The Other Mrs (ARC)
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tread, though she was a little girl and her stride was not wide.
Her father tried to fix the stairs. He was always getting worked
up about them, swearing under his breath about the incessant,
infuriating squeak.
Then why don’t you just step over it? the girl asked her father because Mouse’s father was a tall man, his stride much wider
than hers. He could have easily walked right over that last stair
without putting weight on it. But he was also an impatient man,
the kind who always wanted things just so.
Her father wasn’t cut out for doing chores around the house.
He was much better suited for sitting behind a desk, drinking
coffee, jabbering into the phone. Mouse would sit on the other
side of the door when he did that and listen. She wasn’t allowed
to interrupt, but if she stayed real quiet, she could hear what
he had to say, the way his voice changed when he was on that
phone with a customer.
Mouse’s father was a handsome man. He had hair that was a
dark chestnut brown. His eyes were big, round, always watch-
ing. He was quiet most of the time, except for when he walked,
because he was a big man and his footsteps were heavy. Mouse
could hear him coming from a mile away.
He was a good father. He took Mouse outside and played
catch with her. He taught her things about bird nests and how
the rabbits hid their babies in holes in the ground. Mouse’s father always knew where they were, and he’d go to the holes, lift up
the clumps of grass and fur on top, and let Mouse take a peek.
One day, when he’d had enough of that squeaky stair, Mouse’s
father gathered his toolbox from the garage and climbed the
steps. With a hammer, he drove nails into the tread, clamping it
down to the wood on the other side. Then he grabbed a hand-
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ful of finishing nails. He tapped them into the tread, reattach-
ing it to the riser beneath.
He stood back proudly to examine his handiwork.
But Mouse’s father had never been much of a handyman.
He should have known that no matter what he did, he would
never be able to fix the step. Because even after all his hard work, the stair continued to make noise.
In time, Mouse came to depend that sound. She would lie
in bed, staring up at the light that hung from her ceiling, heart
beating hard, unable to sleep.
There she would listen for that last step to bellow out a warn-
ing for her, letting her know someone was coming up the stairs
for her room, giving her a head start to hide.
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Sadie
I watch from bed as Will changes out of his clothes and into a
pair of pajama pants, dropping his clothes into the hamper on
the floor. He stands for a second at the window, looking out
onto the street beneath.
“What is it?” I ask, sitting upright in bed. Something has
caught Will’s eye and drawn him there, to the window. He
stands, contemplatively.
The boys are both asleep, the house remarkably quiet.
“There’s a light on,” Will tells me, and I ask, “Where?”
He says, “Morgan’s house.”
This doesn’t surprise me. As far as I know, the house is still
a crime scene. I’d have to imagine it takes days for forensics to
process things before some bioremediation service gets called
in to scrub blood and other bodily fluids from inside the home.
Soon Will and I will watch on as people in yellow splash suits
with some sort of breathing apparatus affixed to their heads
move in and out, taking bloodstained items away.
I wonder again about the violence that happened there that
night, about the bloodshed.
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How many bloodstained items will they have to take away?
“There’s a car in the drive,” Will tells me. But before I have
a chance to reply, he says, “Jeffrey’s car. He must be home from
Tokyo.”
He stands motionless before the window for another minute
or two. I rise from bed, leaving the warmth of the blankets. The
house is cold tonight. I go to the window and stand beside Will,
our elbows touching. I look out, see the same thing he sees. A
shadowy SUV parked in the driveway beside a police cruiser,
both of them illuminated by a porch light.
As we watch on, the front door of the home opens. An offi-
cer steps out first, then ushers Jeffrey through the door. Jeffrey
must be a foot taller than the policeman. He pauses in the open
doorway for a last look inside. In his hands, he carries luggage.
He steps from the home, passing the officer by. The officer
closes the door and locks it behind them. The officer has met
him here, I think, and kept an eye on the crime scene while
Mr. Baines packed up a few personal things.
Under his breath Will murmurs, “This is all so surreal.”
I lay a hand on his arm, the closest I come to consoling him.
“It’s awful,” I say because it is. No one, but especially not a
young woman, should have to die like this.
“You heard about the memorial service?” Will asks me,
though his eyes don’t stray from the window.
“What memorial service?” I ask, because I didn’t hear about
a memorial service.
“There’s a memorial service,” Will tells me. “Tomorrow. For
Morgan. At the Methodist church.” There are two churches on
the island. The other one is Catholic. “I overheard people talk-
ing about it at school pickup. I checked and found the obituary
online, the notice of the memorial service. I assume there will
be a funeral eventually but…” he says, leaving that there, and I
easily deduce that the body is still being held by the morgue and
will be until the investigation is through. Formalities like a fu-
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neral and a wake will have to wait until the murderer is caught.
In the interim, a memorial service will have to do.
Tomorrow I work. But depending on what time the memo-
rial service is, I can go with Will after. I know he’ll want to
go. Will and Morgan were friends, after all, and, though our
relationship has been rocky of late, it would be lonely for him,
I think, walking into that memorial service all alone. I can do
this for him. And besides, selfishly I’d like to get a good look
at Jeffrey Baines up close.
“I work until six tomorrow,” I say. “We’ll go together. As
soon as I finish up. Maybe Otto can keep an eye on Tate,” I say.
It would be a quick trip. I can’t imagine us staying long. We’d
pay our respects and then leave.
“We’re not going to the memorial service,” Will says. His
words are conclusive.
I’m taken aba
ck, because this isn’t what I expect him to say.
“Why not?” I ask.
“It feels presumptuous to go. You didn’t know her at all, and
I didn’t know her that well.” I start to explain that a memorial
service isn’t exactly the type of thing that one needs an invi-
tation to attend, but I stop because I can see Will has already
made up his mind.
I ask instead, “Do you think he did it?” I keep my eyes trained
to Jeffrey Baines on the other side of the window. I have to crane
my neck a bit to see, as the Baines’s house isn’t directly across the street. I watch as Jeffrey and the officer exchange words in the
driveway, before parting ways and heading for their own cars.
When Will doesn’t answer my question, I hear myself mut-
ter, “It’s always the husband.”
This time, his reply is quick. “He was out of the country,
Sadie. Why would you think he had anything to do with this?”
I tell him, “Just because he was out of the country doesn’t
mean he couldn’t have paid someone else to kill his wife.” Be-
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cause, on the contrary, being out of the country at the time of
his wife’s murder provided him with the perfect alibi.
Will must see the logic in this. There’s a small, almost imper-
ceptible nod of the head before he asks, backtracking, “What’s
that supposed to mean anyway, about it always being the hus-
band?”
I shrug and tell him I don’t know. “It’s just, if you watch the
news long enough, that’s the way it seems to be. Unhappy hus-
bands kill their wives.”
My gaze stays on the window, watching as, on the other side
of the street, Jeffrey Baines pops the trunk of his SUV and tosses
the luggage in. His posture is vertical. There’s something super-
cilious about the way he stands.
He doesn’t sag at the shoulders, he doesn’t convulse and sob
like men who have lost their wives are supposed to do.
As far as I can tell, he doesn’t shed a single tear.
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Camille
I was addicted. I couldn’t get enough of him. I watched him,
I mirrored him. I followed his routine. I knew where his boys
went to school, which coffee shops he patronized, what he ate
for lunch. I’d go there, get the same thing. Sit at the same table
after he’d left. Forge conversations with him in my mind. Pre-
tend we were together when we weren’t.
I thought of him all day, I thought of him all night. If I’d have
had my way, he’d be with me all the time. But I couldn’t be that
woman. That obsessed, hung up woman. I had to keep my cool.
I worked hard to make sure our run-ins seemed more like
chance encounters than what they were. Take, for example, the
time we crossed paths in Old Town. I stepped from a building
to find him on the other side of it, surrounded by pedestrian
traffic. Another cog in the machine.
I called to him. He took a look, smiled. He came to me.
What are you doing here? What’s this place? he asked of the building behind me. His embrace was swift. Blink and you might miss it.
I looked at the building behind me, read the sign. I told him,
Buddhist meditation.
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Buddhist meditation? he asked. His laugh was light. I learn something new about you every day. He said, I never took you for the meditation type.
I wasn’t. I’m not. I hadn’t come for Buddhist meditation, but
for him. Days before, I’d gotten a peek at his calendar, saw a
reservation for lunch at a restaurant three doors down. I chose
any old building nearby, waited in the foyer for him to pass by.
I stepped from the building when I saw him, called to him and
he came.
A chance encounter which was anything but.
Some days I found myself standing outside his home. I’d be
there when he left for work, hidden by the chaos of the city.
Just another face in the crowd. I’d watch as he pushed his way
through the building’s glass door, as he blended in with the rush
of commuters on the street.
From his building, Will would walk three blocks. There,
he’d slip down the subway steps, catch the Red Line north to
Howard where he’d transfer to the Purple Line—as would I,
twenty paces behind.
If only he’d have turned and looked, he would have seen me
there.
The college campus where Will worked was ostentatious.
White brick buildings sat covered with ivy, beside glitzy arch-
ways. It was thick with people, students with backpacks on,
racing to class.
One morning I followed Will down a sidewalk. I kept just
the right distance, close but not too close. I didn’t want to lose
him, but I couldn’t risk being seen. Most people aren’t patient
enough for this kind of pursuit. The trick is to fit in, to look
like everyone else. And so that’s what I did.
All at once, a voice called for him. Hey Professor Foust!
I looked up. It was a girl, a woman, who stood nearly as tall
as him, her coat fitted and tight. There was a beanie on her
head, flashy, red. Strands of unnatural blond fell from beneath
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the hat, draped across her shoulders and back. Her jeans were
tight too, hugging her curves before meeting with the shaft of
a tall brown boot.
Will and she stood closely. In the center, their bodies nearly
touched.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But the tones of their
voices, the body language said it all. Her hand brushed against
his arm. He said something to her and they both doubled over
in laughter. She had her hand on his arm. I heard her then, she
said to him, Stop it, Professor. You’re kil ing me. She couldn’t stop laughing. He watched her laugh. It wasn’t the hideous way most
people laugh, mouths wide, nostrils flaring. There was some-
thing delicate about it. Something graceful and lovely.
He leaned in close, whispered into her ear. As he did, the
green-eyed monster grabbed a hold of me.
There’s a saying. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Which is why I took the time to get to know her. Her name
was Carrie Laemmer, a second year pre-law student with aspi-
rations of becoming an environmental lawyer. She was in Will’s
class, that one in the front row whose hand shot up every time
he asked a question. The one who lingered after class, who ban-
tered about poaching and human encroachment as if they were
something worth discussing. The one who stood too close when
they thought they were alone, who leaned in, who confessed,
Such a damn tragedy about the mountain gorilla, wanting him to console her.
One afternoon I caught her as she was making h
er way out
of the lecture hall.
I brushed up beside her, said, That class. It’s killing me.
I carried the class textbook in my hands, the one I spent forty
bucks on just to make believe I was in the same class as her, just
another student in Professor Foust’s global public health course.
I’m in over my head, I told her. I can’t keep up. But you, I said, 9780778369110_RHC_txt(ENT_ID=269160).indd 111
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praising her to high heaven. I told her how smart she was. How
there was nothing she didn’t know.
How do you do it? I asked. You must study all the time.
Not real y, she said, beaming. She shrugged, told me, I don’t know. This stuff just comes easily for me. Some people say I must have a photographic memory.
You’re Carrie, aren’t you? Carrie Laemmer? I asked, letting it go to her head, this idea that she was somebody special, that she
was known.
She reached out a hand. I took it, told her I could really use
some help if she had time. Carrie agreed to tutor me, for a fee.
We met twice. There, in some little tea shop just off campus
where we drank herbal tea, I learned that she was from the
suburbs of Boston. She described it for me, this place where
she grew up: the narrow streets, the ocean views, the charm-
ing buildings. She told me about her family, her older brothers,
both collegiate swimmers for some top-ranked college though
she, oddly enough, couldn’t swim. But there were many things
she could do, all of which she listed for me. She was a runner, a
mountain climber, a downhill skier. She spoke three languages
and had an uncanny ability to touch her tongue to her nose.
She showed me.
She spoke with a classic Boston accent. People loved to hear it.
Just the sound of her voice drew people to her. It lured them in.
It didn’t matter what she had to say. It was the accent they liked.
She let that go to her head, as she let many things go to her
head.
Carrie’s favorite color was red. She knit the beanie herself. She
painted landscapes, wrote poetry. Wished her name was some-
thing like Wren or Meadow or Clover. She was your quintes-
sential right-brain type, an idealist, a wishful thinker.
I saw Will and her together many times after that. The odds
of running into someone on a campus that size is small. Which
is how I knew that she sought him out, that she knew where
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