What You Don't Know(65)

“I killed my husband,” the woman told them. She wasn’t nervous standing in front of the group of teens, but matter-of-fact. “I thought it was an accident, but they said it wasn’t.”

They, Sammie quickly figured out, was everyone else, everyone who wasn’t living inside the woman’s head.

“I did it with a knife,” the woman said, after someone asked how it’d happened. “He was asleep.”

Then they were taken to the prison’s cafeteria for lunch, where they were served macaroni and cheese, a green salad, and cartons of chocolate milk like they had at school.

“It’s not usually this good,” the husband-killer said. “They made a special lunch, just because you guys are here. Like we’re having a fucking party or something.”

*

The prison is not what she expects. She’s read about it, looked up photos of it online, but she isn’t prepared for how big it is, how empty it seems. That’s an illusion, she knows, because the place is full up with prisoners, too many of them, but they’re not out in the fenced yard, not in this snow and cold.

There are parking spots for visitors, and she pulls into one but keeps the engine running. Checks her hair. She’d had trouble choosing lipstick—the color a woman wears on her lips is important, like she tells customers at work. It can make your teeth white, your smile glow. Lipstick can change everything. She’d spent a long time picking through her bathroom drawer, looking at all the tubes, each color with its own name printed on the bottom. Lust. Sin. Defiance. Gorgeous. Perverted. They’re all sexual, tawdry. DTF. Down to fuck. There’s nothing called Intelligent or Brainiac. No Failure or Idiocy. Disgusting. Nothing like that. After a while, she slid the drawer shut, didn’t put on lipstick at all. But she wore good shoes—black flats with silver studding around the edges. Classic, expensive. They look nice, but they pinch around her toes. She has her leather purse, she’s wearing a brand-new blouse. It’s stupid, she thinks, to get all done-up to visit a man in prison, but she didn’t think blue jeans would do it. Seever had always noticed when women dressed nicely, and complimented them, and she wants this to go well.

Sammie gets out of her car, pushes the button to lock the door, and starts toward the prison. There’s a woman coming her way across the parking lot, walking fast, her head down to keep out of the wind. Another visitor, all done for the day. There’s something familiar about the woman, and it isn’t until they’re a few feet away that she realizes who it is—Gloria. Seever’s wife.

Gloria looks much like she always did, is even dressed the same. Sammie had seen her a few times when she worked at the restaurant, when she’d come in with Seever, on his arm, and she’d sit in a corner booth and pick through a salad, or tear apart a hamburger, only eating the meat and skipping the bun, and always with her mouth pinched as tight as a drawstring purse, disapproving. Sammie didn’t officially meet Gloria until after Seever’s arrest, when she was scrambling, when every reporter on the planet was desperate for an interview, and Gloria had agreed to sit down and speak with her. It hadn’t gone well, and it’d only lasted a few minutes, but surely, Sammie thinks, Gloria won’t recognize her. It’s been so long.

But Gloria does. She’s walking across the lot, hurriedly, and she seems upset. Or she’s chilled from the wind—there are two spots of color high in her cheeks, her lips are pressed thin—but when she sees Sammie she stops short, takes in a sharp breath. She looks like a woman preparing for a fight.

“Mrs. Seever,” Sammie says, coming forward, her hand already stretched out. She could turn and run back to her car, part of her wants to do exactly that, but she’s found it’s sometimes better to react against her instinct. It throws people off. “How good to see you again. I’m not sure if you remember me, Samantha Peterson. I’d love to speak with you, if you have a moment.”

Gloria doesn’t blink an eye.

“He told me you were coming,” she says, her teeth set as she speaks, clamped together so only her lips move. Her voice is different, Sammie realizes. Gloria’s the kind of woman who usually speaks in a soft voice, a feminine tone. High-pitched and girly, almost a whisper. But now she sounds harsh and gritty, and Sammie realizes it’s because she’s about to burst into angry tears. “Said he’s anxious to see you after so long. Could barely sit still from the excitement.”

Sammie is struck dumb. Gloria Seever is jealous. Every word she says, every movement she makes is oozing with it. Jealousy is always a terrible thing, but this seems so much worse, this ugliness over a man who’ll be put to death soon enough.

“I’m here for an interview,” she says. “To talk.”

“Can you imagine, after everything I’ve done for him,” Gloria shrieks into the wind, and Sammie flinches back from the sound of it. “He’s looking forward to a visit from you.”

And then, just like that, it’s over. Gloria totters away across the blacktop on her sensible heels and climbs into her Buick. Her car squeals when she backs it out, when she turns onto the street. She needs brake pads, a whole new car. Sammie can’t seem to get her legs to move for a moment after Gloria is gone, but is frozen in place, her purse smacking against her thigh and her heart pounding against the inside of her chest.

*

“I’ll need to hang on to your purse, sweetheart,” the guard at the front says, smiling shyly at her. “Standard procedure, you understand.”