My Lovely Wife

by Samantha Downing

  “They’ll never know it was us,” she says.

  “Never?”

  Millicent shakes her head. “I don’t know how. We basically split everything up. I never touched the letters—”

  “But wherever you kept Naomi—”

  “You never even saw it. What about you? Did anyone see you with—”

  “No. I never spoke to Naomi,” I say.

  “Never?” Millicent is silent for a moment. “That’s good, then. No one saw you with her.”

  “No.”

  “And Lindsay?”

  I shake my head. Lindsay and I spoke while hiking. “No one saw us.”

  “Good.”

  “Jenna,” I say. “I almost think we should move because of—”

  “Let’s at least wait and make sure this is real. That it isn’t some kind of hoax.”

  I smile. The irony is too thick not to. “Like Owen’s letters. A hoax.”

  “Yes. Like that.”

  The reminder on my phone beeps. My next client is in fifteen minutes. Either I leave or I cancel.

  “Go,” she says. “There’s nothing we can do now except wait.”

  “If it’s real—”

  “We’ll discuss it again.”

  I walk over and kiss her on the forehead.

  She puts her hand on my cheek. “We’ll be fine.”

  “We always are.”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE KIDS HAVE already heard the news. We had planned to tell them together that evening, at dinner, but they already knew. The Internet and their friends are faster than us.

  If Rory cares, he does not show it. His hand is clasped around his phone, the lifeline to his girlfriend.

  Jenna’s face is still as stone. Her eyes, normally so expressive, look right through us. She is not listening, not even here in the room with us. I do not know where she is. She does not speak until Millicent and I are done telling her what we have told her for weeks: You are safe.

  I don’t think she believes us. I’m not even sure I believe us. Everything she thought was true is turning out to be wrong. Owen was never here. It was always someone else, and no one has any idea who.

  I cannot blame her for shutting down. I want to do the same thing.

  When we are done talking, Rory jumps up and heads for the stairs. Already texting.

  Jenna keeps staring.

  “Baby?” I say, reaching over to touch her hand. “You okay?”

  She turns to me, her eyes focusing. “So it’s all a lie. The killer may not even be gone.”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Millicent says.

  “But maybe.”

  I nod. “Maybe.”

  A minute passed, then another.

  “Okay,” she says, slipping her hand out from under mine. She stands up. “I’m going upstairs.”

  “Are you feeling—”

  “I’m fine.”

  Millicent and I watch her go.

  The rest of my evening is spent on the Internet, researching a new place for us to live. I flip between sites about weather, schools, cost of living, and the news.

  It feels strange to not know what is coming next. Ever since I wrote that first letter to Josh, most of the news has not surprised me. I already knew what the letters would say and could guess how the pundits would analyze them. Not even Naomi’s body was a surprise. I didn’t know the details, but I knew it would be found.

  The only thing that surprised me was the paper cuts.

  Now, nothing is familiar, nothing is expected. I do not like it.

  Fifty-two

  I WATCH THE STORY unfold on TV as if I am not involved. As if I’m just another spectator. And, because I have no power to change the course of this story, I hope. Every time I turn on the news, I hope Owen’s sister is a liar. But one night, I am outside on the back porch, watching the eleven o’clock broadcast, and this is not what Josh says.

  He is in the studio tonight, wearing a jacket and tie, and his face looks like it was shaved minutes before the show started. Josh sounds like a serious reporter when he says that Jennifer Riley is coming back into the country. She wants to clear her brother’s name.

  The urge to throw my phone, again, is stopped by a scraping sound on the side of the house. I get up and look.

  Rory.

  Only he would continue to sneak out after getting caught sneaking out.

  Or rather, only he could continue to get away with sneaking out after he was caught sneaking out. I wonder how many times I’ve missed him.

  He sees me just as his feet hit the ground. Rory was on his way out, not back in.

  “Oh,” he says. “Hey.”

  “Going out for a little night air?”

  He shrugs, admitting nothing.

  “Come sit down,” I say.

  Instead of sitting on the porch, we go out farther into the yard. We have a picnic table with an umbrella on the far side, in between the big oak tree and the dismantled playset.

  Rory says, “You don’t have a lot of room to talk about sneaking out.”

  Days ago, when Owen was supposed to be gone forever, that comment might not have bothered me. I had been looking forward to talking with my son about his first girlfriend. Now, it just feels like a chore.

  I point to one of the benches. “Sit. Your. Ass. Down.”

  He does.

  “First,” I say, “you may have noticed your sister has been having a difficult time. And I am sure you, her only brother, do not want to make her feel worse?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Of course you don’t. So I know you won’t tell her this little theory of yours about how I’m cheating on your mother.”

  “Theory?”

  I stare at him.

  He shakes his head again. “No. I’m not going to say anything.”

  “And I know you are not about to compare me to you and the fact that you are sneaking out late at night. Because you are less than half my age. You are not even close to being an adult. You do not get to sneak out.”

  He nods.

  “What?” I say.

  “No. I wasn’t going to compare us.”

  “And I also know that if I ask you why you were sneaking out, you are not going to say it was to hang out with Daniel. Because that’s not what you’re doing, is it?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sneaking out to see Faith Hammond.”

  “Yes.”

  “Perfect. I’m glad we cleared that up.”

  Rory’s phone buzzes. His eyes go back and forth, between the phone and me, but he does not look at it.

  “Go ahead,” I say.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Don’t keep Faith waiting.”

  He checks the phone and sends a text while pushing that red hair out of his eyes. Faith answers right away, and he sends another. The conversation continues, and I wait until he puts the phone down on the table. Faceup.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  I sigh.

  I am not angry at Rory. He is just a kid who has discovered girls aren’t so bad after all. He used to say girls were “heinous and foul and, most especially, ugly.” The quote is from a book he’d read, and it always made me laugh. I would turn to Millicent and say, “You’re the one who brought them to the library every week.” If we happened to be in the kitchen, she would snap the dish towel at me. Once, she snapped it so hard it cut my arm. The wound was just superficial, barely breaking the skin, but Rory was impressed with his mother. Less so with me.

  And now, he is leaving late at night to see a little blonde named Faith.

  “Does she sneak out, too?” I say. “Do you meet somewhere?”

  “Sometimes. But I can get up to
her room, too.”

  I want to ban him from doing this, put a lock on his window, and call Faith’s parents and say they are too young and it’s too dangerous. Owen is dead, and a killer is on the loose.

  Except it isn’t true. I just have to pretend it is. Just like I have to pretend I don’t remember my first girlfriend.

  “You have to stop,” I say. “You’ve seen the news. It’s too dangerous for both of you to be out alone at night.”

  “Yeah, I know, but—”

  “And you shouldn’t be sneaking out at all. If I told your mother, she would lock your window and put cameras all over the house.”

  Rory’s eyebrows shoot up. “She doesn’t know?”

  “If she did, you’d be grounded until college. And so would your girlfriend.”

  “Okay. We’ll stop.”

  I take a deep breath. Just because I’m angry does not mean I am irresponsible. “And since you have a girlfriend, do you have protect—”

  “Dad, I know how to buy condoms.”

  “Good, good. So just text her at night, okay? See her during the day?”

  He nods and gets up quick, as if he is scared I might change my mind.

  “One more thing,” I say. “And answer me straight.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you taking any drugs?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t smoke pot?”

  He shakes his head. “I swear I don’t.”

  I let him go. Right now, I don’t have time to figure out if he is lying.

  When I’m not watching the news, all I can think about is what else we might have missed. All the ways we might get caught, all the forensic data I have learned about on TV. The DNA, trace evidence, fibers—it all runs through my mind like it makes sense to me, which it does not, but I know it will not point to me. I never said a word to Naomi, much less touched her. Any evidence they find will lead to Millicent.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE FIRST TIME I see Owen’s sister is on TV. Owen was in his thirties when he was killing; now, he would have been about fifty. Jennifer looks a little younger, midforties. She has the same blue eyes, but her hair is a dirtier shade of blond. She is so thin her collarbone sticks out, as do the veins on her neck. They say the camera puts on ten pounds, and if that’s true, Jennifer must look sickly in real life.

  She is on every screen in the clubhouse, where the lunch crowd has stuck around for another cocktail so they can watch the press conference. This is the first time the public has seen Owen’s sister.

  The police chief is on one side of her; the medical examiner is on the other. One has hair, the other doesn’t, and their paunches are the same size.

  Jennifer says that she is Owen Oliver Riley’s sister and that we are all wrong about these murders.

  “I can prove Owen has not killed anyone in the last five years. I came all the way back here to make sure everyone understands that my brother is dead.” Jennifer holds up a piece of paper and says it is Owen’s death certificate, signed by a coroner in Great Britain and stamped with an official seal. She says it again. “Dead.”

  The medical examiner steps to the microphone and confirms what Jennifer has said.

  Dead.

  Next comes the chief of police, who goes on and on about how it was unavoidable that his police department had zeroed in on Owen, but they had been misled. He also confirms Jennifer’s claim.

  Dead.

  We are all clear now. We believe her. Owen is dead, and the police are going back to the evidence to see what they missed.

  But first, Jennifer has one more thing to say. “I am sorry for the families. Sorry that so much time has been wasted focusing on my brother instead of looking for the real killer. An old friend contacted me about what was going on here in Woodview. When she begged me to come back, I knew I had to do the right thing.”

  Jennifer motions to someone behind her, and the medical examiner steps to the side. The camera zooms in on the friend.

  My head spins so fast I almost lose consciousness.

  The woman who called Jennifer Riley is plump and blond, and has a smile that lights up the screen.

  Denise. The woman from behind the counter at Joe’s Deli.

  Fifty-three

  THE GPS TRACKER sits on the dashboard of my car. I flip it over on one side, then the other, and start all over again. It is the same thing I have been doing in my mind after the woman from Joe’s Deli, Millicent’s new favorite lunch spot, appeared on TV.

  Denise. The same woman who served Jenna and me.

  This is a coincidence. It must be. The fact that Owen is dead does not help Millicent and me. It hurts us.

  And if Joe’s was an organic bistro serving roast beef from cows raised on organic grass, it would never occur to me that this is not a coincidence. But Joe’s is not. It is a deli where organic is a word from another language.

  If I could ask Millicent about this new affection for cheap deli sandwiches, I would. But I am not supposed to know. This is information I acquired by spying on my wife.

  I’d never done it before. Thought about it, but never did it. Not even back when Millicent was working with a man who liked her as more than a colleague. It was obvious from the moment I met him. Cooper. The one-time frat boy who never married and didn’t want to. What he wanted to do was sleep with Millicent.

  Cooper was the one who went with Millicent to the conference in Miami. The weekend Crystal kissed me.

  I was convinced Cooper had done the same thing to Millicent.

  When they came back, that belief almost made me spy on both of them. I did not. At least not on her. But Cooper, I watched him long enough to figure out he wanted to sleep with every woman. It wasn’t just Millicent.

  And as far as I could tell, they had not slept together.

  Now that I have spied on my wife, I see the problem with it. I cannot do anything with the information. The tracker is on my dashboard, and I am sitting in the parking lot of the club staring at the gadget, because spying only leads to more spying. If I had known it was such a vicious circle, I would never have done it.

  As I go back and forth, Millicent texts me.

  Chicken pho for dinner?

  Sounds good.

  I wait for another text, one that says date night or has some reference to the news today, but my phone stays dark.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN I GET home, Millicent’s car is already in the garage. I think about putting the tracker on it again but don’t.

  She is making chicken pho in the kitchen. I start to help her, slicing vegetables while she adds fresh onion and ginger to the broth.

  The kids are not around.

  “Upstairs,” she says before I ask. “Homework.”

  “Did you see the news?”

  She purses her lips and nods. “He’s dead.”

  “They only said it a thousand times.”

  I smile a little. She does, too. We cannot change the fact that Owen is dead.

  We are silent for a few minutes, working on dinner, and I try to come up with a way to mention Denise. The kids show up before an idea does.

  I reiterate that they shouldn’t pay any attention to everything going on in the news. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

  This directly contradicts what I told Rory the other night, when I said it was too dangerous for him to sneak out, but Rory is not beating up kids with rocks. Jenna is.

  Still, he notices. He rolls his eyes at me. We haven’t said a lot to each other since our talk in the backyard. I am not sure if he is angry because he was caught sneaking out or angry because I asked if he used drugs. Probably both.

  When no one has anything else to say about Owen, the conversation turns to Saturday. Rory is playing golf. Jen
na has a soccer game, and it is Millicent’s turn to go. I am working. We will all meet for lunch.

  Owen does not come up again until later, after dinner is over and the dishes are done and the kids have gone to sleep. Millicent is in our bathroom, getting ready for bed, while I watch the news and wait for her. She comes out wearing one of my T-shirts from the club and a pair of sweats, her face shiny with lotion. She rubs it on her hands while staring at the TV.

  Josh is standing in front of the Lancaster Hotel, where Jennifer Riley is staying. He talks about the press conference, then cuts to the video.

  “I haven’t seen this,” Millicent says.

  “No?”

  “No. I saw the story online.”

  I turn up the volume. They show snippets from the press conference, including every time someone said the word dead. No one said Owen had passed away, not even his sister.

  When Denise comes on the screen, I look at Millicent.

  She tilts her head to the side.

  I wait.

  When the clip ends, she says, “That’s weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “I know that woman. She’s a client.”

  “Really?”

  “She owns a deli. A pretty successful one, too. She’s looking for a house.”

  Millicent walks back into the bathroom.

  Inside, I exhale. Denise is a client. It had never occurred to me that she’d have enough money to buy a house—at least not the kind of houses Millicent sells—and yet she does.

  I am so stupid.

  Though I am relieved to know this has all been a weird coincidence, wholly caused by my own spying, our problem has not gone away. It’s worse. Owen is dead, and the police are looking for the real killer.

  The chief said a new detective has been assigned to the case. The detective is coming in from another precinct and will review the whole case with fresh eyes. I should have looked at Denise with fresh eyes.

  When Millicent comes out of the bathroom, the TV and lights are off. She gets into bed, and I turn over to face her, even though it’s too dark to see anything.

  “I don’t want to move away,” she says.