The Other Mrs.(32)

She spoke with a classic Boston accent. People loved to hear it. Just the sound of her voice drew people to her. It lured them in. It didn’t matter what she had to say. It was the accent they liked.

She let that go to her head, as she let many things go to her head.

Carrie’s favorite color was red. She knit the beanie herself. She painted landscapes, wrote poetry. Wished her name was something like Wren or Meadow or Clover. She was your quintessential right-brain type, an idealist, a wishful thinker.

I saw Will and her together many times after that. The odds of running into someone on a campus that size are small. Which is how I knew that she sought him out, that she knew where he’d be and when. She put herself there, made him think it was kismet that made them keep running into each other instead of what it really was. A trap.

I’m not insecure. I don’t have an inferiority complex. She was no prettier than me, no better. This was plain and simple jealousy.

Everyone gets jealous. Babies get jealous, dogs do, too. Dogs are territorial, the way they stand guard on their toys, their beds, their owners. They don’t let anyone touch what’s theirs. They get angry and aggressive when you do. They snarl, they bite. They maul people in their sleep. Anything to protect their belongings.

I didn’t have a choice about what happened next. I had to protect what was mine.



SADIE


Later that night, I awaken from a dream. I come slowly to, and find Will sitting in the slipcovered chair in the corner of the room, hiding among the shadows. I just barely make out the outline of him, the blackened curve of his silhouette and the faint glow off the whites of his eyes as he sits there, watching me. I lie in bed awhile, too drowsy and disoriented to ask him what he’s doing, to suggest that he come back to bed with me.

I stretch in bed. I roll over, onto my other side, dragging the blanket with me, turning my back toward Will in the chair. He’ll come to bed when he’s ready.

I fold myself into the fetal position. I pull my knees into me, press them into my abdomen. I brush against something in the bed. Will’s dense memory foam pillow, I assume, but soon feel the swell of a vertebrae, the convexity of a shoulder blade instead. Beside me, Will is shirtless, his skin clammy and warm to the touch. His hair falls sideways, down his neck, pooling on the mattress.

Will is in bed with me. Will is not in the chair in the corner of the room.

Someone else is here.

Someone else is watching us sleep.

I bolt upright in bed. My eyes fight to adjust to the blackness of the room. My heart is in my throat. I can hardly speak. “Who’s there?” I ask, but there’s a bulge in my throat and all that comes out is a gasp.

I reach a hand to the bedside table, make an effort to turn the knob on the lamp. But before I can, her voice comes to me, quietly and measured, the words chosen carefully.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”

Imogen rises from the chair. She comes to me, sets herself gingerly on the edge of my bed.

“What are you doing here? Do you need something?” I ask, trying not to let on to my own state of alarm. But it can’t so easily be disguised. My panic is transparent. There should be relief in seeing that it’s Imogen—not an intruder, but one of our own—but there’s no relief in it. Imogen doesn’t belong in my bedroom this late at night, lingering in the darkness.

I search Imogen with my eyes, looking for a reason as to why she’s here. Looking for a weapon, though the thought alone makes me sick, the idea of Imogen sneaking into our room with the intent of hurting us.

“Is something wrong?” I ask. “Something you want to talk about?”

Always a heavy sleeper, Will doesn’t budge.

“You had no right,” she scolds, quietly seething, “to come into my room.”

There’s a sudden tightness in my chest.

My gut instinct is to lie.

“I wasn’t in your room, Imogen,” I whisper back, and it’s in my best interest now to keep quiet because I don’t want Will to know that I was there. That instead of bathing, I went through the drawers in Imogen’s bedroom, the pockets of her clothing. An invasion of privacy, Will would say, not taking kindly to my searching through her things.

“You’re a liar.” Imogen speaks through her teeth now, as I swear, “I’m not. Honestly, Imogen. I wasn’t in your room.”

Her next words come as a punch to the gut. “Then what was your wine doing there?” she asks. My face flames and I know that I’ve been caught. I picture it, clear as day, setting the glass of cabernet on the desktop as I canvassed her room.

And then later, fleeing in a hurry, leaving the wine behind.

How could I have been so stupid?

“Oh,” I say, straining for a lie. But a lie doesn’t come. Not a credible enough one to share anyway, and so I don’t try. I’ve never been a very good liar.

“If you ever,” she begins. But it’s also where she ends, words cutting off abruptly, leaving it for me to figure out what comes next.

Imogen rises from the edge of the bed. Her sudden height gives her an advantage. She towers over me, stealing the breath from my lungs. Imogen isn’t a big girl. She’s thin, but she has great height, which must have come from her father’s side since Alice was petite. She’s taller than I ever realized now that she’s standing so closely beside me. She leans down and breathes into my ear, “Stay the fuck out of my room,” giving me a slight shove for good measure.