The Other Mrs.(76)

We eat dinner together. As expected, Imogen is a no-show. I pick at my food, hardly able to eat. “Penny for your thoughts,” Will says toward the end of dinner, and only then do I realize I spent the entirety of our meal staring off into space.

I apologize to him and blame fatigue.

Will does the dishes. Tate disappears to watch TV. Otto plods out of the room and up the stairs. I hear his bedroom door close from this distance, and only then, when I’m certain they’re both out of earshot, do I tell Will what Imogen said to me in the cemetery. I don’t hesitate because, if I do, I might just lose the nerve. I’m not sure how Will is going to respond.

“I saw Imogen today,” I begin. I fill him in on the details: how the school called, how I found her alone at the cemetery. How there were pills with her. I don’t dance around the words.

“She was angry but unreserved. We got to talking. She told me, Will, that she yanked that stool out from Alice’s feet the day she died,” I tell him. “If it wasn’t for Imogen, Alice might still be alive.”

I feel like a snitch as I say it, but it’s my duty, my responsibility to tell Will. Imogen is a disturbed child. She needs help. Will needs to know what she has done so that we can get her the help she deserves.

Will goes stiff at first. He’s at the sink with his back toward me. But his posture turns suddenly vertical. A dish slips from his wet hands, falls to the sink. It doesn’t break, but the sound of a dinner plate hitting the sink is loud. I jump because of it. Will curses.

In the moments of silence that follow, I offer, “I’m sorry, Will. I’m so sorry,” as I reach out to touch his shoulder.

He turns off the water and comes to face me, drying his hands on a towel. His eyebrows are lowered, his face flat. “She’s messing with you,” he says incontrovertibly. The denial is clear as day.

“How do you know?” I ask, though I know that what Imogen told me is true. I was there. I heard her.

“She wouldn’t do that,” he says, meaning that Imogen wouldn’t help her mother die. But the truth of the matter, I think, is that Will doesn’t want to believe she would.

“How can you be sure?” I ask, reminding him that we barely know this girl. That she’s been a part of our life for only a few long weeks now. We have no idea who Imogen is.

“There’s this animosity between you and her,” he says, as if this is something petty, something trivial, and not a matter of life and death. “Can’t you see she’s doing it intentionally because it gets a rise out of you?” he asks, and it’s true that Imogen doesn’t behave this way toward Will and the boys. But that doesn’t change things. There’s another side to Imogen that Will can’t see.

My mind goes back to our conversation this morning about the photograph on Imogen’s phone. “Were you able to recover the photos?” I ask, thinking that if he found the photo, there will be proof. He’ll be able to see it the way that I do.

He shakes his head, tells me no. “If there was a photograph, it’s gone,” he says.

His carefully chosen words come as a punch to the gut. If there was a photograph. Unlike me, Will isn’t sure there ever was.

“You don’t believe me?” I ask, feeling bruised.

He doesn’t answer right away. He thinks before he speaks.

In time he says, expression thoughtful, arms folded across his chest, “You don’t like Imogen, Sadie. She scares you, you said. You didn’t want to come here to Maine and now you want to leave. I think you’re looking for a reason—” he begins, tiptoeing around the truth. His truth. That I’m manufacturing a reason to leave.

I hold up a hand and stop him there. I don’t need to hear the rest of it.

Only one thing matters. He doesn’t believe me.

I turn on my heels and leave.



SADIE


I spend another fitful night tossing and turning in bed. I give up the fight near five a.m., slipping quietly from bed. The dogs follow, eager for an early breakfast. On the way out the bedroom door, I reach for the basket of laundry I left for myself to clean, hoisting it onto my hip. I walk out into the hall and down the stairs.

I’m approaching the landing when my bare foot lands on something sharp. It pokes me in the arch of the foot. I sink to the steps to see what it is, resting the laundry basket on my lap. In the darkness, I feel blindly for the offending item, taking it into the light of the kitchen to see.

It’s a small silver pendant on a rope chain, now coiled into a mound on my palm. It’s broken, snipped in two, not at the clasp but in the center of the chain so that it can’t go back together again. Such a shame, I think.

I clasp the pendant between my fingers, seeing the one side is blank.

I turn it over. There on the other side is an M. Someone’s initial. But whose?

Hers isn’t the first name that comes to me. I think of Michelle and Mandy and Maggie first. But then the thought arrives, crashing into me, knocking the wind from my lungs.

M for Morgan.

In the kitchen, I suck in a sudden breath. Did this necklace belong to Morgan?

I can’t say with certainty. But my gut thinks so.

What is this necklace doing in our home? There isn’t one good reason why it would be here. Only reasons I’m too scared to consider.

I leave it on the countertop as I turn and make my way to the laundry room. My hands are shaking now, though I tell myself it’s theoretical only. The necklace could just as well belong to a Michelle as it could to Morgan Baines. Perhaps Otto has a crush on some girl and planned to give this to her. A girl named Michelle.