My Lovely Wife(25)

But those who did live here, and are old enough to remember, believe Owen has returned home. Especially the women.

They remember what it was like to be scared whenever they were alone, indoors or out, because Owen snatched his victims from almost anywhere. Two disappeared from inside their own homes. One was in a library, another in a park, and at least three had been in parking lots. Two of these had been caught on security video. The footage was old and grainy; Owen looked like a big blur dressed in dark clothes and wearing a baseball cap. The videos have been on the news all day, all over again.

Today, I have a tennis lesson with Trista, Andy’s wife, but as I walk through the clubhouse I see her in the sports bar. She is watching the news on one of the big screens. Like her husband, she is in her early forties and couldn’t pass for younger. The ends of her hair are too blond, her eyes are always rimmed in black, and she has a deep, disturbingly natural tan. She is alone and drinking red wine at one o’clock in the afternoon. The bottle sits on the table.

I guess we are not having a lesson today.

From a distance, I watch her, unsure if I should get involved. Sometimes, my clients tell me more than I want to know. I’m like the hairdresser of exercise.

But I have to admit, it can also be interesting.

I walk up to Trista. “Hey.”

She waves and points to an empty chair, never taking her eyes off the TV screen. I have seen her drink plenty of times at parties and dinners, but I’ve never seen her like this.

At the commercial break, she turns to me. “I’m canceling our lesson today,” she says.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

She smiles, but it doesn’t make her look happy. It occurs to me that she might be upset with Andy. Maybe he has done something wrong, and I don’t want to get in the middle of it. I start to get up from the chair when she speaks.

“Do you remember what it was like back then?” she says, pointing at the TV. “When he was killing?”

“Owen?”

“Who else?”

“Of course. Everyone from here remembers.” I shrug and sit back down. “Did you ever go to The Hatch? A bunch of us used to drink there on Saturday nights, and all the TVs were tuned into the news. I think that’s where I—”

She takes a deep breath. “I knew him.”

“Who?”

“Owen Oliver. I knew him.” Trista picks up the bottle and refills her glass.

“You never told me that before.”

She rolls her eyes. “Not exactly something to be proud of. Especially because I dated him.”

“No way.”

“I’m serious.”

My jaw drops. Not an exaggeration. “Does Andy know this?”

“No. And don’t even think about telling him.”

I shake my head. No way would I tell him. I am not about to be the bearer of that news. “But how did you—”

“First, have some of this.” Trista pushes the bottle of wine toward me. “You’re going to need it.”



* * *



? ? ?

Trista was right. The wine dulled the horror of the story she told.

She met Owen Oliver when he was in his early thirties. She was a decade younger with a degree in art history and a job at a collections agency. That was how they met. Owen worked in billing at Saint Mary’s. When the bills weren’t paid, they were turned over to the collections agency.

“It was a scum job,” she said. Her voice slurred from the wine. “I called sick people and demanded money from them. So that was me. Scum. All day, I felt like a scummy person who did scummy things.”

Owen told her she wasn’t. They first spoke about someone named Leann, who owed the hospital more than $10,000. After calling Leann seventeen times, Trista had become convinced the number was wrong. The only person to answer the phone was a man who sounded about ninety and had an obvious case of dementia. Leann was a twenty-eight-year old woman who lived alone. Trista called over to the billing department of Saint Mary’s to check the phone number. She wasn’t supposed to contact the hospital directly, but she did it anyway. Owen had answered the phone.

“Of course I had the right number. Owen told me Leann was an actress.” Trista heaved a big sigh. “I was so embarrassed I didn’t even ask how he knew that.”

They talked. She liked his voice, he liked her laugh, and they agreed to meet. Trista dated Owen for six months.

“We both liked to eat and drink, and would rather watch sports than play them. Except sex. We had a lot of sex. Good but not great. Not earth-shattering. But”—Trista held up a finger and waved it around—“he did make earth-shattering cinnamon rolls. Made them from scratch, too. Rolled out the dough, spread melted butter over it, and then added this cinnamon-and-sugar mixture …” For a second, she stared at nothing. She was slow to come back. “Anyway. The cinnamon rolls were good. There was nothing wrong with the cinnamon rolls. There wasn’t really anything wrong with Owen, either. Except he was a medical billing clerk.”

Trista looked down at the table and smiled. Not a real smile—one that is filled with loathing and aimed at herself. She lifted her head and looked me full in the eye. “I broke up with him because I was never going to marry a thirty-three-year-old medical billing clerk. There was no chance in hell. And if that makes me a snob, so be it, but hell if I was going to be poor my whole life.” She threw up her hands, surrendering to whatever insults I may have wanted to sling at her.