The Other Mrs.(49)

It happened so fast there wasn’t time to wonder where I was, to worry about it, only to realize that I was not in my own bed. I reached a hand across either side of it, feeling for Will. But the bed was empty other than me. My own body was cocooned in a blanket beneath the quilt and I lay there, watching the inert fan above me, illuminated only by a streak of moonlight that came through the window. It was hot in the bed. I wished that the fan would move, that it would send a rush of air to my body to cool me off.

And then suddenly I was no longer in the bed. I was standing beside it, watching myself sleep. The room around me became distorted. The colors began to fade. All at once, everything was monochrome. The walls of the room warped to odd shapes, trapezoids and parallelograms. It was no longer square.

I felt a headache coming on.

In my dream, I forced my eyes closed to stop the room from changing shapes.

When I opened them again, I was in my own bed with an image of Morgan Baines in my mind. I’d been dreaming about her. I can’t remember the details of it, but I know for certain that she was there.

Before he left the bedroom a while ago, Will kissed me. He offered to drive the boys to school so that I could sleep in. You had trouble sleeping last night, he said, and I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. I didn’t have trouble sleeping per se, but my dreams were so vivid I must have tossed and turned in my sleep.

Will kissed me on the head. He wished me a good day and he left.

Downstairs now I hear the rustle of breakfast being served, of backpacks being packed. The front door opens and they’re gone. Only then do I sit upright in bed. As I do, I see my nightgown lying at the end of it, no longer on me.

I rise to my feet, the covers sliding from my body. I discover that I’m naked. The realization of it startles me. My hand goes inadvertently to my chest. I’m not averse to sleeping nude. It was the way Will and I often slept before the boys started toddling into our room when they were young. But it’s not something I’ve often done since. The idea of sleeping naked when there are kids in my home embarrasses me. What if Otto had seen me like this? Or worse yet, Imogen?

The thought of Imogen suddenly gives me pause, because I heard Will and the boys leave. But I never heard Imogen leave.

I tell myself that Will wouldn’t leave before she did. He would have made sure she was gone first, headed to school. Imogen doesn’t always make her comings and goings known, which tells me now that she’s not here, that she slipped out quietly long before Will and the boys did.

There’s dried sweat beneath my arms and between my legs, a result of the inequitable heat in the old home. I remember how hot I was in my dream. I must have whipped off the nightgown unconsciously.

I find clothes in the dresser drawer, running tights and a long-sleeved shirt that I slip on. As I do, another thought comes to me, about Imogen. What if, like me, Will only assumed she’d gone to school, because of her tendency to slip in and out unnoticed?

My fear of Imogen colors my judgment and I find myself wondering: Is she still home? Are Imogen and I the only ones here?

I cautiously leave the bedroom. Imogen’s door is closed, the padlock on the new locking mechanism securely fastened, which tells me she’s not there in her room. Because she couldn’t lock it if she was inside.

The purpose of the lock: to keep me out. It seems like an innocuous enough thing, but at second glance, I wonder if it would as easily lock someone in as lock someone out.

I call out to Imogen as I make my way down the steps, just to be sure. Downstairs, her shoes and her backpack are gone, as is her jacket.

Will has left breakfast for me on the counter and an empty mug for coffee. I fill the coffee mug and take it and my crepes to the table to eat. Only there do I see that Will has left his book behind, the true crime novel. He’s finished it, I assume, and left it for me to read.

I reach for the book and slide it toward myself. But it isn’t the book that I’m thinking about. Not really. It’s the photograph inside, that of his former fiancée. I take the book into my hands, take a deep breath and leaf through the pages, expecting Erin’s photo to fall out.

When it doesn’t, I leaf through again, a second and a third time.

I set the book down. I look up and sigh.

Will has taken the photograph. He’s taken the photograph and left the book for me.

Where has Will put the photograph?

I can’t ask Will. To bring Erin up again would be in poor taste. I can’t possibly nag him over and over again about his dead fiancée. She was long gone before I arrived. But the fact that he hangs on to her photograph after all these years is hard to stomach.

Will grew up on the Atlantic coast, not far from where we now live. He transferred colleges during his sophomore and junior years, leaving the East Coast for a school in Chicago. Between Erin’s death and his stepfather’s, Will told me, he couldn’t stand to stay out east anymore. He had to leave. Shortly after he did, his mother married for the third time (far too soon, in Will’s opinion; she’s the kind of woman who can’t ever be alone) and moved south. His brother joined the Peace Corps and now lives in Cameroon. Then Alice died. Will doesn’t have family on the East Coast anymore.

Erin and Will were high school sweethearts. He never used that term when he told me about her because it was too sentimental, too endearing. But they were. High school sweethearts. Erin was nineteen when she died; he’d just turned twenty. They’d been together since they were fifteen and sixteen. The way Will tells it, Erin, home from college for Christmas break—Will went to community college those first two years—had been missing overnight by the time her body was found. She was supposed to pick him up at six for dinner, but she never showed. By six thirty Will was getting worried. Near seven, he called her parents, her friends in quick succession. No one knew where she was.