The Other Mrs.(73)

“Jeffrey,” I say, inching backward. I try not to let my imagination get the best of me. There could be so many reasons why he’s here. So many other reasons than the one I imagine.

“You’re home,” I say because I’ve only just realized that his home is no longer a crime scene.

Jeffrey senses my fear. He hears it in my voice; he sees it in my body language. My feet retreat, though it’s inappreciable the way that they do. But still, his eyes drop to them. He sees the movement. Like a dog, he can smell my fear.

“I was shoveling my drive. I saw you pull up,” he says, and I reply, “Oh,” realizing that if he did—if he saw my car pull into the drive fifteen or twenty minutes ago—he may have seen me force my way into the home next door. He may have heard the voice mail I left for Officer Berg.

“Where’s your daughter?” I ask.

He says, “She’s busy with her toys.” As I look across the street, I see a light on in a second-floor window. The shades are open, the bedroom bright. I see the little girl’s silhouette as she bounds around the room with a teddy bear on her shoulders, as if giving him a piggyback ride. The little girl is laughing to herself, to her bear. It only adds to my unease. I think of what Jeffrey confessed, about how she and Morgan weren’t close.

Is she glad her stepmother is dead? Is she glad to have her father back all to herself?

“I told her I’d be just a minute. Am I keeping you from something?” Jeffrey asks, running a gloved hand through his hair. He wears gloves, but no hat. I wonder why, if he’s bundled up to shovel snow, he wears no hat. Do the gloves serve another purpose than keeping his hands warm?

“Will,” I tell him, inching backward, “is inside. The boys. I haven’t been home all day” is what I say, though it’s a pathetic excuse, and I know as I say it that I should have said something more tangible than that, more concrete, more decisive. Dinner is ready.

But my reply is wishy-washy at best, and it’s Jeffrey instead who is decisive as he says, “Your husband isn’t home.”

“Of course he’s home,” I say, but as I turn back to the house, I take in the darkness of our home, the lack of movement, the sudden realization that Will’s car isn’t in the drive. How did I not realize when I pulled in and parked that Will’s car wasn’t here? I wasn’t paying attention when I got home. I was too caught up in other things to notice.

I sink my hand into my pocket. I’ll call Will, find out where he is. I’ll beg him to come home.

But the nonresponsive black screen reminds me: my cell phone is dead.

My face must whiten. Jeffrey asks, “Is everything all right, Sadie?” and as tears of panic prick my eyes, I force them back. I swallow against a lump in my throat and say, “Yes, yes, of course. Everything is fine.”

I lie and tell him then, “It’s been a busy day. It slipped my mind. Will had to pick our son up from a friend’s house. He lives just around the block,” I say, pointing arbitrarily behind me, hoping Jeffrey might assume it will be a quick trip for Will. There and back in a matter of minutes. He’ll be home soon.

I tell Jeffrey, “I better get inside. Get dinner started. It was nice seeing you,” though I’m terrified to turn my back to him. But there’s no other way. I have to get inside, close the door and lock the dead bolt behind myself. I hear the dogs bark. I see their faces pressed to the windows that flank the front door. But where they are, trapped inside, they can’t help me.

I hold my breath as I turn. I grind my teeth, steel myself for the agonizing pain of the square blade against the back of my head.

I’ve barely moved when a heavy, gloved hand falls to my shoulder.

“There was something I wanted to ask before you go.”

The tone of his voice is oppressive as he says it. It’s chilling. Between my legs, my pelvic floor weakens. Urine seeps into my underpants. I turn reluctantly back to see the shovel rooted to the ground now. Jeffrey leans on it, uses it for support, tugs on the cuff of his gloves to be sure they’re on tight.

“Yes?” I ask, voice quivering.

Headlights veer this way and that through the trees. But they’re in the distance, moving away instead of drawing near.

Where is Will?

Jeffrey tells me that he’s come to talk to me about his dead wife.

“What about her?” I ask, feeling the way my vocal cords vibrate inside of me.

But as he starts to speak of Morgan, a change becomes him. His stance shifts. He gets choked up speaking about Morgan. It’s subtle, a film that covers his eyes, rather than tears that run from his nose and across his cheeks. His eyes glisten in the moonlight, in the glow off the snow.

“There was something wrong with Morgan,” he tells me. “Something had her upset. Scared even. She wouldn’t say what. Did she tell you?”

It seems so obvious, so transparent. I shouldn’t have to be the one to put the idea in his head. But maybe the idea is already there, and he’s only being cunning. Sly as a fox. I think he or his ex-wife had something to do with it. The proof is in her house, in her own confession. But how can I admit to eavesdropping on their conversation in the church sanctuary, to breaking into the other woman’s house and going through her things?

I shake my head. “Morgan told me nothing.”

I don’t tell him that I didn’t know Morgan well enough for her to tell me why she was upset. I don’t tell him that I didn’t know Morgan at all. It’s easy to see that communication wasn’t Jeffrey and Morgan’s strong suit because if it was, one would think he’d already know that Morgan and I weren’t friends.