, and everyone was completely miserable.

  Anyway, they made it after all. They’re back together after a whole lot of counseling. God knows we did the same.

  I was let out after eighteen months. You can’t imagine what that feels like if you haven’t been through it. You want the light, you want your life back, sure, but you’re also leaving behind people you’ve bonded with. People who have gone through the hardship of prison with you. That’s harder than you realize.

  Mike was waiting for me. I’ll never forget it. He was leaning against his car, a bouquet of yellow flowers in his hand. He picked me up and he held me in his arms, and he said he would never let me out of his sight ever again. Not for a single minute. It’s taken a while, but I’m learning that I am loved, just as I am. I don’t need to lie, or to pretend, and I don’t need to keep secrets.

  Fiona Martin is on the payroll now, at the Tribune. She got a raise, a substantial one, so she can afford a baby sitter. She can pick and choose whatever story she likes. She’s their star reporter.

  Joan and I have started our own shelter for homeless women. It takes up pretty much all our time. Mike wanted to be the main financial backer, but I explained that there was no need. I’ve managed to convince Frank to part with half of his donations towards our program. He thinks I have something on him—I don’t, but since it’s for a good cause, who am I to disabuse him?

  I wanted to call it the Charlene Donovan House, but her parents wouldn’t allow me to. This is the hardest part for me, now that I have fully realized what I did. It was an accident, and I robbed a young woman of her dignity, and prevented her family from mourning properly, for years. I have to live with that. I’m hoping I’ll get there, and I can still be a good person. So maybe this isn’t a tale of revenge after all. Maybe it is a story of redemption.

  Maddie’s in medical school now, in Connecticut. She lives mostly with her mom, but she comes to us at least once a month. She’s doing great. I’m so proud of her. We both are. She says she’s going to be a pediatrician and work with children in third-world countries.

  And next week, we’re going on The Ellen DeGeneres Show together.

  A note from Natalie

  Hello dear reader, you’ve come this far! Thank you for reading The Loyal Wife.

  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I would be very grateful if you would leave a short review. It makes all the difference to independent authors like myself, and helps others find books they might enjoy.

  If you’d like to find out when I have a new release, then please sign up to my mailing list. No spam, I promise, in fact you’ll hardly ever hear from me. I don’t write that fast :)

  Natalie

  Also by Natalie Barelli

  Until I Met Her (The Emma Fern Series Book 1)

  After He Killed Me (The Emma Fern Series Book 2)

  Missing Molly

  Acknowledgments

  There are invariably many wonderful and generous people involved in producing a book, and this one is no exception. I feel very lucky, and I am deeply grateful to all of you.

  Thank you to my fabulous editor Traci Finlay, for helping me bring out the best in The Loyal Wife and keeping me enthusiastic the whole way through!

  Thank you also to Mark Freyberg for taking the time to answer my questions on the legal points in this story. Mark’s generous advice has been invaluable, and needless to say any errors are mine.

  Thank you to my family and my dear friends for their ongoing support and enthusiasm, and especially to my darling husband, just because :)

  And finally, dear reader, thank you for choosing this book.