Just the Nicest Couple(31)

“What is this?” she asked at first, and then, taking the items out of the bag, recognizing her own clothes, “Is this—”

I could almost see the passage of bile going from her stomach back up through her throat. It wasn’t necessarily the sight of blood that did it, but the knowledge of where the blood came from.

She went to the sink for water. As she did, I reached to take the bag from her and she let me, glad, I think, to be free of it.

“You don’t need to see that,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to see that.”

I looked in the bag myself, to see what she saw. Blood gets darker over time, turning it more brown and less red. Still, there was no denying that what was in the bag, all over Lily’s clothes, was blood.

Jake and Nina Hayes live in an upscale neighborhood that’s all custom homes, each house trying not be outdone by someone else. They must be something like four or five thousand square feet, with brick and stone exteriors, turrets, cathedral doors, things like that, which make me think of castles. It’s the kind of place that also makes me wonder how, exactly, people can be this rich. It’s envious, but it makes me think about people in developing countries dying from things like starvation. The discrepancy is shocking, and I think if the Hayeses or their neighbors gave more instead of keeping it all to themselves, this world might be a better place. The only thing that I find surprising is how small their lots are. If I had the kind of money that Jake and Nina have, I’d want privacy and land.

The weather today is advantageous. It’s a windy, gray day. It’s not raining, not yet, but there is a threat of rain, which keeps everyone inside.

I park a few houses down from Jake and Nina’s house. I wait a second, and then I get out of the car and walk back, along the sidewalk. It’s late September. The days are getting cooler but the trees are mostly still green, only a meager few leaves starting to turn. Over the next few weeks, the rest will change colors and fall.

I wear a baseball cap. I pull it down low. I walk confidently, with my hands in my pockets, as if I have as much right as anyone to be here.

When I get to the Hayes’s long driveway, I go straight to the front door. I don’t hesitate. I’ve been thinking about the very real possibility of a video doorbell and need to know what I’m up against. When I get to the door, I make like I’m going to press the doorbell but I don’t press anything. For a second, I stand on the stoop, accessing the button. Ring, Nest and the rest—they all look the exact same, part doorbell, part camera. The cameras are meant to be visible, not hidden. The intent is to deter people from vandalizing property or breaking in, rather than to catch them in the act. If the Hayeses have a video doorbell, I need to know. I have a story in my back pocket for if I get caught on camera now, ringing the doorbell, one I made up about how I misunderstood and thought Lily was here. I’d come looking for my wife, because I needed her for some reason. Family emergency. She wasn’t answering her phone. I didn’t have all the details worked out, but I could make them up on the fly if I needed to.

I won’t need to. The Hayeses have a traditional doorbell. There is no camera attached. It’s just the button. I relax.

I make my way back along the front walkway for the garage. I enter the pin number into the keypad. The garage door lifts open and, as soon as I can, I duck under the overhead door and watch it close behind me. When it reaches the ground, I turn the door handle and let myself into their home.

I find myself standing in a modern mudroom. I hold my breath, counting, waiting for an alarm to go off because maybe Lily was wrong. Maybe Jake and Nina got a home security system after last summer when Lily watched their cat, or maybe they had it all along, but didn’t ask Lily to set it. Lily and I have a home security system. I never felt we needed one. It was a luxury and just another bill to pay. We didn’t have one in our previous house. But this alarm came with our house and, until this week, we almost never used it. I set it off by accident once and the sound was enough to bring me to my knees. You don’t make that mistake twice. I practically had to offer up my firstborn child to make the security company believe that Lily and I were safe, that no one had broken in and was holding me at gunpoint.

Now, every night for the last five days, Lily has asked me to set the alarm.

Neither of us has put into words how, though we know Jake is dead, absent a body, there is nothing concrete to say that he’s dead.

I’m a numbers guy. As a market research analyst, my life’s work is all about qualitative and quantitative research. Data. I like proof. In the absence of proof, my imagination goes wild. Lily’s does too. She has fears that she hasn’t much articulated to me. But I know she feels them. Last night, as we made love, I caught a glimpse of her face in the moonlight. Lily was beneath me. She suddenly stilled and I looked to see if she was okay, if I had lost her. Lily’s eyes were open. She was staring somewhere over my shoulder. She wasn’t with me. She was somewhere else, her eyes on the open bedroom door and she was waiting, I think, for him, for Jake, to come in when our guards were down. Lily shows signs of PTSD. There are times she goes mentally back to that moment with Jake in the forest preserve. She thinks about it still. Sometimes, she’s said, when she closes her eyes, she can see his face, she can see the rage in his eyes. She hears him spitting his words at her. She feels the spit on her face. It terrifies and traumatizes her all over again.