The Other Mrs (ARC)

by Mary Kubica

  After three days missing, Carrie turned up there, in the canal.

  The police called her a floater because of the way she was found, most of her body parts bobbing buoyantly on the surface of the

  canal, while her heavy head dragged beneath.

  Cause of death: accidental drowning. Everyone knew she’d

  been drunk, stumbling. Everyone saw. It was easy enough to

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  assume, then, that she tumbled drunkenly into the canal all on

  her own.

  The entirety of the student population mourned. Flowers were

  laid at the edge of the canal beneath a tree. Her parents traveled

  from Boston, left her childhood teddy bear there at the scene.

  What Camille told me was that Carrie never thrashed about

  in the water. She never gasped and screamed for help. What hap-

  pened instead was that she bobbed listlessly on the surface for

  awhile. Her mouth sank beneath the water. It came back up, it

  went back down.

  It went on this way for awhile, head tossed back, eyes glassy

  and empty.

  If she bothered to kick, Camille said, she couldn’t tell.

  She struggled that way for nearly a minute. Then she sub-

  merged, slipping silently beneath the water.

  The way Camille described it for me, it sounded as undra-

  matic as drowning gets. As anticlimactic. Boring, if you ask me.

  This time, it was just unlucky that Sadie got to that laundry

  before me.

  I’ve been careless. Because the night with Morgan, the trans-

  formation from Camille to Sadie happened too quickly, leav-

  ing me to clean up the mess. Her clothes I burned. The knife I

  buried. I just never counted on Sadie doing the laundry. Why

  would I? She never does. I also never knew that Camille had

  taken Morgan’s necklace. Not until I saw it sitting on the coun-

  tertop this morning.

  Camille should have been more careful where she stood that

  night. She should have better anticipated the sprays of blood. It

  wasn’t like it was her first rodeo. But she came home a bloody

  mess. It was up to me to wipe her clean, leaving my fingerprints

  on the knife and washcloth. I couldn’t let the police find that.

  Sadie rubs at her face and says again, “I just don’t know what

  to believe.”

  “It’s been a long day. A stressful day. And you haven’t been

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  taking your pills,” I say. It dawns on her. She went to bed with-

  out taking her pills. She forgot about them this morning. I know

  because they’re still where I left them.

  That’s why she feels this way, out of control as she always does

  when she doesn’t have her pills. She reaches eagerly for them,

  swallows them down, knowing that in a short while she’ll be

  back to feeling like herself.

  I almost laugh out loud. The pills do nothing. It’s only in

  Sadie’s head that something happens. The placebo effect. Be-

  cause she thinks popping a pill will naturally make her feel bet-

  ter. Have a headache, pop some Tylenol. A runny nose? Some

  Sudafed.

  You’d think, as a doctor, Sadie would know better.

  I bought the empty capsules online. I filled them with corn-

  starch, replaced the ones the doctor prescribed for these. Sadie

  took them like a good girl, but she’d whine about it at times,

  say the pills made her tired and fuzzy because that’s what pills

  are supposed to do.

  She can be so suggestable sometimes.

  I make Sadie dinner. I pour her a glass of wine. I sit her down

  at the table and, as she eats, I rub her cold, dirty feet. They’re

  mottled and gray.

  She nods off at the table, so tired she sleeps upright.

  But she sleeps for only a second at best and when she awakes,

  she groggily asks, voice slurred with fatigue, “How did you get

  home in the storm? Otto said the ferries weren’t running.”

  So many questions. So many fucking questions.

  “Water taxi.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I’m not sure. In time to get Tate.”

  She’s coming to now, speaking clearly. “They kept the kids

  at school all day? Even with the storm?”

  “They kept them there until parents could get to them.”

  “So you went straight to the elementary school? You didn’t

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  come home first?” she asks. I tell her no. She’s cobbling together

  a timeline. I wonder why. I tell her I took the water taxi to the

  island, picked up Tate, came home. Then I went to the public

  safety building for her.

  Only some of it is true.

  “What was Otto doing when you came home?” she asks.

  I’ll have to shut her up soon. Because her curiosity is the only

  thing standing between me and getting off scot-free.

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  Sadie

  I stand in the bedroom, rummaging through my drawers, find-

  ing clean pajamas to replace the ones I have on. I need a shower.

  My feet are aching, my legs bruised. But these things are in-

  consequential when there are bigger worries on my mind. It’s

  an out-of-body experience. What’s happening can’t possibly be

  happening to me.

  I spin suddenly with the knowledge that I’m no longer alone.

  It’s a metaphysical sensation, something that moves up my spine.

  Otto comes into the bedroom unannounced. He’s not there

  and then he is. His sudden arrival makes me leap, my hand

  going to my heart. I come to face him. The signs of his illness

  are now visible.

  He wasn’t lying. He’s sick. He coughs into a hand, his eyes

  vacant and feverish.

  I think of the last conversation I had with Otto, where he ac-

  cused me of putting the knife in his backpack. If what that po-

  lice woman said is true, I didn’t do it. But the part of me known

  as Camille did. The guilt is enormous. Otto isn’t a murderer.

  Quite possibly, I am.

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  He says to me, “Where were you?” and then again he coughs,

  his voice scratchy like it wasn’t before.

  Will didn’t tell the kids where I was. He didn’t tell them I

  wasn’t coming home. How long would he have waited to tell

  them? How would he have said it, what words would he have

  used to tell our children I’d been arrested by the police? And

  when they asked why, what would he have said? That their

  mother is a murderer?

  “You just left,” he said, and I see the child still in him. He

  was scared, I think, panicked that he couldn’t find me.

  I say vaguely, “I had something I needed to take care of.”

  “I thought you were here. I didn’t know you were gone ’til

  I
saw Dad outside.”

  “You saw him come home with Tate?” I assume. I picture

  Will’s small sedan fighting its way through the snow. I can’t

  imagine how the car made it.

  But Otto tells me no, it was before Tate came home. He says

  that soon after we talked in the living room, he changed his

  mind. He was hungry. He wanted that toast after all.

  Otto says he came down to find me. But I wasn’t here. He

  looked for me, caught a glimpse of Will traipsing through the

  backyard in the snow.

  But Otto is mistaken. It was me, not Will, he saw in the back-

  yard in the snow.

  “That was me,” I tell him. “I was trying to get the dogs in-

  side,” I say. I don’t tell him about the knife.

  I realize now what must have really happened with the knife

  back in Chicago. Camille must have put it in Otto’s backpack.

  The story he told me about the night, on the fire escape, when

  I convinced him to stab his classmates wasn’t a pipe dream.

  From Otto’s perspective, it happened just as he said it did. Be-

  cause he saw me.

  And the disturbing drawings, the strange dolls. That wasn’t

  Otto. That was also me.

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  “It was Dad,” he says, shaking his head.

  I realize that my hands are shaking, my palms sweaty. I rub

  them against the thighs of my pajama pants, ask Otto again

  what he said.

  “Dad was here,” he repeats, “in the backyard. Shoveling.”

  “Are you sure it was your father?” I ask.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” he asks, put off by my questions now.

  “I know what Dad looks like,” he says.

  “Of course you do,” I say, feeling light-headed and breath-

  less. “Are you sure it was in the backyard that you saw him?”

  I’m grateful that he’s speaking to me. After his disclosure this

  afternoon, I’m surprised that he would. I’m reminded of his

  words. I’ll never forgive you. Why should he? I’ll never forgive myself for what I’ve done.

  Otto nods his head. He says out loud, “I’m sure.”

  Will was shoveling the lawn? Who in the world shovels grass?

  I realize then that Will wasn’t shoveling. He was digging

  through the snow for the knife.

  But how would Will have known about the knife? I only

  told Officer Berg.

  The answer comes to me, shaking me to my core.

  The only way Will would know about that knife is if he was

  the one who put it there.

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  Will

  Sadie is quickly working out that my story is full of holes. She

  knows someone in this house killed Morgan. She knows it might

  be her. With a little sleuthing, she’ll soon discover—if she hasn’t already—that I’m the puppet master pulling the strings. And

  then she’ll tell Berg.

  I won’t let that happen. I’ll get rid of her first.

  After she ate, Sadie went upstairs to wash up for bed. She’s

  tired, but her nerves are frayed. Sleep won’t come easily tonight.

  While the pills she takes are placebos only, that doesn’t mean

  that the pills I pick up at the pharmacy—those I save for a rainy

  day—aren’t the genuine thing. Combine them with a little wine

  and voila, I have myself a deadly cocktail.

  The best part of the plan is that Sadie’s mental state is well

  documented before we came to Maine. Add to that the discov-

  eries of the day and it wouldn’t be such a stretch to think she

  might want to kill herself.

  A murder meant to look like a suicide. Sadie’s words, not mine.

  I find the pills high above the kitchen cabinets. I use the mor-

  tar and pestle to crush them. I run the sink to lessen the sound.

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  The pills aren’t exactly easy to dissolve, but I have my ways. Sadie has never been averse to a glass of wine after her pills. Thought

  she should know better because such things don’t mix well.

  What I’m anticipating is some form of respiratory distress.

  But who really knows. There’s a whole host of things that can

  go wrong with a lethal overdose.

  I draft a suicide note in my mind. It will be easy enough to

  forge. I can’t live with myself. I can’t go on this way. I’ve done a horrible, horrible thing.

  After Sadie is dead it will be just the boys, Imogen and me.

  This is quite the sacrifice I’m making for my family. Because as

  the breadwinner, Sadie is the one with the life insurance policy.

  There’s a suicide clause in it, which says the company won’t pay

  out if Sadie kills herself within two years of the policy going

  into effect. I don’t know that she’s had it two years. If she has,

  we’re due a lump sum of five hundred grand. I feel a ripple of

  excitement at that prospect. What five hundred thousand dollars

  could buy me. I’ve always thought I’d like to live in a houseboat.

  If she hasn’t had the policy for two years, we’ll get nothing.

  But even then, I reassure myself, it’s not as if Sadie’s death will be for naught. There’s still much value in it, most importantly

  my freedom. There just won’t be any financial gain.

  Momentarily I stop crushing the pills. The thought of that

  saddens me. I think that perhaps it’s best to shelve Sadie’s sui-

  cide until I’ve looked into the policy. Because a half a million

  dollars is a lot to waste.

  But then I reconsider. Silently I scold myself. I shouldn’t be

  so greedy, so materialistic. There are more important things to

  consider.

  After all that Sadie has done, I can’t have my boys living with

  a monster.

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  Sadie

  Why would Will bury a knife in the backyard? And what reason

  would he have to dig it up and hide it from the police?

  If he took the knife, did he take the washcloth too? The

  necklace?

  Will lied to me. He told me he picked Tate up from school

  and then came home, but it happened the other way around.

  Will knew about my condition, this way I have of transform-

  ing into someone else, and he didn’t tell me. If he knew there

  was a potentially violent side of me, why didn’t he get me help?

  You were never boring, he said, such a glib thing to say in light of what I know now.

  Will is hiding something. Will is hiding many things, I think.

  I wonder where the knife is now. Where the washcloth and

  necklace are. If the police did a thorough search of our home, then they’re not here. They’re somewhere else. Unless Will had these

  things on his own person while the police searched our home

  and he hid them afterward. In which case, they may be here.

  But if I’m the one who killed Morgan, why would Will hide

  these things? Was he trying to protect me? I don’t think so.

  I consider what Officer Berg told me, that Will called him

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  and retracted his alibi for me that night. Will said he wasn’t with me when Morgan was killed.

  Was Officer Berg lying, as Will said he was, trying to pit us

  against each other?

  Or did it happen as Officer Berg said? Was Will incriminat-

  ing me?

  I consider what I know about Morgan’s murder. The boning

  knife. The threatening notes. You know nothing. Tell anyone and die. I’m watching you. This is helpful, but unthinkable. Because I can’t get the idea of Erin and Morgan as sisters out of my mind.

  It’s the most damning evidence of all. Because they’re both dead.

  My mind gets lost on our wedding day, the days we welcomed

  our babies into the world. The idea that Will, that ever gentle and compassionate Will, whom everyone likes, whom I’ve known

  half my life, could be a killer, cripples me. I begin to cry. But it’s a silent cry because it has to be. I press my hand to my mouth,

  lean against the bedroom wall, my body nearly collapsing. I press

  hard, stifling the cry somewhere inside. My body convulses. The

  tears stream from my eyes.

  I can’t let the others hear me. I can’t let them see me. I steady

  myself, tasting Will’s dinner as it moves back up and into my

  esophagus. By the grace of God, it stays there.

  I know now that Will had a hand in Morgan’s murder be-

  cause he was in on Erin’s too. Erin’s murder, I think, and not a

  horrible unfortunate accident. But why kill Morgan? I go back

  to the threatening notes and decide: She knew something he

  didn’t want to rest of the world to find out.

  With Will downstairs, I begin to search our bedroom for the

  missing things: the knife, the washcloth, Morgan’s necklace. Will

  is too smart to hide these things in obvious places, like under

  the mattress or in a dresser drawer.

  I go to the closet. I search the inside of Will’s clothing for se-

  cret pockets, finding none.

  I drop to my hands and knees, crawling across the floorboard.

  It’s a wide plank floor, which could conceivably house a secret

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  compartment beneath. I feel with my fingers for loose boards. With

  my eyes, I scan for subtle differences in the height of the boards

  and in the wood grain. Nothing immediately catches my eye.

  On my haunches, I think. I let my eyes wander around the