The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

  I make no attempt to be quiet as I unpack my bag. I drape a plastic tarp over the couch, lay another one in front of the door where he will enter the room when he hears me. I lay things out. The duct tape. The hunting knife. There’s a gun I carry in a shoulder holster, the sleek, light Beretta PX4 Compact Carry with a handy AmeriGlo night sight and Talon grip. It’s only meant to inspire cooperation. To have to use it will represent a failure of planning on my part. But there are always variables for which you can’t account.

  By the time he rouses from sleep and moves cautiously into the front room, I am sitting in one of the cheap wingback chairs by the window. He is not armed. I know there is no weapon in this house. There was a baseball bat under the bed. Maybe he thought that someday Laney’s brother or her father would come for him. But the baseball bat is gone now. In the trunk of my very forgettable car, in fact.

  “Hello, Steve,” I say quietly and watch him jump back. “Have a seat.”

  “Who are you?”

  I work the Cerakote slide that puts a bullet into the chamber and watch him freeze. It’s a sound a man recognizes even if he’s never had a gun pulled on him before.

  “On the couch.”

  The plastic tarp crinkles beneath his weight and he starts to cry again. This time? It’s real.

  “Please.” His voice is small with fear and regret.

  But do I also hear relief?

  We all believe that story, that cheaters never win, and justice will be done. Even the bad guys believe it.

  Isn’t that right, my old friend?

  ONE

  It was just a peep, the tiniest little chirp. But Rain’s eyes flew open and she lay there in the dim morning, listening. She could tell by the light outside the window, by the bubbling of nausea in her stomach that it was way too early. Hours before the alarm would go off.

  Now a groan, just a light one.

  Go back to sleep, she pleaded silently. She pushed her head deeper into the pillows, tugged at the covers. Please, baby.

  Now a hiccup, almost a cry.

  “Leave her.” Greg, groggy, draped a heavy arm over her middle, pulled her in. “She’ll go back.”

  No. She wouldn’t go back. Rain could already tell. Outside her window, the manic chirping of birds. They’d nested in the oak on their lawn, two starlings that chattered all day, starting at dawn. It was cute, a lovely detail of their domestic life. Until it wasn’t.

  Now two quick little sounds from the baby monitor on the bedside table. “Eh—Eh.”

  She pushed herself up, head full of cotton, stomach churning. She’d been up with the baby just two hours earlier, feeding. Growth spurt.

  Greg stirred. “I’ll get her.”

  “No.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Get some more sleep before work.”

  Greg sighed, pulled those blissfully soft covers tight around him.

  Over the monitor, she heard the baby sigh, too. Then the soft, even sound of Lily’s breath like ocean waves. Rain reached for the monitor and turned on the screen. A perfect cherub floated on a cloud next to a white stuffed bear. A little burrito in her loose fleece swaddle. A wild head of red hair. But no, it wasn’t red—it was white and gold, auburn lowlights and orange highlights. It was fairy princess hair. And her eyes weren’t blue, they were facets of sapphire and sky, sea green.

  Her baby was an angel, wasn’t she? Beautiful and sweet beyond expression. Get ready for the biggest love of your life, Andrew, her executive producer, had gushed when she’d announced her pregnancy. He’d teared up a little, gazing at the picture of his twin boys, then ten. And he was right, of course. That love, it changed her—just like everyone said it would. In myriad ways.

  But it was also obvious to Rain that her child was trying to kill her. Slowly. With an adorable, gurgling, two-tooth smile.

  Death by sleep deprivation. No mercy.

  She sank back into bed, closed her eyes. But her brain—as manic and chirpy as her starling neighbors—would not stop chattering.

  Finally, she put on her robe and moved quietly down the stairs. Might as well use the time and mill some organic baby food and store it in those perfect little blue-lidded glass jars. Apples. Sweet potatoes. Broccoli. Five a.m., and she had pots boiling on the stove.

  She watched them bubble as she drank her coffee. Caffeine. Thank god. She would not have survived the last thirteen months without it. She’d given it up when she was pregnant, but as soon as Lilian Rae made her entrance, Rain was back on the sauce.

  She let the aroma wake her, let the magic elixir work its way through her body. The body that was just starting to feel like hers again, now that she was trying to wean the baby—at the not-so-subtle behest of her husband. Greg had walked in while she was nursing Lily to sleep earlier that week. (Yeah, yeah. She knew you weren’t supposed to nurse your baby to sleep. But come on. What other benefit was there in being a human Binky?)

  He’d tenderly touched Lily’s silky hair, then gazed at Rain with an odd smile.

  “How much longer?” he’d whispered. It was date night. He’d brought home dinner, a bottle of wine.

  “Five minutes?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean how much longer are you going to nurse her?”

  She’d tried not to let her body tense with annoyance, measured her breathing. Mommy gets upset, baby gets upset. That simple.

  “I don’t know,” she’d said tightly.

  It was one of those loaded moments, air simmering with all the things each of them wanted to say but didn’t. Instead, he’d pressed his mouth into a line—he claimed that expression meant frustration, she read it as disapproval—gave a quick nod, left the room. After some time seething, she’d unlatched the baby, placed her gently in the crib.

  How much longer? she’d thought. What kind of question is that?

  “I want you back,” he’d said at the table, gentle. He touched her hand. He wasn’t a jerk, was he? One of those clueless men who thought her body existed for his pleasure only. “We said six months.”

  “I want me back, too,” she admitted.

  She wanted to nurse Lily, loved the closeness of it, those soothing quiet moments with her baby. She wanted her body back, wanted to feel sexy again. It seemed everything about motherhood was this complicated twist of emotion, a delicate balance of holding on and letting go.

  And, seriously, those nursing bras? Some of them were cute, but for the most part they looked like pieces of equipment rather than lingerie. She hadn’t felt sexy in ages. How could you be sexy, hot, erotic when you didn’t even own yourself?

  “So,” he’d said at dinner that night. “Can we get on a plan?”

  Thanks to a Google search—how to wean your baby!—she was on a plan. The morning and midday feedings were solid food now. Which meant she could have a glass of wine at night and not have to “pump and dump” (another sexy bit of breastfeeding terminology). The pediatrician said so. Anyway, she’d vowed never to put that pump back on her breast again. God, how much more like a cow could a thing make you feel?

  She could already feel that she was producing less milk. Her breasts were smaller, more familiar. She’d bought some new lingerie, lacy, pretty, no cup clasps in sight. Sexy? She wasn’t feeling it yet. But she was getting there.

  She drained the vegetables, milled them into mush, then filled the little jars.

  Very sexy.

  She liked the way they looked with their cheerful blue tops lined up in the fridge, which was stocked and tidy. Everything in order, everything sorted. There was a satisfaction in it. She ran the house with a frugal, high-end, minimalist zeal. She did the grocery shopping, cooking and day-to-day cleaning. The cleaning lady came once every other week to do the big stuff. She did a load of laundry every day. The dry cleaning, mainly Greg’s work clothes, got picked up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She ran the house the way she used
to do her job—with accuracy and efficiency.

  She was only half listening to the news broadcasting from her phone as she wiped down the quartz countertop, though it was already clean. The news was bad, as usual. She tried not to get hooked in as she managed the fresh tulips that dipped from their glass vase, pulling a wilting one, adding more water. On the distressed gray cabinet, she spied a sticky handprint. She wiped it clean. The sun was streaming through the big windows now. She put some of Lily’s toys in the wicker basket, rearranged the fluffy white throw on the cozy sectional where she and Greg spent most of their time now that they were parents—who knew you could watch so much television.

  “—Markham, tried and acquitted for the violent murder of his pregnant wife, Laney Markham, was found dead in his home early this morning.”

  The words stopped her cold, a board book clutched in her hand. She moved over to her phone, turned up the volume, something other than caffeine pulsing through her system.

  The voice was familiar, and not just because Rain listened to this National News Radio broadcast every day, but because the woman speaking was her closest friend and former colleague. And the news show was the one Rain used to write, edit and produce.

  “Markham was found not guilty last year in the stabbing death of his wife. His defense leaned heavily on cell phone records that confirmed his alibi that at the time of his wife’s murder, he was out of state with a woman who turned out to be his lover.

  “Police are investigating. This is Gillian Murray reporting, National News Radio.”

  She could almost hear the lick of glee in her friend’s voice. The two of them had covered the story together for over a year, were both crushed when Markham been acquitted. No one else had ever been charged with Laney Markham’s murder, and the murder of her unborn child.

  It had stayed with them both, the terrible injustice of it nagging at them. They looked on with impotent rage as the machine took over—Markham’s inevitable book release, the talk show circuit where he pretended to be tirelessly looking for his wife’s killer. They had to see his face nearly every day, the mask of the wrongly accused man so fake, so painted on, Rain couldn’t see how anyone might believe it.

  I used to believe in justice, Gillian said one night over too many drinks. I don’t anymore. Bad people win. They win all the time.

  Rain had tried to cheer her up, but how could she? Her friend was right.

  She snapped off the broadcast, stared at the jars of baby food. The room swirled around her the way it used to, when a story got its teeth in her.

  Someone killed Steve Markham. He got away with murder, until he didn’t. A million questions started to take form. Who, what, when, where? Why? It touched another nerve, too.

  Greg came down the stairs, dressed in his workout clothes, holding a garment bag. He was watching her. From the lines of worry etched in his forehead, she could tell he already knew.

  “You heard about Steve Markham?” she asked.

  “Just got the news update on my phone,” he said, rubbing at the crown of his head. He put the garment bag on the couch, tried for a smile. “You and Gillian should get together and have a toast. Markham finally got what he deserved.”

  “Who do you think did it?” she asked.

  “You would know better than I do,” he said. His voice was gravelly, soft. She’d never heard him raise it, in all their years together. “The brother. The father. The guy had no shortage of enemies.”

  “Lots of people make threats,” she said. “It’s another thing altogether to take someone’s life. Even someone who deserves it.”

  She poured him a cup of coffee from the French press, handed him an apple. This was his preworkout breakfast. He’d put on weight during her pregnancy. But he’d lost it all. In fact, he was in better shape now than he had been when they were first dating, the muscles on his arms strong and defined, his body lean. She could not say the same for herself. She tried to squeeze herself into her old jeans the other day and wound up lying on the bed, crying. Had she ever fit into them? It seemed impossible.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked. He wrapped her up, kissed her on the forehead. “What’s going on in that big brain of yours?”

  “It’s just—odd,” she said. “A year later. Someone kills him.”

  He moved away, took a bite of his apple, a sip of his coffee.

  “It’s a good day when people get what they deserve. Isn’t it?” he said, moving toward the door. “One less psycho in the world.”

  Why didn’t it feel like that? She was aware of a hollow pit in her stomach.

  “I’m going to get a workout before I head in,” he said.

  Oh, how nice for you, she thought but kept it to herself.

  “Okay,” she said instead. “Do you think you’ll be back in time for me to work out tonight?”

  There was a bit of an edge to all of it. Who stayed home? Who worked? Who had time to be with friends and indulge in hobbies? They both worked at giving each other time.

  “I’ll try, honey,” he said. “But you know how it is, right? You can’t always just leave.”

  Greg was the producer for the local television news program. Local news.

  “Right,” she said. “There might be some breaking story about the sheep-shearing festival this weekend.”

  He gave her a look. “Don’t be a news snob, babe. We can’t all cover major cases for the National News Radio, can we?”

  He came back to where she stood in the kitchen, pulled her in again, this time for a kiss on the mouth.

  She felt herself smile, light up a little. That’s one of the things she first loved about him, that he didn’t have the huge, hyperinflated ego of the other men she met in news. She could tease him, and he didn’t sulk. It didn’t always work in reverse, she’d be the first to admit.

  “That was nice last night,” he said. “You look good, Rain. You feel good.”

  “So do you,” she said. His lips on her neck, his hand on her back.

  “I’ll get home,” he whispered. “I promise.”

  He downed his coffee, then moved toward the door.

  She followed him out to the car. Autumn crisp and cool on the air. A stiff wind bent the branches; she pulled her robe tight around her. Yes, she was the woman who went out into the driveway in her pajamas. So what?

  Greg put his bag in the back, walked over to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. The shine of his deep brown eyes, the small scar on his chin, the wild brown hair that he couldn’t quite tame unless he cropped it short. She saw worry in the lines on his forehead, in the wiggle of his eyebrows.

  “Don’t let this pull you under again, okay?”

  She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. The Markham case. It had shaken her, rattled them. That person she was when a story was under her skin—she wasn’t a good wife, a good friend. In fact, she wasn’t good for anything except the story she wanted to tell.

  That was then—another life, another woman. She had Lily now; she was a mother. There wasn’t room for both parts of herself. She was smart enough to know it.

  Another kiss—soft and familiar, the scent of him so comforting—then he climbed into their sensible hybrid SUV and drove off. She watched him, his words echoing in her head.

  Got what he deserved.

  Her pulse raced a little, that early-morning nausea came back. She wanted to call Gillian but knew she wouldn’t be able to talk for a while yet.

  As she stepped back into the foyer, Lily started crying. Game on.

  But while Lily ate her oatmeal, secure in her high chair, Rain retrieved her laptop. She half expected the lid to groan like the door on an abandoned house, maybe find some cobwebs covering the keyboard. It had been a long time since she thought about work.

  She opened the files she’d kept from the Markham case, and started rereading her old n
otes, sifting through the digital images, the saved internet links.

  She used to dream about Steve Markham, and in her dreams, he had the cold yellow eyes of a wolf. They often, in her dreams, shared a meal across a long table, lined with plates of rotting food—overripe fruit split open, red, spilling innards and seeds on the white cloth, decomposing meat buzzing with flies, wilting greens turning to slime. He’d be laughing, teeth sharp. And though she wanted to run, she’d be lashed to her seat, staring, mesmerized by his hideous grin.

  When he’d been acquitted, she fantasized about killing him herself.

  But the rage passed, left a kind of emptiness in its wake. A terrible fatigue of the mind and the spirit.

  She was remembering all of this when Lily tossed her sippy cup onto the table in front of the laptop.

  “Ma! Ma!” Lily yelled happily, looking very pleased with herself.

  Rain gazed over the computer at her daughter, apple cheeks and tangle of hair, face and bib painted with oatmeal.

  “You’re right, bunny,” she said, snapping the lid on her laptop closed and lifting the pink cup. “Let it go.”

  TWO

  But she couldn’t let it go.

  That was always her problem.

  She could never just let things go.

  That’s what made her a good reporter, and kind of shitty at everything else. A dog with a bone, in fact, according to her husband. She held grudges, which every shrink and life coach would tell you was bad for your marriage, your life. She did not meditate. She was not Zen, by any means. She did not go with the flow. She held on. Dug in deep.

  Rain strapped Lily into the jogging stroller—because there was no way Greg was going to get home in time for her to go to the gym, however pure his intentions. Her fatigue from the too-early morning wake-up had lifted a little (thank you, three cups of coffee). Lily kicked her legs and waved her chubby arms with joy, cooing happily, resplendent in rainbow leggings and pink fleece.

  At the end of the driveway, Rain surveyed the tree-lined street, as was her habit.