The toy that had caused his brakes to fail was the same one he had carefully packed in Isaiah’s baby bag the day of the accident. Will distinctly remembered packing the toy in a side pocket of the bag, which zipped securely. It was the new toy Isaiah had yet to play with. For the life of him, he could not understand how that toy could have rolled out of the baby bag, which had been sitting on the passenger seat.
He tried to think of scenarios that would warrant the toy falling out of the baby’s bag or rolling under his brake—but he couldn’t think of a single one. Then he tried to remember if he had indeed left the zipper open on the bag. He thought about whether it was open when he gave it to Morgan at the mall, but then he remembered that he had not given Morgan the bag at the mall. Morgan had gone to his truck to get the bag.
Then he wondered if Morgan had taken the toy out to look for something and maybe just hadn’t put the toy back. That was the only scenario that made any sense, the only logical explanation. To put his mind at rest, he would have to ask Morgan about it when she got home.
Later that evening, after they ate a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, Will approached the subject of the toy from the accident. “Hey, did you see the pictures from the car accident?”
“No. I heard it was pretty bad. To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to see them. It was bad enough seeing you all banged up in the hospital.” Morgan stood and removed her unfinished plate from the table.
Will continued talking as he got the feeling that Morgan was trying to close their conversation about the car accident. “They said there was a toy lodged under my brake.”
“I know, that is horrible. I know I’ve had a CD fall under my foot, and I’ve dropped my cell phone before and it’s fallen under my legs, but neither had caused me to not be able to drive.” She walked back into the dining room. “You sure were lucky that you weren’t hurt worse.” She picked up her glass. “Are you done with your food?”
“Yeah,” Will said.
She picked his plate up also and walked back into the kitchen.
“And from the looks of things, it is a miracle that no one else on that highway got hurt either.” Will shook his head. He waited for Morgan to return to the dining room, but heard water running in the sink instead.
He rose from his seat and joined her in the kitchen. “Can I ask you a question?”
Morgan began washing the dishes. “Yeah. What?” She didn’t turn in his direction, focusing on the dishes.
“That day of the accident, when you got Isaiah’s baby bag out of my SUV, did you pull anything out of it, or look around in it?”
“No, I just grabbed it and came right back into the mall. Why?”
“Because, the toy that was lodged under the brake pedal was one I packed in the baby’s bag before I left home.”
Morgan stopped washing the dishes. “Oh, my. So it must have fallen out of the bag and rolled under the brake pedal.” She shook her head.
“That’s the thing. I packed that bag and I am sure I zipped all the compartments up, especially the compartment with the baby’s toys. You know I don’t want germs getting on things that he puts in his mouth.”
“Well, obviously you didn’t zip it if one of the toys rolled out.” Morgan rinsed her glass off and placed it in the dish drainer.
“Morgan, can I ask you something else?” Will didn’t quite know how to broach the subject he was about to bring up, but did it anyway.
“Yeah, what?” She took Will’s glass, washed it, and placed it in the dish drainer. Then she picked up one of the dinner plates and started washing it.
“Are you trying to harm me?”
Morgan stopped cold, then turned to stare at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just asking. I know that bag was zipped up, and I can’t think of any way that toy could have ended up under my pedal other than human hands putting it there.” He wanted to be completely wrong about what he was saying. He wanted Morgan to be completely mortified that he would even ask her such a thing, but instead she looked as if she wanted to choke him for asking it.
“I can’t believe you would even think that I would want to harm you. You get in an accident and you think it’s my fault. They must have you on some pain medication that is making you loopy.”
“Come on, Morgan, what am I supposed to think? I look on the Internet and see that you’ve been looking at companies that sell life insurance,” Will said to see what her reaction would be.
“I told you I was looking for dental insurance.”
“That’s what you said, but that is not what the history on the computer showed. There wasn’t one company that offered dental insurance,” Will said.
“Right, that’s why I told you that I couldn’t find anything. I don’t do searches much and I couldn’t find what I was looking for so I just stopped.” Morgan raised her hands as if pleading with him to understand what she was trying to tell him.
“What about the oil on the kitchen floor?”
“What oil?” Morgan turned her attention back to the plate, washing it as if it had grime stuck on it.
“I found a bottle of vegetable oil in the trash can that day you said you’d used something new to clean the floor. And the slickness on the floor didn’t feel like any cleaner. It felt like oil.”
“Okay, okay, Will. I had spilled some oil on the floor that morning and obviously I didn’t do a good job cleaning it up. I didn’t see the need to mention to you that I’d spilled some oil. So I made a mistake. Everything turned out fine.” She rinsed the plate off and placed it in the drainer, then emptied the sink of the dishwater. “Look, I am not going to stand here and let you continue to accuse me of trying to harm you. Why would I want to do that anyway?” The syrupy sweetness she’d exuded at the hospital had returned. She closed the distance between them and put her arms around him. “Why, honey? I would never harm you. I love you too much for that. I am just hurt that you would even think that.”
Will wanted to believe her, and started having second thoughts. Maybe he hadn’t completely closed the baby’s bag. And maybe she didn’t know how to use the right search words on the Internet. And maybe, just maybe, there was a possibility that she had spilled oil on the kitchen floor and there had been a little residue still left.
Maybe he was blowing everything out of proportion, and the stress of not working combined with the accident had him thinking crazy thoughts. “Baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you of trying to harm me. I just want to make sure we are okay. I guess the stress of everything has taken a toll on me, too.”
“Honey, I understand. Why don’t you go ahead upstairs and relax for a few minutes, and I’ll be up there as soon as I change Isaiah and get him ready for bed.” She kissed him on the forehead, then on both cheeks, and on his lips.
It had been a while since they had been intimate. Will loved having his wife back in his arms. “Okay, baby.”
He did as she said and got comfortable on his bed. Then a few minutes later he heard Morgan enter their bathroom. Next he heard the water in the bathtub being run. He felt his hand being tugged.
“Come on in here with me, Mr. Tracy.”
Will sat up and followed his wife into the bathroom. He smelled peppermint.
“Go ahead and get in the tub.”
Again he did as his wife said. “What is that smell?”
“Just a new peppermint bath wash I ordered.”
Will sat down in the tub and felt invigorated as the warm water and the peppermint made his skin tingle. He’d never been to a spa, but figured that this must be how people felt when they had a full spa treatment.
“I’ll be right back,” Morgan said.
Will sat back and closed his eyes. He wished that Morgan had bought the peppermint bubble bath right after his accident. It was doing wonders for him now and he was sure it would have done even more for him when he was sore.
He opened his eyes when he felt a tickle on his nose. Morgan was standing i
n front of him with her birthday suit on. It had been so long since he’d seen her birthday suit that he thought he was seeing it for the very first time.
“Would you like me to join you?” Morgan asked.
“Do you have to ask?”
“Well, I don’t want you to think that I want to harm you.” Morgan smiled, and it was angelic.
Will pulled her hand. “Girl, be quiet and get in here and stop playing.”
“Just checking, baby,” Morgan said.
She joined him in the tub, and, for the next hour, all thoughts of hurt, harm, and pain dissipated, replaced by feelings of love, pleasure, and joy.
Chapter 17
Will woke up well rested. The bedroom was still dark and he wondered what time it was. The clock on his nightstand indicated that it was 2:41 in the morning. He closed his eyes, trying to fall back to sleep, but he couldn’t. His body still tingled, feeling good from the bubble bath Morgan had run for him. His mind still tingled too, as he thought about the way his wife had eased away all of his tension once she joined him in the tub.
He had fallen asleep easily once they finally crawled into bed. And now he was wide awake. He wondered what was in the peppermint bubble bath that now made him want to start taking baths more often. It felt like old times for him again. He was awake in the middle of the night.
Falling into his old routine he slipped out of bed, trying not to disturb Morgan from her restful sleep, and he headed downstairs. Just as he had done so many nights before, Will used the nightlights and moonlight to help guide him through the second floor to the stairs. Even though his body felt better than it had since before the accident, he held the rail as he descended, not wanting to overexert himself and cause a relapse of continuous back pain.
Gingerly, he took each step one at a time. On the third step Will felt something brush against the side of his right foot. He looked down, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark. What he saw puzzled him. Next to his foot was one of the baby’s wooden blocks. And there were two more blocks, one on each of the next two steps.
He adjusted his eyes, peering to see if there were any more blocks or anything else on the steps. Not seeing anything, he continued down the steps, avoiding each of the blocks. Once he got down the stairs he looked back up at the blocks. From the bottom of the stairs he could see that they had fallen right where a person would step when going down the stairs—the same place he would have stepped if he had been trotting down the center of the stairs as he normally did.
Will got an eerie feeling, causing the hairs on the back of his head to stand up. If Morgan had been merely cleaning up and dropped the blocks, he could almost understand that. But the way the blocks were situated on the stairs, it was as if they were strategically placed there.
He probably wouldn’t be having the eerie feeling or the negative thoughts if it weren’t for the fact that the baby’s blocks were normally in a case on a bookshelf in the baby’s room. Will hadn’t pulled them out in weeks for his son to play with, and Morgan had not pulled them out either for him to play with that night. Will shivered as he thought about what would have happened if he had stepped directly on the first block and then down to the next step trying to relieve the sharp pain in his foot. And then possibly to the next step, that is, if he hadn’t tumbled down the stairs by then.
There was no doubt in his mind that his wife was trying to harm him. He replayed things in his mind: the life insurance companies, the oil on the kitchen floor, the toy in his car, and now he would add the blocks on the stairs. And though he couldn’t fathom it, he was even starting to think that his wife didn’t just want to harm him, but to kill him.
Will sat in his den stark still. His wife was trying to harm him and she was acting as if it was all in his head. She had basically gone so far as to seduce him the night before and he dumbly believed her. He trusted her and she took him for a fool. But he was glad he wasn’t a fool, not anymore. Will remembered the proverb that went something like “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” He wasn’t going to be a fool twice.
For the next couple of hours, Will continued to sit on the couch, thinking about any and every nuance of his relationship with his wife. And he started to wonder if there were two sides to his wife. Often he thought that Morgan’s mood swings were just that. Now he wondered if they weren’t mood swings, but another side of her, maybe even the real side of her that she didn’t want him to see.
The longer he sat and thought, the more clear to him it became that Morgan wasn’t someone he was going to be able to deal with in a rational manner. So he was going to have to be careful in how he handled her, and be careful around her—really careful. He had no idea what she was capable of. As he thought about his entire relationship with his wife, he wondered if he had really ever known her. Many people, including his pastor, had encouraged him to get to know Morgan better before marrying her.
Will ascended the stairs, leaving the blocks where they were. He slipped back into bed an hour before Morgan was due to wake up. The hope was that she had not woken up while he was downstairs, and that she would see the blocks on the stairs and think he had slept soundly all night.
He lay awake until she turned her alarm clock off, stirred, and then got up to get ready for work. Will was tense, and remained that way throughout the time Morgan got ready for work, as she kissed him on his forehead, and until he heard her car pull out of the driveway. He played possum, pretending to be asleep the whole time.
As soon as she was gone, he jumped up out of bed and looked out of the window to make sure. He went straight to Isaiah’s room and picked him up, not caring that the baby was still asleep. Will hugged the baby as if he hadn’t seen him in years.
The baby awoke, crying from the tight hold Will had on him. Will loosened his grip and bounced him up and down. “Isaiah, it’s okay, it’s okay. Daddy’s going to take care of you, don’t worry.” Closing his eyes tight, Will held the one thing in his hands that would make him not think too rashly. He had learned that people who made rash moves often made silly mistakes. He couldn’t let Morgan know he was on to her.
For the rest of the day and the next couple of days, Will acted as if everything was fine with the world. He did his best not to agitate Morgan, and acted as if he was none the wiser that his wife had bad intentions for him.
He literally watched his step around her and made it a point not to eat or drink anything she cooked or fixed specifically for him, no matter how hungry or thirsty he happened to be at the time. Will didn’t know when or how she was going to attempt to hurt him again, and he wasn’t going to make it easy for her.
When Will knew he couldn’t take it anymore, he called Phillip at work and asked if he could meet him at his house. He wanted to talk privately, and Phillip, being the best friend that he had always been, didn’t hesitate or ask him any questions. He just told Will he’d be at his home in thirty minutes to meet him.
When Will arrived at Phillip’s home, he was already there. He rang the bell and Phillip swung the door open to greet his friend. “Hey, man, what’s up? Come on in.”
Will stepped into the house and headed straight for the family room. He set Isaiah down on the floor, and the baby’s bag on the sofa. Then he paced back and forth, trying to think of what to say to his friend so Phillip wouldn’t think he was completely crazy. The last time he’d come over to his home basically unexpected, Will was asking for the information for a marriage retreat; now he was asking for he didn’t know what.
Phillip remained quiet, patiently waiting to hear what his friend had to say. After what felt like an eternity, Will finally found the words to say, “Remember when I came over here that time and asked you for the information about the marriage retreat?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, forget it,” Will said.
“Huh? Forget it?”
“Yeah, I need your mindset to be going in a whole other direction. I know one of the callings in your life is to try to k
eep couples together. And I think there are many reasons why couples should try to stay together when they are having problems. But some problems just cannot be fixed,” Will said.
“You are losing me,” Phillip said. “Sit down for a minute.”
Will sat down, allowing himself to try to calm down. He needed to coherently tell his friend why he was at his home and what conclusions he had made concerning his wife.
“Okay, what I am about to say might sound a little crazy or off the wall, but just hear me out.”
Isaiah pulled himself up on the side of the couch. Will picked the baby up and took a deep breath. “Morgan is trying to kill me.”
Phillip stared at his friend as if waiting for the punch line. When he saw that none was coming, he said, “Come again?”
“Morgan is trying to kill me,” Will repeated.
Phillip looked at Will in disbelief. “What makes you think that Morgan is trying to kill you?”
“I’ve had quite a few incidents that all could have resulted in my demise. The worst was the car accident.”
“Will, man, that sounds a little farfetched. Are you being a little paranoid? How could Morgan have tried to kill you in your car? She wasn’t even anywhere near you when you had your accident,” Phillip said.
“She didn’t have to be, she set the wheels in motion for me to get into an accident.” Phillip opened his mouth to speak again, but Will held his hand up. “Look, let me talk. Let me tell you how I have come to this conclusion. And let me just assure you that I am not on any pain medication that might have me hallucinating.” Will shook his head. “Heck, at this point, I wish I were hallucinating.”
Will continued to tell his friend not only about the events that led him to the conclusion that his wife was trying to kill him. He also told Phillip about her shift in moods, and how she made snide remarks and called him names. By the time he finished describing everything, Phillip was on the same page as his friend, and just as concerned for his friend’s life.
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