My Lovely Wife(77)

Early Sunday morning, when we are alone in the kitchen and the kids are still asleep, I ask Millicent what she thinks of Claire Wellington.

“She’s very tall.”

“She’s smart,” I say.

“And we aren’t?”

We exchange a smile.

Millicent has just returned from a run. She stands at the sink, in her spandex, and I admire the view. She catches me and raises an eyebrow.

“Want to go back to bed?” I say.

“You want to show me how smart you are?”

“I do.”

“But I need a shower.”

“Want company?”

She does.



* * *



? ? ?

We start in shower and move to the bed. Our sex is cozy and familiar, rather than passionate and furtive. Not a bad thing.

When Rory wakes up, we are still in bed. I know it’s Rory, because he cannot shut a door without slamming it and his footsteps are heavy when he goes down to the kitchen. Not long after, Jenna gets up and follows the same routine—bathroom and then kitchen—but everything is softer.

Millicent is curled up beside me. She is naked and warm.

“The coffee is still on,” she says. “They’ll wonder where we are.”

“Let them.” I have no intention of getting out of bed until I have to. I stretch out and close my eyes.

The TV turns on, the volume loud. The kids are probably glad we aren’t downstairs. Normally, we do not watch TV on Sunday mornings, so for them this is a treat. They flip between cartoons and a movie with explosions.

“I bet they’re eating cereal,” Millicent says.

“We have cereal?”

“Organic. No sugar.”

“We have milk?”

“Soy.”

I do not say “yuck” out loud, but I think it. “That’s not bad, then.”

“I guess not.”

She snuggles a little closer.

This is what life was like before Holly. Everything moved a bit slower, less frantically, without much excitement.

The days blended together, punctuated only by big events. Our first house was so tiny, but it felt huge, at least until we outgrew it—followed by Millicent’s first huge sale, Jenna’s first day of school, our bigger house and bigger mortgage. The paper cut on Rory’s hand.

When Jenna was four, she got sick with a cold that turned into bronchitis. She could sleep for only an hour or so before the coughing would wake her up. Millicent and I spent three nights sleeping in her room, me on the floor and Millicent in Jenna’s little bed. Between the two of us, we helped Jenna get more sleep than us.

I taught Rory how to ride a bike. He would never admit it, but he used training wheels for an extended period of time. Balance was not his thing. Still isn’t.

None of this was exciting, not at the time. They were routines and responsibilities, with an occasional smile or even a laugh. Moments of happiness followed by long stretches of blurry, repetitive days.

Now, I want it all back. Maybe I have had too much excitement, or this is too exciting, but either way it is not what I want.

“Hey,” Millicent says. She sits up in bed, covered by the sheet. Her red hair is tangled. “You hear that?”

Downstairs, the breaking-news music blares out of the TV. It cuts off when one of the kids changes the channel to a cartoon.

I roll my eyes. “News breaks every five minutes.” I pull Millicent back down on the bed, into my arms, with no intention of moving unless the police break down our door. “Probably some celebrity got arrested.”

“Or died.”

“Or a politician got caught cheating,” I say.

“That’s not even newsworthy.”

I laugh and bury myself deeper under the covers.

My hope is that they have arrested someone for the murders. It would not be Naomi and Lindsay’s killer, but it would be someone who has done other bad things. Someone who deserves to be locked up before he hurts someone. I imagine him as a disheveled, slovenly man who has crazy eyes.

“Okay, that’s it,” Millicent says. “I’m getting up.” She throws off the covers all at once, like the old Band-Aid trick. It works. The bed isn’t cozy without her.

She throws on a robe and heads downstairs. I jump in the shower first.

The kids are on the couch, watching a teenage show about aliens. Their empty cereal bowls are on the coffee table, and I am surprised Millicent has let them stay there. I find her in the kitchen, standing next to the coffee maker. Her cup is tipped over, and the coffee is running off the side of the counter, onto the floor. She isn’t even looking at it. Her eyes are focused on the little TV set she keeps in the kitchen.

Josh is on the screen. He is standing in front of a woodsy area so thick with bushes I cannot see the building behind him, just the steeple high above the trees. I do not know the place or where it’s located. The wooden sign in front of the church is weather-beaten and faded. Josh’s mouth is moving, but no sound comes out. The volume is too low.

I do not need it anyway. The news is plastered across the bottom of the screen, in red.





HOUSE OF GOD OR HOUSE OF HORRORS?



UNDERGROUND DUNGEON FOUND IN ABANDONED CHURCH