“I know, but Annabelle is—”
“She’s what?”
I made the decision to lie in a split second. “She started seeing someone.”
“A boyfriend?”
“If he’s not yet, he will be. He’ll call the police right away.” This is the type of scenario we prefer to avoid.
Millicent shook her head. She may have even cursed under her breath. “I can’t believe we’re just finding this out.”
“We always watched her at work.”
“Not always.”
I let that go. This was not the time to question Millicent about what she hasn’t told me. Not when I was lying.
“So,” I said. “Naomi.”
Millicent sighed. “Naomi.”
We do not mention Annabelle again.
* * *
• • •
I DO NOT want to work, but I have no choice. My day is packed with back-to-back lessons, and when they are finally over I pick up the kids from school and take them to the dentist. By chance, their appointments have landed on Thursday the 12th. Millicent schedules their cleanings in advance, every six months on the dot.
As we walk into the office, Jenna and Rory play roshambo to see who goes first. It is one of the few times they speak in unison.
“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.”
Rory loses, Jenna gloats, and the bigger picture eludes them. Both still have to get their teeth cleaned.
In the waiting room, I check the news on my phone and am bombarded by pictures of Owen’s previous victims. Our local paper put all of them on the front page, and all the pictures had been taken when they were smiling and alive. The message is not subtle. If you look like these women, tomorrow you will be at risk. Owen could be coming for you. There is no indication that anyone would be able to fight back or escape, and the only way to survive is to not get chosen. It is a little offensive, I think, that women are treated as if they are so helpless. The writer of this article has never met my wife.
After the dentist, ice cream. Millicent meets us for this bizarre family tradition. I was the one who started it, back when the kids were much younger and I wanted to make them stop crying at the dentist. The promise of ice cream worked, and now they won’t let it go.
We all have our favorite. Millicent orders vanilla, I have chocolate, and Rory gets rocky road. Jenna is the experimental one. She always orders the special. Today, it is blueberry chocolate chip, and she loves it. I think it is disgusting.
Once everyone’s teeth are tingling and our brains are frozen, we split up. Millicent takes the kids home, and I go back to work. On my way into the club, I run into Trista. She canceled our last lesson, and I’ve barely seen her since that drunken day she told me about her relationship with Owen Oliver. I am so grateful to her for that, but she doesn’t know it. She doesn’t know much of anything right now; she stares at me with the dead stare of a drunk, but it isn’t because of alcohol. She is on pills—most likely painkillers, and a lot of them. I see it quite often at the country club.
But never from her.
“Hey.” I reach out and touch her arm. “Are you okay?”
“Perfect.” She says the word hard, like she’s anything but.
“You don’t look okay. Do you want me to call Andy?”
“No, I don’t want you to call Andy.”
I think I should, because I’d want to know if my wife was stoned up to her eyebrows. I reach for my phone.
Trista looks at me. “A woman is going to disappear tomorrow. And then she’s going to die.”
I want to tell her that maybe it won’t happen, maybe they’ll catch him, but I don’t, because it’s a lie. The police are not going to catch Millicent and me. They don’t even know we exist.
“Yes,” I say. “Someone is probably going to disappear.”
“Owen’s a bastard.” Trista looks vacant but isn’t. Beyond the pills is something that refuses to go numb. Something angry.
“Hey, stop that. You can’t blame yourself for this asshole.”
She snorts.
“You won’t be alone tomorrow, will you?” I say this because I am genuinely worried about her. Everything Trista does hurts only herself.
“Andy will be home.” She looks up at the TV, where they are showing footage from when Owen was arrested fifteen years ago. Trista shivers. “I have to go.”
“Wait—let me give you a ride home.”
“I’m not going home.”
“Trista.”
“I’ll see you later. Tell Millicent I’ll call her.” She walks toward the women’s locker room but then turns back. “Don’t tell Andy, okay?”
I never told him about seeing Trista drunk, and didn’t tell him about his wife’s past with Owen Oliver. Another omission won’t make the betrayal worse than it already is.
“I won’t tell him,” I say.
“Thank you.”
She vanishes into the locker room, and I stare after her, wondering what we have done. Bringing back Owen has affected more than the police investigation.
My last client of the day also talks about it. He is a nice man with three daughters, and two are in Owen’s target age group. All of them still live in the area. Two are single and live alone, and he is so worried he has offered to send them away for the weekend. He didn’t live here when Owen was around the first time but has heard more than enough.
Despite the afternoon ice cream, dinner is still at six. Jenna says everyone at school has been talking about Owen all week. One of her friends has an older sister who is convinced that Owen is coming for her. Rory snickers at this and says it won’t happen, that both are too ugly even for a serial killer. Jenna throws a dinner roll at her brother, and Millicent orders them to stop. They resort to calling each other names by mouthing them across the table.
“I said stop it.”
Millicent does not like to repeat herself, so they stop. For a minute. Jenna flinches when Rory kicks her under the table. I am sure Millicent sees it, but she says nothing, because when dinner is over she announces an impromptu movie night. Sometimes when they fight too much, she makes them spend more time together. It is her way of making sure they work it out instead of going their separate ways.
They argue for twenty minutes about which movie to watch. Neither Millicent nor I interfere; in fact, we don’t pay attention. We are in the kitchen, finishing up the dishes, when she asks if I am going back out tonight.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“It’s fine.”
My tone is sharper than I mean it to be. Hearing about Owen all day has not helped my stress level. Neither did seeing Trista. Something about her, about what she is doing to herself, bothers me.
Everything that happens tomorrow is because of me. I wrote the letter to Josh, I chose the date, I promised another woman would disappear. And I am the one who switched from Annabelle to Naomi just last night. I am the one who has to make sure she is right.
The flip of a quarter chooses our movie for the evening, and it is about a dolphin. Rory and Jenna sit together on the floor with a bowl of popcorn and do not throw it at each other. Millicent and I sit on the couch with our own popcorn. She spends more time looking at our kids than at the movie, and her eyes look ten shades lighter. They always do with the kids.
She stays like that until the movie is over and the kids trudge upstairs to bed, their banter light and filled with dolphins. I start to stand up when she puts her hand on my knee and squeezes it.
“You better get ready,” she says.
She makes it sound like this is her idea, and it irritates me. “You’re right,” I say. “I need to get out of here.”
“You okay?”
I look down at her, at my wife with the clear eyes that are so unlike Trista’s. Everything about
Millicent is the opposite of Andy’s wife.
I smile, thankful I am not married to Trista.
Twenty-four
I HAD NOT INTENDED to wear my suit, because speaking to Naomi wasn’t in the plan, but at the last minute I put on the one Millicent likes best. It is dark blue with a hand-stitched collar, and it cost too much. But since I have it, I might as well wear it.
As I stand in front of the mirror and put on my tie, Millicent appears behind me. She leans against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, and she watches me. I know she wants to ask, because I never wear this suit except with her. She bought it.
I continue with my tie, put on my shoes, collect my wallet, phone, and keys. My disposable phone is not in the house.
When I look up, she is still there, still in the same position.
“I guess I’m off,” I say.
She nods.
I wait for her to say something, but she remains silent. I walk past her and down the stairs. As I reach the door to the garage, I hear him.
“Dad.”
Rory is at the door to the kitchen with a glass of water. He holds up his other hand and rubs his thumb and forefinger together. More money.
He did not just happen to be in the kitchen. He was waiting for me.
I nod and walk out.
* * *
• • •
NAOMI IS AT the front desk, checking people in, answering the phone, troubleshooting for everyone who walks up with a problem. Tonight, I do not sit outside. I am in the lobby.
It is large and plush, with overstuffed furniture in dark colors and thick fabrics. Velvet curtains hang against the walls, trimmed in gold braid like the Lancaster uniforms. Fringe and tassels are everywhere.
I can hide in this lobby, hidden in the ornate decor, just another unknown guest working on my computer, having a drink, because I cannot sit in my hotel room for one more minute. This is almost the truth. I cannot sit in my car outside the hotel for one more minute. If Naomi is the one, I feel compelled to get a little bit closer.
But not to speak to her; I’ve decided not to do that. There is just no time. Not after the last-minute change. I am too stressed, too worried. Resurrecting Owen Oliver has become more complicated than I thought it would be. Maybe because of the media, maybe because of Trista, but it’s also because my kids won’t shut up about him.
This is so much different than Lindsay. It was just Millicent and me, no one else, not even on the periphery.
New Year’s Eve, Millicent and I went to a party at the country club. Jenna was twelve, Rory a year older, and it was the first time we had left them alone on December 31. They had been ecstatic about it. So were we. Ringing in the New Year with adults hadn’t happened since before the kids were born.
Less than a month earlier was when I saw that woman at the mall, the one who looked like Robin. Millicent and I had sex that night. Not the married, get-it-over-with kind of sex. It was the kind we had when we were first dating, when we couldn’t get enough of each other. The great sex.
The next day, it was all over. The sex, the mood, the feeling. We went back to arguing about money—what we could and could not afford. That included the New Year’s Eve gala.
It was a costume party. Millicent and I dressed up like we were from the 1920s, a gangster and his flapper girlfriend. My suit was pin-striped, and I wore shiny wingtips and a fedora. Millicent wore a shimmery violet dress with a feathered headband, and her lips were painted crimson.
I normally found costume parties depressing. They made me feel surrounded by people who dreamed of being anyone other than who they were.
That night, we were different. Not like the others, not like anyone else at that party. Millicent and I talked about doing it again. Killing a woman. We talked about what we would do to her. If we would do it. Why we would do it.
“What about her?” Millicent said, motioning to a woman whose breasts were so large they bordered on grotesque. They were fake, and we all knew it, because she had told everyone how much they had cost.
I shrugged. “We wouldn’t be able to drown her.”
“You’re right about that.”
“And her?” I said, nodding to a beachy blonde with a date as old as her grandpa.
Millicent smiled, her white teeth stark against her ruby lips. “Mercy killing. Judging by that tan, she’ll get skin cancer anyway.”
I stifled a laugh. Millicent giggled. We were being horrible, gossiping in the most twisted way, but it was all just talk. For most of the night, we spoke only to each other.
Given that it was our first big night out in a long time, I was prepared to stay out late, and even had an energy drink before leaving the house. But we didn’t stay out late. By five minutes after midnight, we were on our way home.
By a quarter after, our 1920s costumes had been thrown off and discarded on our bedroom floor.
I had no idea if we were starting something or continuing it, but I didn’t want it to end.
* * *
• • •
IN THE LOBBY of the Lancaster, I look at my watch, check my phone, and surf the Internet. It’s all to pretend I’m not watching Naomi. She does not notice me. The night is much busier than normal, in part because the next day is Friday the 13th. People have come to town to see what Owen will do, who he will take and kill. Some of these people work for legitimate media sources; others are the kind who follow spectacles or events that can be recorded and loaded online.
A group of them sit near me in the lobby. They are college-aged kids who are looking to make money, and they speculate about how much money they can make. It’s all based on how graphic their video is, although capturing the actual kidnapping of a woman would be the mother lode. Provided they hold the camera still.
When they finally leave, off to find likely places serial killers hang out, I can focus back on Naomi. I look for something to tell Millicent, something we can share. I want this to feel like it did before.
Naomi is smiling and has been all night. This is amazing, even admirable. Many of the people who approach the front desk are disgruntled or need something, yet she never fails to be kind. She smiles even when someone calls her an idiot.
I start to think she is some kind of Pollyanna, someone who is nice and happy no matter what. I don’t like it. Millicent and I can’t whisper in the dark about that.
Then I see it—the crack in Naomi’s sugary-sweet persona. When one particularly rude guest turns his back, Naomi gives him the finger.
I smile.
Time to go home and tell Millicent.
Twenty-five
I WAKE UP TO silence. Dawn is an hour away, and the world is dark as velvet.
It is Saturday the 14th.
Millicent is not home yet.
Our decision to separate came late on Thursday night, after I returned home from the Lancaster. The plan was to keep Naomi alive for a while, just like Lindsay. It had to be done, because it’s what Owen always did.
I just didn’t like it. Didn’t even want to see it.
Part of me knew I should, because it wasn’t fair to make Millicent do it by herself. I tried to imagine what it would be like to lock Naomi up and keep her alive, feeding her, giving her water, and torturing her. It makes my stomach turn.
I don’t think I can see that, up close and in person.
This keeps me from talking to Millicent about where she kept Lindsay and where she will keep Naomi. I’ve thought about asking her but never have. At times, I feel a little bad about it, but not bad enough. Most of the time, I’m just relieved.
“I can do it,” Millicent said.
We were at home alone on Friday morning. The kids were already at school. We sat in the kitchen having another cup of coffee and discussing our plans.
“You shouldn’t have to do it all yourself,” I said.
“I did it before.” Millicent stood up and carried her coffee mug over to the sink.
“Still,” I said. My protests were weak, and I knew it. They made me feel better anyway.
“Still nothing,” Millicent said. “I’ll take care of it. You take care of that reporter.”
“I will. Eventually, I’ll have to contact him again.”
“Exactly.”
She turned to me and smiled, lit up by the morning sun coming through the window.
Our plan was set. It was the same plan we had used on Lindsay.
We had prepared every detail, the way Millicent always does. First, the drug. Lindsay, and now Naomi, had to be unconscious so we could take her to a deserted place. Turned out chloroform is not the miracle knockout drug the movies pretend it is. Our research led us to some dark and scary places on the Internet, where everything is available for a price. Electronic currency, an anonymous e-mail, and a private mailbox can get you anything, including a tranquilizer strong and quick enough to knock out a dinosaur.
Since we only had to knock out a 130-pound woman, we didn’t need much.
Millicent bought a notebook computer that only we knew about. We used it for researching the drugs. Also to find Lindsay.
And Petra.
And Naomi.
On Friday night, we took Naomi together. Just as we had done with Lindsay.
In the parking lot behind the hotel, Millicent waved down Naomi as she was driving away. They were just beyond the security cameras. I watched as Millicent bent down to the driver’s-side window, talking fast as if she needed help because her car had broken down. Then I saw the telltale jerk of her arm when she injected Naomi with the drug. Millicent pushed Naomi’s body to the side as she slipped into the driver’s seat and drove away.
I followed, smiling. After so much searching and planning and talking, I loved watching it all play out.
* * *
• • •
WE SEPARATED IN the woods. I took Naomi’s car and got rid of it while Millicent drove away in my car with our still-unconscious victim. By the time I made my way to Millicent’s car, parked a block from the Lancaster, and then back home, it was after midnight. In Hidden Oaks, everyone’s porch light was on, including ours.
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