“I was walking my dogs down past the woods behind Main Street there, just near the man’s house, I guess. I didn’t know no one lived there again. I heard somethin’. Some yellin’ I think it was, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
The screen cuts back to the news anchors, who try to decode the woman’s statement.
“The police believe that the anonymous 911 call made just before 9 p.m. the night of the murder is suspicious because this witness, Georgia Bouvier—in addition to the victim’s estimated time of death, per the coroner’s office—indicates that this crime took place a couple of hours before the anonymous call was made. When asked exactly what she heard, Bouvier said it sounded like a man yelling at someone to ‘get out.’ This was closer to 7 p.m. More on this as it develops.”
“Mom,” Ben complains. I’ve stopped working on his mask and stand with it in my hands, fixated on the TV. I quickly refocus my attention and make sure my voice sounds light.
“Alllmost done here.” I tie on his little mask and he hops off the step stool he was standing on and runs to look at himself in the mirror. Collin has flipped to some sports headline show as he laces up his dress shoes at the edge of the couch. I feel like I could be sick. Who was Luke yelling at to get out? Rachel comes back with bright red lips.
“Are we ready?” she asks impatiently, not looking up from her phone where she texts Katie photos of her costume. It’s nice to see they’re still friends, despite Katie’s move. I suppose that’s one thing social media is good for.
“Come on, kiddo,” Collin calls to Ben, who is bounding down the hall and directly out the door to the car. As we put on our coats, Collin whispers, “I’ll drive so you can get nice and tipsy for later.” He raises his eyebrows at me, flirting, and kisses me on the cheek. “I mean, if you want.” I try very hard to make my face look the way it’s supposed to look, and not drained of blood and apathetic.
“And me without my slutty cat costume,” I say back, smiling. I’m trying to resemble the person I was not so long ago.
At the party, Collin stands in a circle of dads who make chitchat and drink beer near the bar. I spot Liz and Tammy by the punch bowl. They wave and come over.
“Long time, no see,” Liz says, sipping a martini. She’s dressed like Cher and calls Tammy and me party poopers since we didn’t dress up.
“It has been,” I say. They never really give me much guff about being busy, since they know the history with Ben and the stress they “could not even imagine,” and they think I am “just a saint” to handle it all so well. Yeah, I think to myself, I handled it as poorly as a mother possibly could.
“We loved having you at the book club. You should come by next week, join us again.”
“Okay, I might,” I say. My smile is weak and my voice is tired, I can tell.
“Goddamn it,” Liz says running over to the barrels where the kids are bobbing for apples and her son is starting to unzip his little fly. “It’s not a toilet, Brian!” she yells, picking him up before he pees in the apple water.
Tammy looks at me and giggles. Gillian and Karen are coming over from the beer garden, dressed as twin cats. Behind them I glance over to Collin who mouths an exaggerated Pineapples? It’s our code word at parties. He’s asking if I want him to come and save me. I can’t help but smirk at this. It’s been a long time since we pulled out that little trick. I mouth back with a laugh, It’s okay.
“Hey, girls!” Gillian hoots, and after a few minutes of small talk she’s already scanning the room for women to make fun of.
“Eleven o’clock. Dear Lord.” We all look over to our left.
“Who is it?” Liz asks.
“Elaine Fitch.”
“Fattest Wonder Woman I have ever seen,” Tammy adds, saying what they were all thinking, and they cackle together. A kid dressed as a ghost walks over to us. A small voice comes from under his white sheet. He looks up at me. I see two blue eyes blink behind the jagged-cut eyeholes.
“Are you Melanie?” he asks. I assume he’s one of Ben’s friends.
“I am. Who are you?” I kneel down to him. But he doesn’t answer, he just hands me a little pumpkin-shaped felt candy bag.
“Why, thank you,” I say, but he turns and walks away, disappearing into the crowd of kids around the apple barrels in front of us. Gillian gives an animated “Oh, that’s so sweet” look and clasps her hand to her heart.
“Well, does someone have a tiny admirer?” Karen jokes.
“Probably a bribe from Ben to stay out longer.” I open it and pick a chocolate coin off the top. Then I see something else in the bag. There is something small and heavy at the bottom. My heart starts to pound. I scan the room, looking for the kid who gave it to me, wanting to go after him, but not wanting to look like a lunatic in front of the gossip squad. I peel the wrapper off the chocolate in my hand and put it in my mouth with a look to the other women like I’m being naughty for eating it. I’m trying to stay calm. We have a brief conversation about how many calories are in a martini, and after an acceptable amount of small talk time, I hurriedly excuse myself to the bathroom.
I go into one of the stalls and sit on the toilet. I’m sweating, trembling. I look inside the bag and pull out a cell phone. I don’t understand. It’s like the disposable phone Luke gave me, but I know it can’t be. That one is on the bottom of the bay. No, this one is a new one. The buttons are different. It’s not the one I had, but whose is it and what the hell is it doing in this bag? I flip it open and it has one text message, marked as unread. Who was that kid? Is this meant for me? Maybe it’s a mistake. I stare at it before I shakily click open the message. I look at the screen in utter disbelief as I read.
I know what you did, Melanie Hale.
I almost drop it, my hands are shaking so violently, but I don’t. I place it gingerly on top of the metal toilet paper holder and stare at it. I dab the sweat on my forehead and try to catch my breath. Does someone know about the affair, or did someone see me at his house the night he died? Does someone think I killed him? No, that can’t be. This can’t be happening. I text back, Who is this?
I wait, but there is no reply.
16
I SEARCH THE PARTY for the ghost child. Whoever sent this to me is here, but since everyone is in disguise, there is no way to know who sent that kid over. They could have paid a random child in treats to walk over to me anonymously like that—they just chose the most covered-up kid so I couldn’t find him later. And I can’t. Maybe whoever sent him simply placed a sheet over his head and told him it would be a fun Halloween prank. There are no kids dressed like ghosts. I can’t keep making circles around the place. I can’t behave strangely. Faking illness to leave early would also be out of the ordinary, so I stand near Collin, who is still in midconversation with the group of husbands near the bar. He slips an arm around my waist. I smile, pretending to listen, but I am thinking, going over and over in my mind how this happened. I was careful.
All the way home, Rachel silently cries with her earbuds in. Despite her giddy text exchanges with Katie, she’s still angry her friend has moved away and is making sure we know we didn’t do enough to change that fact and have assisted in ruining her life. Ben is listing every single name on each piece of candy in his stash, counting them and grouping them into favorites. By the time we pull into the drive, he’s finally sleeping. Collin carries him to bed, and Rachel slams her door, taking her adolescent pain out on everyone around her. I go up to the bathroom and run the shower so I have a minute to hide the phone. There is no text back from whoever sent the first text to me. I need to keep it and wait for an answer. I create a PIN so I can lock it. Then I put it in the bottom of a tampon box, a place Collin would never look, and then stack a box of soap and some washcloths on top of it.
The bathroom has filled with steam, so I quickly undress and step into the shower just before Collin comes in. He’s telling
me about Ben’s sugar crash as he carefully takes off his clothes, hanging his dress shirt in the adjacent closet and binding his socks together before he tosses them into the hamper. I can’t really hear him over the pounding water. Then I feel the cool draft as he opens the shower door and presses his body against mine from behind. I hold his arms and pull them tightly around me. I need him. I wish I could tell him that I’m in trouble. I wish I hadn’t ruined our lives. The steam masks the well of tears in my eyes, and we kiss, slipping into easy, familiar lovemaking before bed.
I lie awake as Collin snores lightly beside me. The windows in the bedroom are open and I relish the sweet, earthy smell the breeze carries in. Our room is decorated with carefully chosen whites and grays, a puffy down comforter and good linens. I wanted it to feel light and airy, soft—a sanctuary. My peaceful surroundings are doing nothing to curb my nauseating anxiety. I don’t know him well enough to know who’d want to hurt him, and I suppose, if I’m honest with myself, I wasn’t careful. I was too seduced by the white-hot lust and the thrill of it to be as vigilant as I thought I was. Because someone knows.
Suddenly, I remember something. The thought makes me sit straight up in bed with my eyes wide. Jonathan Wilderman. He said it the very first day: he can’t stand Luke. That doesn’t make a person a murderer, of course, but he thinks Luke stole his story—and therefore his success and potential fortune. Those are high stakes. People kill for much less. All of a sudden he leaves the group right after all this and has a nervous breakdown? Only something very traumatic, I imagine, would give someone a nervous breakdown. Oh my God.
The police are keeping the cause of death quiet. I don’t know if there was a gunshot or stab wound that I didn’t see. It just looked like the fall had smashed his skull, but I can’t be sure. I wonder why they haven’t released that part. I need to see Jonathan. Just a friendly visit. I should bring a card and make sure he’s feeling better. That’s innocuous enough. Anyone would do the same. I’ll go tomorrow.
The next morning, I text Mia to see which hospital he’s in and she replies telling me he’s been discharged. I ask for his address, say I want to send a card. On the way, I stop at a coffee shop and spend some time trying to see what I can find out about Jonathan online. He looks like he stepped out of a Lord of the Rings film with his long beard and cape-like coats he wears even in the heat of the summer, so I can’t imagine he’s that social media savvy. He likely hosts basement gatherings to engage in role-playing games or Dungeons and Dragons tournaments. Jonathan Wilderman. A few come up, but can be eliminated immediately. I narrow the search by adding our county after his name. I don’t see much: no Instagram, no images when you google him. I do see a nerdy Twitter account. That’s him. A close-up of his face taken from a very low and unflattering angle. I scroll through his tweets. All of them are literary quotes. Nothing telling.
On a drizzly late Saturday morning, I walk up a long dirt drive carrying a plastic cone of grocery store flowers. Jonathan’s house is in a rural area on the edge of town, and I don’t expect what I see when I reach the end of the winding drive. It resembles a shack more than a house. The outside of it looks like somebody emptied a dumpster on top of it. Hub caps decorate the side of the house in massive piles. There’s a rusted push mower, a seat that looks like it was pulled from a van and a couple of old oscillating fans with metal blades, all piled on top of one another in front of the house, among many other piles of junk. A few garden gnomes, kind of terrifying with missing noses and fingers, sticking out of a stained twin mattress. This is beyond eclectic. He’s a hoarder. I step over the skeletons of discarded furniture that have been invaded with years of damp, and before I reach the front door, I hear a voice.
“Can I help you?”
I jump. There is a bony woman in a housecoat who blends into the clutter, and I didn’t see her. She’s looking right at me. Her wisp of white hair disappears into the milky gray backdrop on this hazy day, so she appears bald at first. She doesn’t get up from her ancient metal deck chair when she calls to me, a long cigarette hanging from her lips.
“Oh. Yes. Hi. I’m—uh, I heard Jonathan was ill.”
“Yep.”
“So, I—I’m sorry. I’m Mel. From his writing group at Classics Bookstore.”
“Oh, you’re a writing friend. Come on up.” She pushes a wooden chair with the back broken off in my direction, and I sit.
“Thanks. The others said they were gonna stop by when he got back home.”
“Yep. They did.” Great, I think, this will seem less strange, then.
“I felt bad I wasn’t able to come, so I was out and about today, and I wanted to just drop this off and wish him well.”
“That’s nice of you. He’s sleepin’. I’m not supposed to wake him. He needs his rest.”
“Oh, I understand. Are you his...” I never imagined him with a wife, so I almost guess sister.
“Wife. Barbie. Nice to meet ya.” She doesn’t make eye contact or shake my hand, just rocks back in her chair and smokes. I hand her the flowers. Inside the front window I see stacks and stacks of books piled from floor to ceiling. It reeks like cigarettes and neglect. “Is he going to be okay?”
“Oh, that old fart will be fine. You’re a pretty thing, aren’t ya?” She changes gears so quickly, I’m taken aback. It sounds like more of an accusation than a compliment.
“Oh. Thanks?”
“You’re a writer, then?”
“No, not really. No. I just was dabbling, really. I guess.”
“John!” she screams into the house out of nowhere, and a yelp escapes my lips involuntarily. She doesn’t acknowledge it, just nods as if she’s confirmed something of great importance. “Yep. Sleepin’.”
“That’s really okay. I just wanted to drop these off.”
“Dabbling, huh? John takes it all too seriously.”
“Oh, does he?” I ask, hoping to hear more.
“He thinks he should have won at least a Booker Prize, whatever the hell that is, by now. His blood pressure is too high and the goddamn vein in his neck is always popping out anytime someone else gets published who he doesn’t respect. It’s killin’ him. It’s his own damn fault.” She pushes her feet in and out of her pink, threadbare slippers as she talks. Maybe this is a segue and I can ask more.
“It has to be tough for someone like him when other people steal his ideas, I’m sure.”
“Who stole his idea this time?” she yells in a puff of exhaled smoke, then laughs a quick, bitter laugh.
“No, I—I just heard that he thought...”
“Oh, Jesus. He thinks everyone stole his idea. Goddamn Stephen King stole his last idea, didn’t you hear? Call the press!” She wheezes and coughs for a short spell.
Well, that’s that, I guess. Just a high-strung, failed writer blaming the world for his situation.
“Ya didn’t hear? Well, I heard. I heard allll about it for days until he spent a day in bed with chest pain and finally shut up. Ya want a cigarette?”
“Oh, I’m all right. I should go.”
“He probably won’t sleep all day, you can come back later if ya want.”
“You know, if you could just give him the flowers, that should be good. I would have mailed them, but I was in the area.” I hope she doesn’t start yelling again and wake him up, accidentally. I want to leave. I stand. Thankfully, she doesn’t counter, she just picks up a Coors Light bottle full of cigarette butts and jams the one in her hand inside.
“Okay, then.” She gives a sharp wave, and I tiptoe through the organized trash and make my way back down the drive. The whole thing was a bit unsettling, but I got my answer. Which is actually disappointing because it was the only lead I had.
I have to take Ben to a swimming lesson at the aquatic center at two, so I head home, taking the route through downtown, using Main. I pull off the side street and go down the alley that sepa
rates the heart of town from the dirt clearing and then wooded area that leads to Luke’s. I don’t know why I stop. I’m not close enough for it to appear suspicious. Main Street looks abandoned anyway in the rain, but I just need a minute. What was I thinking, sneaking back through those trees like that? I must have lost my mind.
I see something in the distance. A figure moving through slanted lines of rain. Someone is running, rounding the wooded area and coming this way through the flat dirt leading to the main road. Coming right toward me. The only thing back there is Luke’s place. Who could be running from that direction? Are they coming from his house? I want to put the car in Reverse and leave, but I’m fixated, looking at the figure.
Just when it looks like they will jog directly in front of my car, they duck to the right and out of sight in the alley. They don’t notice me. Just when I resolve to back up, there’s a tap on my window. I leap back. Then I see a familiar face, under a rain parka, laughing.
“I’m sorry, Mel. I didn’t mean to startle you. Jumpy much? I thought you saw me coming.” It’s Mia.
“Wha-what are you doing here?” I stutter. My mind is searching for any plausible scenario where her running from Luke’s house would make sense.
“What do ya mean? I’m running.”
“Running?”
“Got a 10K next weekend.”
I still look at her blankly. “In the rain?” I ask.
“Rain or shine,” she says. I don’t see headphones, but some people don’t use them for races. It’s weird, but if she’s covering for something, why would she stop to say hello? If she’s covering for something, she sure isn’t acting nervous.
“Out here?” I look around and she seems confused by my confusion. I guess she could have been just running past, not into the trees that lead to his house. I didn’t actually see her come through them. She just sort of appeared. I relax a little.
Such a Good Wife Page 13