My Lovely Wife

by Samantha Downing

  The following afternoon we went to Krav Maga. Unlike tae kwon do, the Krav Maga school does not require uniforms or belts, which Jenna liked a lot better than the white gi everyone at tae kwon do had to wear. Jenna preferred to wear her sweatpants and T-shirt.

  It never occurred to me that she would hurt the boy who was trying to teach her something, much less try to knock him out.

  The whole thing happened so fast no one saw it. Not even me, and I had been watching Jenna from a row of chairs designated for parents. One minute, they were both standing up and the boy was showing Jenna how to form a proper punch. The next minute, he fell to the floor and screamed in pain.

  A few drops of blood hit the mat, and everyone lost their minds.

  “What the—”

  “How did—”

  “Is that a rock?”

  A mom in a turquoise jumper pointed to Jenna. “She did it. She hit him with a rock.”

  Pandemonium followed, along with a lot more screaming and big accusations.

  It took a few hours to sort out, in part because the boy’s mother arrived and started yelling about why no one had called an ambulance. That made someone call an ambulance. And the police.

  Two uniformed officers showed up and asked what happened. The boy’s mother pointed at Jenna and said, “She hit my son.”

  Understandably, the officers were confused, because we were in a Krav Maga studio where people get hit on a regular basis. They also thought it was a little funny that the boy was hit by a girl. The man who owned the studio did not think it was funny at all.

  In the end, the boy was fine. The blood had come from a small cut on his lip and really was just a few drops. No one went to the hospital and no one got arrested, but Jenna and I were disinvited from the Krav Maga studio.

  Throughout the course of the afternoon, the boy’s mother vowed more than once that she would sue. And on top of everything else, I was forced to cancel several tennis lessons, and pissed off at least one client.

  Once we were in the car, alone, I asked, “Why?”

  Jenna stared out the window.

  “You must have had a reason,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe to see if I could.”

  “Could hit that kid with a rock?”

  “Could knock him out.”

  I do not point out the obvious. She did not knock him out. All she did was split his lip.

  “Are you going to tell Mom?” Jenna said.

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  Actually, I had no idea. At that moment, I could not even look at Jenna.

  She has never reminded me of Millicent. When Rory was born, he already had little tufts of red hair. Jenna was born bald. When her hair finally started growing in, it was the same color as mine: dark brown without a hint of red. Her eyes were the same as mine, too.

  I was so disappointed.

  It was not personal. It was not anything Jenna had done or hadn’t done. I just wanted a little red-haired girl to match my boy and my wife with the flame-colored hair. This was the picture in my mind, the image I had when I thought about my family. The real Jenna did not fit, because she looked like my mother instead of her own.

  The first time she ever reminded me of Millicent was when she hit that boy with a rock. She looked just like Millicent did when she hit Robin in our kitchen.

  What I found sexy in my wife was horrifying in my daughter.

  Forty-four

  IT IS LATE at night. Millicent and I are in her office. She works for Abbott Realty, a small pond of a business where she has been the big fish for years. The office is in a strip mall, sandwiched between a gym and a Chinese restaurant. Inside, it is empty and private, because no one is looking for real estate at this hour. The downside is the glass front, which means anyone can see inside. The open layout of the desks provides no cover, so we leave the lights out and sit in the back. If the circumstances were different, it might be romantic.

  Millicent knows about Jenna. A friend told her before I could, sending her into a rage. She called and yelled loud enough to make my eardrum vibrate, because she said I should have called her when we were still at the studio. She is right.

  Now, Jenna is safe at home, asleep in her bed and not throwing rocks. Not throwing up. Not cutting off what’s left of her hair. Millicent is calm. She even brought dessert, a single chocolate éclair. She cuts it in two, and the halves are perfectly even. I take a bite of mine and she takes a bite of hers, and I wipe chocolate off her top lip.

  “She’s not okay,” Millicent says.

  “No.”

  “We need to talk to her doctor. I can call—”

  “Is she like Holly?” I say.

  Millicent sets down her éclair as if it’s about to explode. “Like Holly?”

  “Maybe it’s the same thing. The same illness.”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “No. Holly started torturing bugs when she was two. Jenna is nothing like her.”

  By that comparison, she is right. Jenna screams whenever she sees a bug. She can’t even kill a spider, let alone torture one. “Then it’s our fault,” I say. “We have to get rid of Owen.”

  “We’ve been trying to.”

  “I think the hunt for Naomi should end,” I say. “We should let her be found.”

  “How will that help—”

  “So we can get rid of Owen for good.” When Millicent starts to point out the obvious, I hold up my hand. “I know, I know. Hard to get rid of someone that isn’t even around, right?”

  “That would be one way to put it.”

  “He was a great idea—I’m not denying it. But we’ve caused so many problems.”

  “So many?”

  “Jenna. The people in this town. Women are really afraid.” I am careful to omit what she doesn’t know, like Trista.

  Millicent nods. “I never meant to hurt Jenna.”

  “I know you didn’t.” I lean forward in my chair, closer to Millicent, so that she won’t miss what I’m saying. “It would be difficult, if not impossible, to fake his death without a body. Really, the only way is if he drowns in the ocean or a lake and is never found. But there would be doubt. And to make it halfway plausible, we would need someone credible to tell the story.”

  “Like Naomi,” Millicent says.

  “And what are the chances of letting Naomi do that?”

  “In the negative.”

  “Then maybe Owen doesn’t die. Maybe he just leaves.” I pause here, waiting for a reaction. When she doesn’t say anything, I keep talking. “Owen has such a big ego he wrote to a reporter so everyone knew he was back and knew exactly when he would grab his next victim. So why wouldn’t he tell everyone he is going to leave? He’s the type that would brag about what he did. He would say, ‘I told you exactly what I was going to do and when I was going to do it, and you still couldn’t catch me. Now you’ll never find me.’”

  Millicent nods a little, like she’s thinking about it.

  “I know it’s not ideal,” I say. “But if Owen’s gone, everyone will stop talking about him and maybe Jenna won’t be scared anymore.”

  “The timing has to be right,” she says. “They need to find Naomi before you send another letter.”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “I’ll take care of that first.”

  “Maybe we should do it together.”

  She looks at me, her head tilted to one side. For a moment, I think she is going to smile, but she doesn’t. This is too serious now. We have moved beyond using this as foreplay.

  “I can take care of Naomi,” she says. “You concentrate on the letter. You have to make everyone believe Owen has left.”

  I want to argue and go with my idea, but instead I nod. Her idea makes sense.

 
She sighs a little. “I hope this works.”

  “Me too.”

  I reach over and slip my hand into hers. We sit like this until she picks up what’s left of my éclair and takes a bite. I take hers and do the same. A tiny smile appears on her face. I squeeze her hand.

  “We’ll be fine,” I say.

  Millicent has said this before. She said it when we were young and broke with one baby and another on the way. She said it when we bought our first house and then the second, bigger one.

  She also said it after Holly, when her body was lying in our family room, her head smashed by the tennis racket.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHILE I STOOD over Holly, coming to grips with what I had just done, Millicent went straight to work.

  “Do we still have that tarp in the garage?” she said.

  It took me a second to process. “Tarp?”

  “From when we had that leak.”

  “I think so.”

  “Get it.”

  I paused, thinking we should call the police. Because that’s what you do when you kill someone out of self-defense. You call the police and explain what happened, because you did nothing wrong.

  Millicent read my mind.

  “You think the police will believe Holly was a threat to you?” she said.

  Me, the athlete. Me, with the broken tennis racket.

  Holly, with no weapon at all.

  I did not argue. I went out to the garage and dug through the shelves and plastic containers until I found the rolled-up blue tarp. When I returned to the living room, Holly’s body had been readjusted; her legs were straightened, and her arms flat at her side.

  We spread the tarp out on the floor, and together Millicent and I wrapped the body like a mummy.

  “Let’s move her into the garage,” Millicent said.

  It was almost like she didn’t have to think about it.

  I did what she said, and Holly ended up in the trunk of my car. I took her out to the woods and buried her while Millicent cleaned up the blood. By the time the kids got home from school, every sign of Holly had been scrubbed out.

  We did the same thing with Robin, only she didn’t get buried in the ground. Her body and her little red car ended up at the bottom of a lake.

  Millicent is right. We have always been fine.

  Now it’s my turn to make sure of it.

  * * *

  • • •

  BOTH HALVES OF the éclair are gone, and Millicent brushes the crumbs into a wastebasket. We stand up to go, walking back through the dark office and out to the car. It’s late. Even the Chinese restaurant is closed, but the gym is available twenty-four hours. It stands out like a single halogen star in a dark sky.

  Before starting the car, I turn to Millicent. She is checking her phone. I reach over and put my hand against her cheek, the same way she has touched me so many times. It makes her look up in surprise.

  “So do we have a plan?” I say.

  She smiles all the way up to her eyes. “Definitely.”

  Forty-five

  THE NOISE IS gone. For the first time, as improbable as it seems, clarity comes all at once. Until I saw Jenna hit that boy, I never realized Millicent and I have been doing more than we realized. We have been destroying our own family.

  Owen’s final letter is the easiest one to write. I have a goal now—to get rid of Owen—and it feels like I know how to achieve it.

  Though I will send it to Josh, as I always do, the letter is really addressed to the public. I tell them they are stupid.

  I gave this to you. I tried to help you catch me by letting you know when, the exact day, I would take my next victim. I even gave you two weeks to prepare, to plan. Yet you failed. You didn’t stop me, couldn’t catch me, and because of you, Naomi is dead. Let there be no mistake: Her death isn’t my fault. It’s yours.

  She knew it. Naomi had seen the same reports, had read my earlier letter, yet she was still out alone on that Friday the 13th. Naomi knew she had been stupid. She had faith, though. Faith that you were looking for her, faith that you would find her. She was half-right.

  If I had the time, I would tell you everything I did to her. Every mark, every cut, every bruise. But that would be redundant. You already have her body.

  Really, there isn’t anything else to say. We played a game, and you lost. Naomi lost. Everyone lost but me. And now I’m done. I came back and accomplished my goal. I have nothing left to prove. Not to you, not to myself.

  Goodbye.

  Finally.

  Once the final version is done, I tell Millicent. She has come to the club to pick up Rory, who played golf after school and is done before I am. Millicent stops by the tennis court, where I am waiting for my next client. Her flesh-colored heels thump against the cement as she walks toward me with a smile.

  Days have passed since our late-night conversation. Now that Jane Doe has gone public she has been giving interviews to anyone who asks. She was impossible to avoid until Jane Doe #2 arrived last night.

  Instead of having a press conference, she livestreamed her story on the Internet, and the local news rebroadcast it. The woman is younger than the others, maybe still in college, and she has jet-black hair, pale skin, and lips that look painted with blood. Jane #2 is almost the opposite of Owen’s typical victims, but she told almost the same story as Jane #1. Only the parking lot was different, along with a few dramatic tweaks. This Jane claimed Owen hit her in the face, and she showed off a purplish bruise on her cheek.

  As soon as the livestream ended, my old friend Josh appeared on TV. Of late, Josh has been very serious, but last night he sounded almost sarcastic. He did not come right out and say he thought Jane Doe #2 was a liar, but he may as well have. I cannot imagine anyone believed her. I know I didn’t.

  The problem is that women like her are keeping Owen as the lead story on the news. I do not have to remind Millicent of this as she walks onto the tennis court.

  “I’m ready whenever you are,” I say.

  Her dark sunglasses hide her eyes, both from the sun and from me, but she nods. “Hello to you, too.”

  “Sorry.” I lean over and kiss her on the cheek. She smells like citrus. “Hello.”

  “Hello. The letter is ready?”

  “Do you want to read it?” I want her to say yes, I want to watch her read it, but she shakes her head.

  “I don’t need to. I trust you.”

  “Oh, I know. Just asking.”

  She smiles and kisses me on the cheek. “See you at home. Dinner at six.”

  “Always.”

  I watch her walk away.

  She does not go to Joe’s Deli today. Today is all work, either at the office or open houses.

  I still watch the tracker, still check where she is going, but it is not because I want to know about Naomi. I already do. If she is not already dead, she will be soon.

  I watch the tracker because I like to watch Millicent.

  * * *

  • • •

  ANOTHER DAY GOES by, then another, and Josh is back to counting down how many days have passed since Naomi went missing. I watch him on my phone all the time, waiting for the breaking-news announcement about her body. Even when I wake up in the middle of the night, I feel an urge to see if anything is happening. On the Internet, news can break at any time. Normally, this is not a problem. But now that I am waiting for news to break, it is infuriating. And inconvenient.

  I go downstairs and out to the backyard, where I check my phone. The news is the same as when I went to bed. Nothing is breaking, nothing is happening; it is like a boring rerun.

  But I’m not tired. At two in the morning, the air is still, and so is our neighborhood. No one in Hidden Oaks throws late-night parties or even plays loud music. I don’t even see a light o
n in any of our almost-mansions.

  I wish I could say this was our dream home, that we took one look at it and knew it was the place we wanted to be, the place we had worked so hard to get. It isn’t true. Our dream home is a bit deeper into Hidden Oaks, where the houses become real mansions. The inner circle is for hedge funders and surgeons.

  We live in the middle circle, but only because of a nasty divorce, which led to frozen assets followed by a bank foreclosure. Because Millicent had sent that bank a lot of mortgage business, we were able to buy a house we should not have been able to afford. This is why we live in the middle of Hidden Oaks. We should be in the outer circle, but once again, I found my way into the middle.

  The sound of rustling bushes makes me jump. There is no wind tonight.

  The noise comes from the side of the house. If we had a dog, I would assume it made the noise, but we don’t. We don’t even have deer in this area.

  The rustle comes again, followed by a creaking sound.

  With my phone in hand, I get up to investigate. Our back porch is about half the length of the house, from the kitchen to the corner. In the dark, I walk over to the far railing. The path along the side of the house is partially lit by a street lamp, and it’s empty. No animals, no burglars, no serial killers.

  A soft scraping noise comes from above. I look up just in time to see Rory sneaking back into the house.

  I had no idea he’d snuck out.

  Forty-six

  PARTYING, DRUGS, GIRLS. Or just because.

  These are the reasons Rory sneaks out of the house. They are the same for all teenage boys. I first snuck out to smoke weed. Next, I snuck out because it worked the first time. Eventually, it was because of Lily. My parents never knew. Or more likely, they never cared.

  And yet, even when Rory saw me sneaking out, it still did not occur to me that he was doing the same thing. This is how oblivious I have been.