by Britney King
My mother knew the truth, though. “That is not how you win friends, Melanie,” she said when she found the girl’s ponytail in my backpack. But she never told anyone. Not even my father, I don’t think. And no one called me names after that.
“Pick up the pace,” Mrs. Elizabeth says as she escorts me back to my room. “I haven’t got all day, Princess.” I shuffle my feet, forcing her to go slowly. She guides me down long corridors. We turn left, we turn right. I try to memorize the route we’ve taken, but it feels pointless. This place is a maze. Plus, I’m too busy peering in small windows. From what I can see, Vanessa is right. Most women are alone. I can’t see most of them—that or the rooms are empty. But the ones I do manage to get a glimpse of are basically carbon copies of the others. They’re all doing the same thing. They’re staring at the same book I hold in my hands, the very one my roommate was staring at when I woke up in this place.
“Move along,” Mrs. Elizabeth warns.
“Sorry,” I say, wincing. “It’s the pain.”
“There is sweetness in pain,” she tells me. But she doesn’t look at me when she speaks.
When we reach the doorway, she stops, turns, and faces me. “Your roommate has been moved to solitary.”
I glance through the window as though I need proof.
“And Mrs. Anderson, if you ever lie to me again, you’ll end up there too. For twice as long.”
I keep my face neutral, which is to say, mostly blank.
“No dinner for you, I’m afraid.”
“I’m on the weight loss plan.”
Mrs. Elizabeth frowns. She thinks I’m mocking her, but it’s blatant enough to be debatable. I hadn’t yet learned proof isn’t required in places like this. She reaches for my palm, turns it over, and places two pills inside. I watch as she retrieves a paper cup from a cart across the hall. She hands it to me. “For the pain.”
I pop the pills in my mouth and swallow. I have no idea what she’s giving me, but I hope they make me sleep.
“Drink up,” she orders. “We can’t have you choking, now can we? I doubt Mr. Anderson cares to be a widower twice over.”
I down the water. It does nothing to quench my thirst.
Mrs. Elizabeth unlocks the door, and with a slight shove, she forces me in.
It scares me to think I might someday go willingly.
Chapter Fourteen
Tom
Melanie had grossly misinterpreted Newton’s third law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, for sure. But she was mistaken when she expected her push to elicit an equally forceful push back. She had not accounted for the fact that most people prefer to shove harder. She had forgotten to pick her enemies carefully because the way those enemies fight is who you become.
“This is not good,” Mark says, telling me what I already know. He’s here to prove a point—many points, actually—and he’s started by barging into my office. Now, he’s standing there, waiting for me to say something, the weight of the world on his shoulders. When I fail to come up with anything that fits, he shakes his head. “In fact, Tom, this is very, very bad.”
Mark has a tendency to exaggerate. I have no idea at this point if he is talking about me. It could be any number of things. With him, it’s always something. “It’s not so bad,” I say. “Plus, our numbers are in great shape.”
“You have two options,” Mark informs me bluntly. “Kill her—or see to it that her past goes away.”
I take a sip of my tea. I don’t have to ask who he means by her, so I say, “I’ve never killed anyone.” I don’t say that I have no idea about my wife’s past—or that it is particularly extensive—or that taking that route would most certainly be the path of most resistance.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what to tell you.” He shoves a manila folder across my desk.
I open it.
“Jack Fielding. Gregory Hollis. Evan Burnett.”
“Do you know what these men have in common?”
“What?” It’s not a lie if it’s a question.
“They’ve all had relations with Melanie. Relations that could—that will—come back to haunt us.”
“How is that?”
“Never mind. I don’t have time to go into it. What you need to know is this.” He points to their photographs. “These are the three main players we have to be concerned about.”
My eyebrows raise. “Main players?”
I’m not sure if I want to ask about the others. He’s just asked me to kill three people. Who knows how far he’ll go with this.
“I can’t have another dead wife on my hands,” I tell him. “That would look suspicious.”
“Tom,” Mark says. “We can’t have the RWP fail.”
“What’s the RWP?”
“The Replacement Wife Project.”
“I see.”
“Melanie’s past puts it in grave jeopardy.”
Mark has a flair for paranoia. In his mind, something is always on the verge of failing. “How so?”
“It’s in the agreement, Tom. Not to mention the fact that we need this to work. If her history comes out, as shady as it is, the whole thing will crumble. No one wants to move from a sure thing to damaged goods. No one.”
He isn’t exactly lying, so I say the only thing that comes to mind. “Okay.”
Mark looks at me dead on. “I can trust that you’ll figure this out—that you won’t screw it up. Can’t I?”
“Who’s to say? I’ve never killed anyone before.”
He rolls his neck. “Don’t worry so much, Tom. Really, it’s not so hard.”
I glance down at the spreadsheet on my desk. Now doesn’t seem like a good time to bring up bad news about recruitment.
“The thing is,” he says, and I swear he’s a mind reader. “This has to work. We cannot afford for it not to. I’ve made too many promises.”
“What kind of promises?”
“You let me worry about that. Your job is numbers. Speaking of that, women coming in, women with children. Women seeking to join a church community…that’s a given. And it’s a good thing because what do we both know about women in most households?”
“They control the budget.”
“Correct. But they don’t earn the money. Which means we need buy in. We need a reason for the men to stick around.”
“I agree,” I say, hoping he’ll read between the lines. Killing three of them is counterintuitive to his goal.
“What do men want, Tom?”
I shrug. “Power.”
“Precisely.” He claps his hands. “But you know what else they want? They want to golf. They want time alone to watch sports. They want freedom to do what men do. They don’t care about parties and social standing and they especially don’t care about attending church on their day off.”
I know this better than anyone.
“We have to give them a reason to care,” he continues. “And how do we do that?”
Again, I shrug and tell him what he wants to hear. “We offer them a replacement wife?”
“Exactly,” he says. “Men are pretty basic, Tom. They only really want a few things: women, money, toys, play things. They want freedom and they want sex.”
I start to mention the former leads to the other. Cause and effect. But Mark is on a roll, so I keep my mouth shut.
“Freedom and sex, Tom. Both of which they feel are inhibited by religion. We have to offer them that.” He’s pacing my office. He stops to glare out the window, down at the city. “This is business. We have to show them that by committing to the church, they aren’t giving anything up. They have to see they’re not losing anything. They’re gaining a second shot at life. A do over, if you will.”
I don’t understand what this has to do with me killing anyone. “Why does Melanie have to die?”
“She is a liar, Tom. We cannot be associated with liars. If it gets out that her reputation is…you know…less than stellar, it’ll be the death of the project.”
&nb
sp; “So by erasing her past, by killing people…what? This makes her record clean?”
“Not exactly. But at least there won’t be any proof.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and turns to face me. “This is why I’m hoping you’ll choose the right path here… because boy, that wife of yours? She’s a looker. People look at you differently for landing a woman like that, don’t they?”
“I haven’t noticed.”
“Respectable advertising, that’s what we need.”
“A good accountant too,” I remind him. I glare at the numbers.
“Yes, that too,” he agrees.
When I look up, Mark glances down at his watch. “I gotta run. That file there,” he points. “It has everything you need on your marks.”
“Of course.”
In two short strides he’s halfway out the door. Finally, I exhale.
Mark stops abruptly and pauses just inside the doorway. He turns and leans against the doorframe. “David will pay you a visit later, should you have any questions on specifics.”
I expected as much. Mark rarely does his own bidding.
“Oh—and Tom?”
I raise my brow.
“Please don’t force my hand on this. I’d hate to have to handle this matter myself.”
I salute him.
Mark smiles. “Been there and done that, remember?”
I nod. I remember, all right.
I’d only stepped away from the hospital to take care of a few things at the office. Work was piling up, and certain things had to be dealt with. Already, I’d been out quite a bit with June following her surgery. The infection on top of it all was unexpected. She hadn’t recovered well from the beginning, and now that she was back in the hospital, she didn’t want me to leave. June swore they were out to get her. She was never very specific about who “they” were, unfortunately, and I was too preoccupied to dig very deep. But the doctors all agreed, the infection combined with the medications was enough to cause paranoia.
“It’s okay, Tom. Just go,” Dr. Dunn advised me when he made his rounds. “I’ve given her something to make her sleep.” I looked on as he checked my wife’s chart. “I’d say you have a few hours at least.”
“I don’t know. If she wakes up—”
“She’ll never even know you left.”
“It’s good to see a familiar face among so many,” I told him. Grant Dunn was second in command at New Hope and our resident plastic surgeon. One rank above me, we weren’t exactly close friends—I don’t have many of those—but as experts in our respective fields, you could say, we regarded one another with a professional affinity. In other words, we stayed in our lanes. Which is exactly why when he told me to go, I trusted that I could.
“You don’t think she’ll wake up?” I asked again. I knew what he would say, which is at least half of the reason I asked the question. I was looking for reassurance. I hate hospitals, and I was looking for any reason possible to get out of there. I couldn’t put off things at the office any longer. That, and Melanie was blowing up my phone. She’d started to get antsy with me spending so much time with June. The truth was, I wasn’t good at juggling multiple women. It was never my intention. In reality, I got mixed up in something I was having a hard time getting out of. In reality, a one-night stand turned out to be something else and that something else was more than I’d bargained for. Really, I just wanted her to go away. But she had other plans.
“It’s good stuff we’ve given her,” Dr. Dunn assured me. “Trust me, she’ll hardly know you’re gone.”
I stood and quietly stretched. “The infection is improving, Dr. Comey says.”
“Comey?” Dunn cocked his head. “The infectious disease doctor?”
I nodded. “That’s how he introduced himself.”
Grant Dunn scratched at his jaw. “He’s not supposed to be on this case.”
I didn’t ask what he meant. All I could think about was the work back at the office that had piled up. The work that was continuing to pile up. And the mistress I needed to get off my back before she did something stupid.
He walked to the door, opened it, and motioned for me to follow. “Yes, Comey is right,” he told me as he led me out of the room. We walked down the hall. “Her numbers look good. Very good.”
Dr. Dunn walked me all the way to the end of the corridor. I was grateful when we came to the entrance of normal life, to life outside those hospital walls where time stood still. “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “I’ve got things handled here.”
That was all I needed to hear. I hadn’t even bothered to tell her goodbye. I hadn’t wanted to disturb her. Work was waiting, and I had other things on my mind.
The next time I saw my wife she was dead.
Chapter Fifteen
Melanie
The next time I see Vanessa, her chest is bandaged, and her eyes are vacant. We’re seated in a small room with a clear glass wall separating us. A man in a white coat stands to my right. He explains that it’s his lab assistant I see sitting with Vanessa. I watch the two of them until Vanessa’s eyes meet mine. I don’t know what I was expecting—a smile maybe, the finger, I don’t know. But definitely something more along the lines of our first encounter. What I got was indifference. So not even close.
“Is she all right?”
He assures me Vanessa is fine.
The first lesson in The Good Book—that is literally what it is called—is: Seek mastery in all areas. The man in the lab coat opens to it, and points. “That’s our ethos,” he says. “Mastery.”
I watch as his assistant places wires on Vanessa’s arms.
“That’s the lesson we are focusing on today.”
“What’s the difference between The Good Book and the agreement?”
He cocks his head. “You don’t know?”
I could lie. But I’m hungry, and it feels like too much effort. “I want to make sure.”
“The agreement is a part of The Good Book. It’s an admission saying you adhere to it.”
“Right.”
“Any other questions before we get started?”
“Can she hear you in there?”
“Same as you can.” He reaches out to shake my hand. “I’m Dr. Mueller.”
I don’t introduce myself. I take it he knows who I am. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Instead, I stare at the switchboard in front of me. I count thirty buttons.
“Shock therapy,” he tells me.
“Seriously?” I could be in a movie. I could be in a book. I could be anywhere. All my life, I wanted it to be interesting, and now it is.
“That there,” he motions, “is a shock generator. Each switch,” he points to them one by one, “renders anywhere from 10 to 50 milliamps.”
I lean forward and touch one of the switches lightly. “Does it hurt?”
“On the low end, not so much. On the high end…well, it’s no picnic.”
I glance at Vanessa. She doesn’t look at me.
“We’re going to work on mastering our emotions this morning.”
I decide right now might not be the best time to tell him I don’t have emotions.
“I understand Mrs. Bolton stole from you.”
I shrug.
“Well,” he says. “Did she or did she not?” Dr. Mueller gives me the once-over, as though he’s accessing my intelligence. “It’s a very simple question, Mrs. Anderson. We only make things complicated with our answers.”
“She did.”
“And you lied.”
I press my lips together. Guilty people hate it when accusations are thrown around. We're wrong often enough to know when we aren't, and often enough to know how little it matters. You screw up enough and everyone just assumes you've screwed up again because that’s who you are.
Of course, his accusation is correct. What bothers me is it wasn’t that I lied to save my roommate. That’s what he’s thinking. I just never cared for smoothies. I’ve never understood why anyone wants to drink their calori
es? Of course, this was before I understood what true hunger felt like. Now, I know better. Now, I know what leads to such nonsense. Starvation. It’s a gnawing, awful feeling. It’s like something invisible trying to tear its way out of you. And until you feed that something, the clawing never stops.
Whatever. They can starve me all they want. But I will not let them break me. I will play their games for as long as it takes. I will play them until I learn how to win. There is simply no alternative. This is who I am.
The man in the white coat repeats his statement. “You lied, Mrs. Anderson. The question is…why?”
“I take it that’s not considered mastery?”
He huffs. “You might think you’re being cute, but that won’t help you now, not in here. And especially not with me.”
“I don't know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to say you understand why you’re here, and why we’re doing this.”
I glance down at the book and scan the code of honor written into the agreement.
* * *
1. Seek mastery in all areas.
2. Never ignore a friend in need, in danger, or in trouble.
3. Submit to a cause greater than oneself.
4. Remain obedient to furthering the mission.
5. Never abandon a group to which you owe your success.
6. Serve your leaders with unwavering devotion.
7. Your honor is more important than your life.
8. Never deny your spouse what is rightfully theirs. Strength is found in submission.
9. Family is the cornerstone of everything. Care for them faithfully.
10. The world is governed by appearances. Act accordingly.
11. Cleanse your home. Purify your heart.
12. Your body is your temple. Treat it as such.
13. Keep counsel. Guard your reputation with your life.
14. Never fear harming another with just cause.
15. Seek like-minded individuals to walk the path of greatness.
16. Strive for excellence at all costs.