My Lovely Wife(73)

I point to one of the benches “Sit. Your. Ass. Down.”

He does.

“First,” I say, “you may have noticed your sister has been having a difficult time. And I am sure you, her only brother, do not want to make her feel worse?”

He shakes his head.

“Of course you don’t. So I know you won’t tell her this little theory of yours about how I’m cheating on your mother.”

“Theory?”

I stare at him.

He shakes his head again. “No. I’m not going to say anything.”

“And I know you are not about to compare me to you and the fact that you are sneaking out late at night. Because you are less than half my age. You are not even close to being an adult. You do not get to sneak out.”

He nods.

“What?” I say.

“No. I wasn’t going to compare us.”

“And I also know that if I ask you why you were sneaking out, you are not going to say it was to hang out with Daniel. Because that’s not what you’re doing, is it?”

“No.”

“You’re sneaking out to see Faith Hammond.”

“Yes.”

“Perfect. I’m glad we cleared that up.”

Rory’s phone buzzes. His eyes go back and forth, between the phone and me, but he does not look at it.

“Go ahead,” I say.

“It’s okay.”

“Don’t keep Faith waiting.”

He checks the phone and sends a text while pushing that red hair out of his eyes. Faith answers right away, and he sends another. The conversation continues, and I wait until he puts the phone down on the table. Faceup.

“Sorry,” he says.

I sigh.

I am not angry at Rory. He is just a kid who has discovered girls aren’t so bad after all. He used to say girls were “heinous and foul and, most especially, ugly.” The quote is from a book he’d read, and it always made me laugh. I would turn to Millicent and say, “You’re the one who brought them to the library every week.” If we happened to be in the kitchen, she would snap the dish towel at me. Once, she snapped it so hard it cut my arm. The wound was just superficial, barely breaking the skin, but Rory was impressed with his mother. Less so with me.

And now, he is leaving late at night to see a little blonde named Faith.

“Does she sneak out, too?” I say. “Do you meet somewhere?”

“Sometimes. But I can get up to her room, too.”

I want to ban him from doing this, put a lock on his window, and call Faith’s parents and say they are too young and it’s too dangerous. Owen is dead, and a killer is on the loose.

Except it isn’t true. I just have to pretend it is. Just like I have to pretend I don’t remember my first girlfriend.

“You have to stop,” I say. “You’ve seen the news. It’s too dangerous for both of you to be out alone at night.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

“And you shouldn’t be sneaking out at all. If I told your mother, she would lock your window and put cameras all over the house.”

Rory’s eyebrows shoot up. “She doesn’t know?”

“If she did, you’d be grounded until college. And so would your girlfriend.”

“Okay. We’ll stop.”

I take a deep breath. Just because I’m angry does not mean I am irresponsible. “And since you have a girlfriend, do you have protect—”

“Dad, I know how to buy condoms.”

“Good, good. So just text her at night, okay? See her during the day?”

He nods and gets up quick, as if he is scared I might change my mind.

“One more thing,” I say. “And answer me straight.”

“Okay.”

“Are you taking any drugs?”

“No.”

“You don’t smoke pot?”

He shakes his head. “I swear I don’t.”

I let him go. Right now, I don’t have time to figure out if he is lying.

When I’m not watching the news, all I can think about is what else we might have missed. All the ways we might get caught, all the forensic data I have learned about on TV. The DNA, trace evidence, fibers—it all runs through my mind like it makes sense to me, which it does not, but I know it will not point to me. I never said a word to Naomi, much less touched her. Any evidence they find will lead to Millicent.



* * *



? ? ?

The first time I see Owen’s sister is on TV. Owen was in his thirties when he was killing; now, he would have been about fifty. Jennifer looks a little younger, midforties. She has the same blue eyes, but her hair is a dirtier shade of blond. She is so thin her collarbone sticks out, as do the veins on her neck. They say the camera puts on ten pounds, and if that’s true, Jennifer must look sickly in real life.

She is on every screen in the clubhouse, where the lunch crowd has stuck around for another cocktail so they can watch the press conference. This is the first time the public has seen Owen’s sister.

The police chief is on one side of her; the medical examiner is on the other. One has hair, the other doesn’t, and their paunches are the same size.

Jennifer says is that she is Owen Oliver Riley’s sister and that we are all wrong about these murders.