The Other Mrs.(79)

These things terrify me, because I think that if they do belong to Otto, he is regressing. It’s a defense mechanism, a way to cope. Taking on childish behavior to avoid facing a problem head-on. My own therapist used to say this about me, telling me I acted like a child at times when I didn’t want to tackle adult issues in my life. Perhaps Otto is doing the very same thing. But why? On the surface he seems happy enough. But he’s the quiet type; I never know what’s going on inside his mind.

I think back on that therapist of mine. I was never very fond of her. I didn’t like the way she made me feel silly and small, the way she denigrated me when I expressed my feelings. It wasn’t just that. She also confused me with other patients.

Once I sank down into her leather swivel armchair and crossed my legs, took a sip of the water she always left on the table for me. She asked what had been happening lately, in that way she always did. Tell me what’s been happening. Before I could reply, she began to counsel me on how to sever ties with some married man I was seeing, though I wasn’t seeing a married man. I was married already. To Will.

I blanched in embarrassment for her other client, the one whose secrets she’d just shared.

There is no married man, I explained.

She asked, No? You broke it off already?

There was never a married man.

I stopped seeing her soon after.

Otto had a therapist back in Chicago. We swore we’d pick up the therapy when we moved to Maine. We never did. But I think it’s time we do.

I step past the doll. I go downstairs. I take the drawing with me.

A plate of French toast sits on the kitchen counter. That and a pot of coffee, keeping hot on the coffee maker’s warming plate. I help myself to the coffee but I can’t bring myself to eat a thing. As I lift the mug to my lips, my hands tremble, casting waves across the coffee.

Beside the plate of French toast is a note. Feel better, it reads, with Will’s signature closing, the ever-present Xo. He’s set my pills out for me. I leave them where they are, not wanting to take them until I’ve gotten some food inside of me.

Out the kitchen window, I see the dogs. Will must have let them outside before he left, which is fine. They’re snow dogs—huskies—in their element in weather like this. It’d be nearly impossible to get them back in before they’re ready to come.

In the backyard, the wind beats through the naked trees, making their limbs bend. It’s snowing, a heavy snow. I hadn’t expected so much. I’m surprised that school wasn’t canceled today. But I’m also grateful for it because I need this time alone.

The snow doesn’t fall vertically, because of the wind. It falls sideways instead, with abandon, forging snowdrifts across the yard. The sill of the kitchen window begins to collect with snow, burying me alive inside. I feel the weight of it on my chest. It’s harder to breathe.

I take a careful sip of the coffee, noticing that the pendant necklace I left on the counter early this morning is gone. I search the floor, behind the canisters, the junk drawer where we keep random things. The necklace is nowhere. Someone has taken it. I picture it lying there how I left it, the dainty chain coiled into a mound with the M on top.

The fact that it’s now missing only adds to my suspicion. This morning while I lay in bed, the four of them—Will, Otto, Tate and Imogen—were in the kitchen together. It would have been so easy for Imogen to slip that necklace from the countertop when no one was looking. I consider the threatening notes Morgan received. Would Imogen have sent those? Why, I wonder at first, and then just as quickly: Why not? I think of the way Imogen treats me. The way she scares me. If she could do this to me, she could just as easily do it to Morgan.

I leave the drawing where it is and carry my coffee to the laundry room. There I see that this morning, after I went back to bed, Will finished the laundry for me. The piles of clothes I left are gone. They’ve been replaced instead with an empty laundry basket and a clean tile floor.

I drop to my hands and knees beside the washing machine, looking beneath, grateful to find the bloodstained washcloth still there, and yet just as horrified as I was at seeing it for the first time. All the emotions come rushing back to me, and I know that I have to tell Will about this.

I leave the washcloth where it is. I go back to the kitchen to wait. I sit at the table. Otto’s drawing sits six feet away, the eyes of the decapitated head staring at me. I can’t stand to look at it.

I wait until nearly nine o’clock to call Will, knowing that by then he’ll have taken Tate to school. He’ll have dropped him off. He will be alone by now and we’ll be able to speak in private.

When Will answers, he’s on the ferry, heading to campus.

He asks how I’m feeling as he answers the call. I tell him, “Not good.” I hear the sound of the wind whipping around him, gusting into the handset. He’s outside, standing on the outer deck of the ferry getting peppered with snow. Will could be inside in the nicely heated cabin, but he isn’t. Instead he’s relinquished his seat indoors for someone else, and I think that this is so classic Will, to be selfless.

“We need to talk, Will,” I say, and though he tells me that it’s loud on the ferry, that this isn’t the best time, I say it again. “We need to talk.”

“Can I call when I get to campus?” he asks. Will talks loudly through the phone, trying to counter the noise of the wind.