Three Single Wives: The devilishly twisty, breathlessly addictive must-read thriller

by Gina LaManna

  “There’s one more thing I wanted to discuss with you,” Roman said. “I know you’re new to the city, and sometimes it can be hard to get on your feet.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  “If you’re looking for a little extra cash, I might have a proposition for you.”

  Penny’s pulse pounded. This wasn’t where she’d expected the conversation to go. She wasn’t ready for…that. She just wanted alone time with Roman to see if they were compatible. To see what she was missing out on in this life. She wasn’t really trying to ruin a marriage; these were all just dreams. Bad, bad dreams.

  “My wife’s friend is looking for a babysitter.” Roman interrupted her thoughts with yet another surprising twist to the conversation. “Do you have experience with kids?”

  “Yes,” Penny lied. “I love kids,” she lied again. “I’m available most evenings, except when I’m here, of course.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll pass your information along if that’s all right?”

  “Absolutely. Thank you for thinking of me.”

  “It’s my pleasure.” Roman’s fingers lingered a second longer than necessary. Eventually, he gave a final squeeze and pulled his hand away. “I look forward to seeing more of you, Penny Sands,” Roman said softly. At the last second, he added, “And your work.”

  “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.” Penny stood, smoothed her skirt over her backside. Had she done it on purpose? she wondered, feeling a glow of satisfaction as Roman’s eyes followed her move. Maybe, maybe.

  Roman walked Penny to the door. She hesitated, feeling the distance between them shrinking, the air ballooning out of the room and leaving her breathless. Penny didn’t need to look up to see Roman’s hand as he raised it over her shoulder and rested it against the doorframe. She didn’t need to breathe to inhale his scent.

  Then Roman’s hand snaked out, his fingers grasping Penny’s jaw. He hovered over her, his touch both commanding and gentle in one gift-wrapped package. His breath was spiced with mint, his cologne an expensive, exotic cocktail.

  He waited just long enough for Penny to say no. To shut him down and back away. To strike him across the face. To demand an explanation. To press herself against him.

  Penny did nothing but close her eyes. An electric fire burned at her, clawing its way across her skin. Raking hot with intensity, flush with shame. Burning brilliant with passion and flaming into ashes with horror as their lips touched.

  TRANSCRIPT

  Defense: Mrs. Wilkes, when did you find out your husband was being investigated by Luke Hamilton?

  Anne Wilkes: The night of Eliza’s event at the Pelican Hotel.

  Defense: When you first heard the accusations, did you think your husband was guilty?

  Anne Wilkes: Of course not.

  Defense: You already suspected your husband was having an affair. What happened to your relation ship when you found out there was more to the story?

  Anne Wilkes: Nothing. I didn’t tell him anything. Sometimes, it’s safer to lie. In fact, if more people lied, maybe someone wouldn’t have ended up dead.

  EIGHT

  Seven Months Before

  July 2018

  Secrets were heavy.

  Heavy, living, breathing things that grew and morphed, changed and mutated over time. They suffocated and drowned their keepers; they blistered with anger and deepened with depression.

  Having never known the true weight of a secret before, Anne wondered if this one would be the death of her. It had grown inside her soul, taken root, and bloomed, pregnant and swollen, until it threatened to burst at the softest breeze.

  It consumed her mind, day and night. Her interactions with her children had grown listless. She’d started skipping playdates because she couldn’t fathom the idea of making conversation with happy little mothers when she was weighed down by an anchor. She could barely sustain her daily routine, clinging with a desperate greediness to the last dregs of normalcy.

  As she loaded Gretchen’s sandwich with potato chips between slices of whole wheat bread (God forbid the school find out she’d packed chips—full fat!), she was suddenly struck by the ridiculousness of it all.

  Here she was, the doting mother and wife. Playing the role of hostess and cook and maid, but why? Had one single person noticed the barbell chained to her ankle over the last several weeks? Who among her darling family had asked what was on her mind as she drifted, distracted, through life?

  No one.

  Anne slammed the top slice of bread onto the sandwich and heard the crunch of chips as she stared at it, bile rising in her throat. She’d told no one about Mark’s visits to a young woman living in a suspect neighborhood. Only she and the possum knew about their dalliances on Tuesday nights.

  When she could, Anne still made the trek over to the offending apartment. Tuesday nights on repeat. For some reason, that was the day they’d chosen for their weekly rendezvous. Anne wondered why not Monday, when the week was fresh? Or Friday, when the weekend was their oyster? Or Wednesday, as a halfway point?

  Not that it mattered. Anne should have forsaken her weekly jaunt altogether and pushed it out of her mind, but the problem was, she couldn’t. There was something addictive, something tantalizingly awful about watching her husband derail their neat little life.

  Week after week, Anne’s heart hardened, her gut tightened, and when she finally drove home, she became a tight ball of fury as she collapsed into bed riddled with guilt and shame. The heaviness that accompanied such secrecy threatened to drown her in her sleep.

  Through it all, Anne couldn’t bear to confront her husband. Her mind danced a deadly duet between the logistics of the fallout a divorce would cause (insurance, a steady salary, a father figure for the kids) and the emotional turmoil the secret gave her (anger, flashes of an anger so murderous she startled herself). Together, everything was wrapped in a tender layer of sadness.

  Anne finished making Gretchen’s sandwich and threw some carrot sticks into Samuel’s paper bag. The babysitter would arrive in under ten minutes. It was, once again, Tuesday night.

  Instead of letting the anger consume her, Anne was pleased to find a calmness descending over her shoulders as she climbed up the stairs and checked on the kids. All were sleeping by some miraculous turn of events. Gretchen’s angelic little lashes dusted posy-pink cheeks. Samuel’s thumb was stuck in his mouth, despite his recent birthday when he’d promised to give up the habit. The twins lay sprawled, hands in the air, curled into their side-by-side cribs. In sleep, they were perfect.

  Anne went to her room, sat before the small mirror perched on the old dresser that she’d made into a piecemeal sort of vanity. When they’d first been married, she’d installed Hollywood-style bulbs while Mark added a large mirror. She’d found a refurbished stool at a garage sale for five bucks to add to the display. Mark had sanded and painted it for her, along with the dresser.

  It’d been quaint, years ago. Anne remembered their honeymoon days, specifically the year after they’d been married. She would don her best robe, whip her hair into a loose updo, and preen before the vanity as she gazed lovingly at her new, precious diamond wedding band.

  Mark would come into their room, find her there, and whisk her onto the bed where, shrieking, they’d make love until gasping and spent. It had been a time of easy euphoria. She’d felt rich, full of life, satisfied beyond belief with the hand fate had dealt her.

  Now, the dresser looked cheap and dingy. Gretchen had smeared blue nail polish along one side, and a chunk of mirror had cracked off in the top right-hand corner. Two of the drawers didn’t fully shut, and the one that did squeaked like the dickens, so Anne ended up leaving it open so as not to wake the twins when she reached for her deodorant.

  Anne glanced into the cracked mirror and swiped on the same shade of lipstick she’d been wearing since they’d gotten engaged. It was a bit crusty, and Anne had been meaning to pick up a new tube when she was at the store. But in addition to
being distracted with her shiny new secret and forgetting about her shopping list, Anne had also found herself being inordinately frugal.

  Just in case, she told herself. Just in case she had to get used to managing four children on a single mother’s (lack of) income. She’d begun putting the extra pastries back during grocery store runs, buying on-sale grapes instead of the organic apples her children loved. Anne’s running shoes had developed a hole in the bottom that she was staunchly ignoring.

  Anne rose, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She’d given up the pretense of wearing her evening best to spy on her husband. It made her feel even more pathetic that she had to lie to a twenty-something babysitter. There were plenty of lies swirling through the atmosphere already without Anne adding to the problem.

  Tonight is it, she decided.

  The babysitter was ringing the doorbell when Anne reached the landing. Anne had asked Eliza if she knew anyone who would babysit on short notice, because Anne had been forced to let Olivia go for personal reasons. Shame Olivia was so nosy.

  Thankfully, Eliza’s husband had been able to recommend a young girl from his acting class who was looking for work. After a quick interview and an hour trial run with the kids the previous weekend, both women agreed to move forward with their working relationship.

  “Hi there, Penny,” Anne said. “Thanks so much for coming by tonight.”

  “Oh, thank you! I’m so glad you’re trusting me to be here with your kids,” Penny said. “I was really looking forward to spending more time with them. They’re just adorable.”

  Anne nodded along, thinking the kids would be better in Penny’s hands than her own. She wasn’t sure if that was devastating or a relief, so she ignored it. Instead, she let the young woman in, gave her instructions, and paid her cash up front.

  “I usually don’t collect money until the end…” Penny looked at the wad of bills in her hand. “I mean, whatever you prefer.”

  “My husband might beat me home, and I don’t want things to be awkward. He doesn’t know the going rate.” Anne scrounged up a wink. “This way, we’re all square.”

  “Okay, well, have a wonderful time,” Penny said. “We’ll be fine here. Well, duh. We’re not going anywhere—sorry, bad joke. Call if you need anything at all.”

  Anne was barely listening as she shrugged on her coat. As she grabbed her keys, she idly wondered if Penny would ever disappear for three days and leave her children behind. Probably not. Women like Penny lived pretty, perfect little lives.

  Anne arrived outside the apartment complex a few minutes later than she’d intended. She’d stopped to get a coffee from the gas station, a funny little splurge she allowed herself despite her new penny-pinching ways. Though the real splurge was the Bailey’s liqueur that she tipped into the cup in place of creamer.

  Hunkering down in her seat, Anne settled in to watch. Mark arrived, and the same old routine began again. As Anne drank more of her coffee, she stopped tasting the Bailey’s. She added a little whiskey from the flask in her purse to spice things up.

  It wasn’t enough for her to just watch anymore. She needed to do something, and the alcohol helped her think. It gave her confidence. Armed her with numbness and rage instead of the delicate hurt that plucked at her like vicious paper cuts, she could formulate a plan of attack.

  Setting her coffee into the cup holder, she reached for the handle of her car door. Her dismally unpainted nails rested against it, frozen there as she watched the same song and dance continue outside the gate—the hug, the brief kiss on the forehead, the disappearing act behind the overgrown shrubs.

  Before she knew it, they were gone, and it was too late. The gate was locked. Anne’s self-esteem might have been at an all-time low, but she wasn’t climbing over a fence to knock on the door. She’d wait, wait, wait some more. She’d gotten good at waiting.

  But an hour into waiting, Anne grew restless. She’d tried to pep herself up with the self-help book Eliza had given her a while back, but that was equally depressing. Marguerite Hill, the author, was all about seizing control of one’s life, and Anne had never felt less in control. So she dialed the one woman she knew who could take charge better than anyone else.

  “Eliza,” Anne said once her friend answered. “Are you free tonight by chance?”

  On the other end of the line, Eliza hesitated. A low chatter sounded in the background, along with the clinking of dinnerware.

  “Oh, are you out with Roman?” Anne asked. “We can meet a different—”

  “No, I’m just finishing up dinner at the country club with my in-laws,” Eliza said. “I can meet you after. Same place, thirty minutes?”

  “I need an hour,” Anne said. “I have to clear my head.”

  Anne hung up with Eliza, then stepped outside the car and into the fresh night air. It had an instantly sobering effect. She walked toward the apartment complex, surprising herself, no doubt buoyed by the booze. Then she stopped. Turned around. Climbed back into the car and waited some more. Even whiskey from a flask didn’t make her invincible.

  Finally, once she was confident she was under the legal limit, Anne pulled away from the curb and pointed her mom van filled with empty car seats and the carcasses of juice boxes toward the usual place. A place she hadn’t gone for years.

  _______________________________

  The usual place was a local dive bar just off Wilshire. Anne and Eliza had discovered it during their younger years when they’d shared an apartment down the block. The two girls had met during their freshman year of college when they’d been paired together as random roommates. It took one semester of bonding before they agreed to ditch campus, find part-time jobs, and get a regular apartment.

  At the time, Eliza had been a fresh-faced, hopeful grad. Anne had been focused on her relationship with Mark, planning their upcoming nuptials, anticipating children and a full life together. Their friendship had blossomed over the trials and tribulations of an otherwise happy, uneventful college career.

  Garbanzo’s Bar and Grill had been the only digs close enough to walk to from their pinprick of an apartment. As neither college student could afford the cost of a cab, the dive bar had been the logical option for all their moaning and complaining needs.

  They’d met at Garbanzo’s when Anne’s brother had died and again when Eliza’s family had come over from Beijing, leaving her battered and hurt after their visit. They’d met there after Eliza’s shotgun wedding, and they’d planned Anne’s extravagant nuptials over glasses of cheap red wine. Though both women had long since outgrown the dismal charm of sticky floors and slimy tables, neither could give up the dirty, trusted locale that housed their deepest secrets and grandest desires.

  Anne pushed open the door, pleased to see that nothing had changed in her long absence. The same tarnished gold bell tinkled lightly as she entered, a necessity, since most of the time, the bartender, Joe, sat on a stool in the back, smoking with the chefs. Health department be damned.

  This evening, however, Joe was out front, his focus on the television where he was screaming obscenities at a wrestling match. A few figures sat hunched over the bar, two men, one woman. It smelled like flat beer and grease. The biggest difference Anne noted was the bald spot on Joe’s head that had increased in circumference over the last few years.

  “Annie!” Joe called as she entered. “Long time, no see. I thought you forgot about Uncle Joe!”

  Joe Garbanzo was the only person in the world allowed to call her Annie. Mostly because Anne had been too timid to correct the oversize man the first time he’d nicknamed her. Decades later, and it just seemed rude to mention it. He’d also deemed himself an honorary uncle to the girls, though why, Anne could only guess. The only words they usually exchanged were a greeting by name and then, “The usual?”

  Joe winked at her. “The usual?”

  “That would be fantastic. Same table,” Anne said. “Eliza should be here any moment.”

  Anne slid into a booth tucked along t
he back corner, as far away from the television screens, the restrooms, and the kitchen doors (from which the faint scent of cigarette smoke was never quite extinguished) as she could manage. She tried to unfold the paper napkin over her lap and simultaneously peel her jeans from the upholstery. Neither worked, and she forfeited the napkin on the table in a pile of something she hoped was ketchup.

  Five minutes later, the cheese curds and beers arrived—tap Coors Light with four olives each. Anne wrinkled her nose, wondering how old the olives were and if Joe had scooped them into the glasses with his bare hands. It was funny, the things she noticed now that she was nearing forty. Things she hadn’t thought twice about when she’d been twenty-three and invincible.

  Eliza arrived a few minutes later, looking wildly out of place in the dive bar. She wore a trim, professional skirt, stockings, and a blouse that buttoned up to her neck. Her thin legs rose out of cute pumps that clicked across the floor. Eliza was forced to stop once en route to unstick her heel from a particularly grimy patch on the floor.

  “Sorry about that,” Uncle Joe called from behind the bar. “Had a fight in here earlier and beer went everywhere. Haven’t had a chance to clean it up yet.”

  Joe went back to lounging against the counter, thick arms folded across a protruding belly, and studied the match on television. He’d never clean it up, and everyone knew it.

  “I’m so sorry to make you drive all the way over,” Anne said as Eliza slid into the booth, her eyebrows knitting as she tried to scoot along the vinyl fabric and found herself stuck in place. “You look like you’ve just come from, well, I dunno—the Ritz. Some huge business meeting or something.”

  Eliza waved a hand, a caginess evident in her movements. “Let’s talk about you. By the way, did that girl work out? The babysitter? Roman said he emailed you some names.”