My Lovely Wife(36)

Millicent shook her head. She may have even cursed under her breath. “I can’t believe we’re just finding this out.”

“We always watched her at work.”

“Not always.”

I let that go. This was not the time to question Millicent about what she hasn’t told me. Not when I was lying.

“So,” I said. “Naomi.”

Millicent sighed. “Naomi.”

We do not mention Annabelle again.



* * *



? ? ?

I do not want to work, but I have no choice. My day is packed with back-to-back lessons, and when they are finally over I pick up the kids from school and take them to the dentist. By chance, their appointments have landed on Thursday the 12th. Millicent schedules their cleanings in advance, every six months on the dot.

As we walk into the office, Jenna and Rory play roshambo to see who goes first. It is one of the few times they speak in unison.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.”

Rory loses, Jenna gloats, and the bigger picture eludes them. Both still have to get their teeth cleaned.

In the waiting room, I check the news on my phone and am bombarded by pictures of Owen’s previous victims. Our local paper put all of them on the front page, and all the pictures had been taken when they were smiling and alive. The message is not subtle. If you look like these women, tomorrow you will be at risk. Owen could be coming for you. There is no indication that anyone would be able to fight back or escape, and the only way to survive is to not get chosen. It is a little offensive, I think, that women are treated as if they are so helpless. The writer of this article has never met my wife.

After the dentist, ice cream. Millicent meets us for this bizarre family tradition. I was the one who started it, back when the kids were much younger and I wanted to make them stop crying at the dentist. The promise of ice cream worked, and now they won’t let it go.

We all have our favorite. Millicent orders vanilla, I have chocolate, and Rory gets rocky road. Jenna is the experimental one. She always orders the special. Today, it is blueberry chocolate chip, and she loves it. I think it is disgusting.

Once everyone’s teeth are tingling and our brains are frozen, we split up. Millicent takes the kids home, and I go back to work. On my way into the club, I run into Trista. She canceled our last lesson, and I’ve barely seen her since that drunken day she told me about her relationship with Owen Oliver. I am so grateful to her for that, but she doesn’t know it. She doesn’t know much of anything right now; she stares at me with the dead stare of a drunk, but it isn’t because of alcohol. She is on pills—most likely painkillers, and a lot of them. I see it quite often at the country club.

But never from her.

“Hey.” I reach out and touch her arm. “Are you okay?”

“Perfect.” She says the word hard, like she’s anything but.

“You don’t look okay. Do you want me to call Andy?”

“No, I don’t want you to call Andy.”

I think I should, because I’d want to know if my wife was stoned up to her eyebrows. I reach for my phone.

Trista looks at me. “A woman is going to disappear tomorrow. And then she’s going to die.”

I want to tell her that maybe it won’t happen, maybe they’ll catch him, but I don’t, because it’s a lie. The police are not going to catch Millicent and me. They don’t even know we exist.

“Yes,” I say. “Someone is probably going to disappear.”

“Owen’s a bastard.” Trista looks vacant but isn’t. Beyond the pills is something that refuses to go numb. Something angry.

“Hey, stop that. You can’t blame yourself for this asshole.”

She snorts.

“You won’t be alone tomorrow, will you?” I say this because I am genuinely worried about her. Everything Trista does hurts only herself.

“Andy will be home.” She looks up at the TV, where they are showing footage from when Owen was arrested fifteen years ago. Trista shivers. “I have to go.”

“Wait—let me give you a ride home.”

“I’m not going home.”

“Trista.”

“I’ll see you later. Tell Millicent I’ll call her.” She walks toward the women’s locker room but then turns back. “Don’t tell Andy, okay?”

I never told him about seeing Trista drunk, and didn’t tell him about his wife’s past with Owen Oliver. Another omission won’t make the betrayal worse than it already is.

“I won’t tell him,” I say.

“Thank you.”

She vanishes into the locker room, and I stare after her, wondering what we have done. Bringing back Owen has affected more than the police investigation.

My last client of the day also talks about it. He is a nice man with three daughters, and two are in Owen’s target age group. All of them still live in the area. Two are single and live alone, and he is so worried he has offered to send them away for the weekend. He didn’t live here when Owen was around the first time but has heard more than enough.

Despite the afternoon ice cream, dinner is still at six. Jenna says everyone at school has been talking about Owen all week. One of her friends has an older sister who is convinced that Owen is coming for her. Rory snickers at this and says it won’t happen, that both are too ugly even for a serial killer. Jenna throws a dinner roll at her brother, and Millicent orders them to stop. They resort to calling each other names by mouthing them across the table.