The New Husband(86)

All he knew was that Simon hadn’t visited the box, maybe for the longest stretch yet.

Is this how I’m going to die? Glen asked himself over and over. Left alone. Completely forgotten. If so, at least he wouldn’t have to bear witness to his family’s suffering any longer. At least he’d be gone.

His bathroom had a foul reek. The water he’d been rationing was running low. The batteries of his LED light were nearly out of juice, but it didn’t much matter. He couldn’t read even if he had wanted. His mind was elsewhere. Soon he’d be in the dark. Then he’d waste away. Maybe it wasn’t so awful. He considered it almost romantically. One day he’d close his eyes … and then all those regrets would be gone. Someday someone would crash through the wall of the box to find his bones shackled to a chain. Then, those who mattered to him most, assuming his family was still alive, would at last have some closure.

Glen was entertaining these thoughts when the door to the box flew open, and light flooded in. Simon was there, looming in the doorway.

“Did you say something to Maggie? Did you get a message to her somehow?”

“No,” Glen said, cowering, slinking away. His first inclination was always to move to safety, but there was no safe corner in the box. Simon stayed rooted and Glen quickly got the sense he didn’t come to hurt him; he came for answers.

“I think she was here, with her friend. Now, why would that be?”

Glen got anxious, too. Why would that be?

“She’s probably curious about you. She’s inquisitive. It’s her nature.”

“Hmmm…”

Simon appeared lost in thought. “Maybe so,” he said, rubbing his chin. “But if I find out you’re lying, Glen…”

He didn’t bother finishing.

“Nina’s been in contact with my ex-brother-in-law, Hugh,” said Simon. “Why?”

“Who is Hugh?”

“Emma’s brother. He’s a junkie. A loser. I decided to start checking Nina’s Facebook app on her phone. Careless girl never logs out. Sure enough, she and Hugh have been exchanging messages about me. He wants to meet her. Maybe they’ve already met. Now, why would Nina reach out to him? What’s she thinking?”

Glen was Simon’s best source for information. Knowing Nina the way he did, he could venture a guess.

“Obviously, she’s looking into you. Something’s made her nervous and she wants to know things about you. Things you might not be sharing.”

“The therapist?” Simon wanted the source.

“For sure, that.”

“I thought the same. But I also went to the Muddy Moose—see if Teresa Mitchell returned. That would be a problem. Remember her?”

Glen said nothing.

“Well, she is back. I bet you anything Nina went to see her. If she did, she’d have found out your love story was just a little one-night stand. Why, why, why does this all have to get so complicated?”

It sickened Glen to imagine what Nina must have thought of him all this time—a liar, a thief, an adulterer. His spirit lifted somewhat at the possibility she’d learned part of the truth.

Glen knew that Simon had carefully planned the setup with Teresa. He loved talking about his cleverness. At first he wasn’t going to use Teresa’s name in that text message he sent Nina. When Simon learned Teresa had taken off, leaving no forwarding address, and nobody counted on her coming back, he decided to add more detail, thinking it made the story more believable.

The pictures he’d sent, coupled with the lie, had served their purpose well. As long as Nina believed Glen had enjoyed a torrid affair, it made it easier for her to move on with another man—specifically Simon.

Simon made a tsk-tsk sound. “I didn’t think she’d go looking for that waitress after all this time. Damn therapy.”

And that’s when Glen knew Simon intended to kill Teresa, if for nothing else than out of sheer vindictiveness.

“You must be hungry.” A kinder look came to his face. “I’ll make you some eggs. Then I got to get home for dinner. Pasta primavera tonight. Yum. Maybe I’ll come back later and let you watch TV. I’m thinking you’re going to be really interested in the evening news.”

“The news?” Glen was confused.

“Yes, sir—the monster is on the loose.”

Glen went cold inside. “Simon, what have you done?”

“You’ll see soon enough. Thought I did a better job of it, but no worries. I wore a mask. It’s not like she’s going to identify me or anything, and besides I left plenty of reasons for the police to look elsewhere.”

Glen’s mind wandered, as it tended to do, from this thought to that, and he wasn’t concerned about monsters, or the news.

He was thinking about Maggie.

Why was she here?

Maybe he had gotten a message to her, unwittingly even? Was it possible? And just like that, hope returned—hope tempered with a great deal of worry.

The house was alarmed; not with one system, but two. The second system was a solar-charged backup in case of a power failure. That backup alarm sent an alert directly to Simon’s cell phone anytime someone entered the house.

Glen prayed nobody got the foolish idea to come looking here alone.

Simon was about to shut the door, but turned back to Glen.