No One Will Miss Her(60)

Geller was listed as Ethan’s lawyer, with multiple phone numbers: office, assistant, emergencies. I called the last one and listened as it rang. He answered on the second ring, his voice gravelly.

“This is Kurt Geller.”

I took a deep, shaky breath, and let my voice pitch higher.

“Mr. Geller, this is Adrienne Richards. I’m sorry if I woke you. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Adrienne,” he said. In the background, a muffled female voice said, Who? Geller cleared his throat. “Of course, Ethan’s wife. But why—”

“Ethan’s dead,” I said. “And I just shot the man who killed him.”

I don’t know what I expected. A gasp of shock, maybe, or stunned silence. Instead, I found out why Kurt Geller was the kind of attorney who gave his clients a special phone number for midnight legal emergencies.

“All right,” he said smoothly. “Did you call 911?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Anyone else?”

“Just you.”

“Good,” he said again. “We’re going to keep this brief. The first thing they’ll look at is your phone records. Here’s what you need to do.”

I sat heavily on the living room sofa and listened to Geller’s instructions. I tried not to think about Dwayne, facedown and dead in the room down the hall. The hand not holding the phone was starting to shake. Not at the violence, or the loss, but at the realization that I was alone. Truly. For the first time since everything had been set in motion, maybe even for the first time in my life. Strangest of all, the self I was left to rely on was someone I barely even knew. I had stepped into Adrienne’s life, a performance that was only meant to last a few days but was now extended indefinitely, and for a much bigger audience. For a moment, I imagined hanging up, grabbing whatever I could carry, and running. I had killed Lizzie; I could let Adrienne go, too. And maybe I should. I could be reborn somewhere out there in the world, choose a new name, create a new self. I could be nobody at all. The gym bag with the cash, the diamonds, was sitting in a closet just a few feet away. Less than three minutes had passed since I’d dialed 911. I could still be gone before they got here.

Something was moving in the hallway, just beyond the faint rectangle of light spilling through the open office door. My breath caught in my throat, then came out in a little whimper as the cat appeared, padding silently out of the dark and across the floor toward me.

“Adrienne?” Kurt Geller’s voice was sharp. “We should end this call now.”

The cat hopped into my lap, purring, and stretched up to rub his face against my chin. I drew another breath. Slow, steady, even.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

“I understand.”



I don’t know how long I sat there, petting the purring cat, listening for the sound of sirens or pounding on the door. I was on my own tonight, but I would meet Kurt Geller tomorrow, and I wondered how much contact he’d had with Adrienne, how long it had been since he’d seen her. If he knew her well enough to notice that something seemed off. I tried to imagine what she would say. You’d seem different, too, if you’d just been attacked by a maniac in the middle of the night.

Eventually, I stood, clutching the cat in my arms, and walked back to the office. I stood in the doorway, in the same spot Dwayne had been in the moments before I shot him. The last thing he ever said, the last word that passed his lips, was my name.

I tried not to think about that, either.

I told you I never wanted to kill Adrienne, that I never thought about it even once, and that was true. But I promised to be honest, and honestly, I thought about Dwayne dying. I did. I thought about it all the time. There was the time I imagined pinching his nose shut and letting his drugged-out sleep turn into something more permanent, but it didn’t stop there. His death was a constant what-if thrumming away in the back of my mind. It didn’t have to be that I killed him myself. Sometimes, I imagined standing on our doorstep while a police officer approached with his jaw set and his hat in his hand, the surest sign of bad news. I thought about hunting accidents. Overdoses. A brake failure on the same icy stretch where my mother spun out and crashed. I imagined myself putting a hand on the doorjamb to steady myself, as the officer asked if there was someone I could call. You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this, he’d say, because that’s what they always say.

Nobody ever stops to think that “alone” can also mean “free.”

And free was what I felt. All those years I had drifted along with Dwayne, the two of us clinging to our shitty life like it was the only thing to stop us from drowning. There was nothing left to cling to now. I was unanchored, already moving much faster than I ever had before, carried away by an unseen current. Alone, but afloat.

Free.

Downstairs, someone began pounding on the door. There were shouts—“Police!”—and the cat startled, leaping out of my arms and darting away, disappearing into the darkness of the house. I turned.

“I’m here!” I shouted. “I’m coming out.”

I’ve never been a sentimental person. I felt no desire to pause for last looks, or plant a kiss on his cooling temple. I would leave him behind the way I’d left everything else: without saying goodbye. I was grateful that he’d died facedown, so that his eyes wouldn’t follow me when I left. So that I wouldn’t have to see the permanent surprise etched on his face. Except for the awkward slump of his body against the floor, he could have been asleep. There was hardly any blood at all.