Dear Wife(72)

“You and your sister are hardly unloved,” I say. “Your father talks about you all the time. You’re even his computer password.” The Reverend asked me not to mention it, but I’m pretty sure if he heard this conversation, he’d say something similar.

“ErwinGrace2, I know. What, you don’t think IT has access to the computer passwords around here?”

I don’t answer. If Erwin Four runs the IT, if he knows how to log on to his father’s computer, he’ll know how to pluck Sabine’s story from the history files. I study him for clues, but then again, maybe him cornering me here is the biggest clue of all. The first pinpricks of understanding burn like hot ice on my skin.

He raises both hands, lets them fall back to his lap. “Do you believe what my dad preaches, that marriage is a holy covenant between three people—a man, a woman and God?”

I almost laugh. Almost. Not just because this conversation is ridiculous, but also because if God had been anywhere near my marriage, He wouldn’t have just stood by and watched you slap and punch and kick me. He would have shielded me. He would have taken one for the team.

“Another thing I’ve never really given much thought,” I say carefully.

“Well, I have, and let me tell you, it’s yet another reason for me to never tie the knot. That is a threesome I am not the least bit interested in.”

He stands, and at that moment, right there and then, is when I feel it. Something stark and obvious. Something not right. I put some space between us, scooping items from the table into the bags, hurrying farther down the line.

“What about sin? What are your feelings on that?”

“Why are you asking me? I’m hardly an expert on anything Biblical.”

“Because you’re not one of Dad’s mindless sheep. You’re not going to parrot his words back at me. I get enough of that at home. I’d like to hear an honest answer from someone like me, someone who’s bitten into more than a few apples.” His gaze wanders south. Alarm zips up my spine.

I turn away, tugging on my T-shirt. “I’ve made mistakes. Hasn’t everybody?”

“Yes, but according to my dad, sin is preordained. The Bible tells us not to sin at the same time it tells us we’re destined to lie and cheat and steal. If you ask me, that’s the whole problem with Christianity. It takes away an individual’s free will. It renders us powerless.”

Leave, a voice screams in my head. Don’t stay here alone with this man.

I eye the distance between Erwin Four and the door, the way he’s standing there like a roadblock.

“I don’t think it’s about taking power away,” I say slowly, buying myself some time. I drop the bags in the box and edge around to the opposite side of the table. “But to give it back. Choose God and go to heaven. Isn’t that the point?”

“You didn’t answer my question.” He steps to the right, and I ease to the left.

“I’m pretty sure I did.”

Get out, get out, get out.

In three lightning steps, Erwin Four is in front of me, smelling of aftershave and astringent and—beer? Or maybe that’s my memory, playing tricks on me.

“No. I’m pretty sure you didn’t. The question still stands. How do you feel about original sin? Good?” He runs a finger down my forearm, his touch so light I have to actually look down to make sure it was real. “Or bad?”

I don’t move because I can’t. A wave of disgust, so intense I’m paralyzed, sticks my sneakers to the floor. The air between us shimmers, and I’m transported to another time, another place. A dusty field at last year’s annual barbecue.

I remember everything about that day. How the afternoon air was muggy and hot, the official start of what would be a sweltering summer. How the beer was flowing faster than the river behind the bandstand, and how you chugged it from a red Solo cup. How when I made a joke, saying you might want to switch to water, you laughed and ran your finger down my forearm, soft and light as a feather, like Erwin Four did just now.

But only because people were watching.

Your laugh was for them, but the words you whispered in my ear were for me. You leaned in, stinking of beer and fury. “If you ever, and I mean ever embarrass me like that again, I will kill you and dump your body somewhere no one will ever find it.”

It’s your face I see now when Erwin Four leans in, your breath heating up my cheek. “I think you took the money, Beth,” he says, low and deadly, “and if you’re nice I might just let you keep it.”

There’s only one thing to do here, really. Only one way to satisfy both my temper and my terror.

I look Erwin Four in the face and knee him hard in the balls. And then I’m off at a dead run.



MARCUS

Ma starts upstairs while I gather up the files I’d spread across the living room and kitchen, unpin the papers from the wall and toss everything in a basket I fetch from the laundry room. I can’t stay in the house, not with Ma’s weighted sighs and worried stares. I haul the basket to the car, dump it in the trunk and drive to the station.

The place is changing shifts by the time I arrive, beat-weary cops trudging out the door, nodding to their fresh-faced replacements like an unspoken passing of batons. I don’t want to think too hard about how long I’ve been on the job, or how little I slept last night. I’m running on fumes and adrenaline, like I do every time I’m nearing a break on a case. Something big is about to happen—I can feel it. The papers with the four phone numbers are burning a hole in my pocket, excitement vibrating in the deepest part of my bones.