The Other Mrs.(84)

“If I hurt you in any way,” I whisper, “I’m sorry. I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you.”

Only then does he acquiesce. He lets go of my wrist and I step quickly back.

“Why don’t you go lie down in your room,” I suggest. “I’ll bring you toast.”

“I’m not hungry,” Otto grunts.

“How about juice, then?”

He ignores me.

I watch, grateful that he turns and lumbers up the stairs to his bedroom, backpack still clinging to his back.

I go to the first-floor study and close the door. I hurry to the computer on the desk and open the browser. I go to look up the website to the ferry company to search for news on delays. I’m anxious for Will to be home. I want to tell him about my conversation with Otto. I want to go to the police. I don’t want to wait anymore to do these things.

If it wasn’t for the weather, I’d leave. Tell Otto I’m running out on an errand and not come back until Will is here.

As I begin to type in the browser, a history of past internet searches greets me.

My breath leaves me. Because Erin Sabine’s name is in the search history. Someone has been looking up Will’s former fiancée. Will, I assume, feeling nostalgic on the twenty-year anniversary of her death.

I have no self-control. I click on the link.

Images greet me. An article, too, a report from twenty years ago on Erin’s death. There are photographs included in the article. One is of a car being excavated from an icy pond. Emergency crews hover solemnly in the background while a wrecker truck lugs the car from the water. I read through the article. It’s just as Will told me. Erin lost control of her car in a wicked winter storm like the one we’re having today; she drowned.

The second image is of Erin with her family. There are four of them: a mother, a father, Erin and a younger sister who looks to me somewhere in between Otto’s and Tate’s ages. Ten, maybe eleven. The photograph is professional-looking. The family is in a street between an avenue of trees. The mother sits on a garish yellow chair that’s been placed there for purposes of this photograph. Her family stands around her, the girls leaning into their mother indulgently.

It’s the mother I can’t take my eyes off of. There’s something about her that nags at me, a round woman with shoulder-length brunette hair. Something strikes a chord, but I don’t know what. Something that hovers just out of the periphery of my mind. Who is she?

The dogs begin to howl just then. I hear it all the way from here. They’ve finally had enough of this storm. They want to come inside.

I rise from the desk. I let myself out of the study, padding quickly to the kitchen, where I yank open the back door. I step outside, onto the deck, hissing to the dogs to come. But they don’t come.

I move across the yard. The dogs are both frozen like statues in the corner. They’ve caught something, a rabbit or a squirrel. I have to stop them before they eat the poor thing, and in my mind’s eye I see the white snow riddled with animal blood.

The yard is covered in snowdrifts. They rise a foot high in some spots, the grass barely flecked with snow in others. The wind tries hard to push me down as I trek through the yard, making my way out to the dogs. The property is large, and they’re far away, pawing at something. I clap my hands and call to them again, but still they don’t come. The snow blows sideways. It gusts up the leg of my pajama pants and into the neckline of my shirt. My feet, covered in slippers alone, ache from the bitter cold. I didn’t think to put shoes on before I came outside.

It’s hard to see much of anything. The trees, the houses, the horizon disappear in the snow. I find it hard to open my eyes. I think of the kids still in school. How will they get home?

Halfway to the dogs, I think about turning around. I don’t know that I have it in me to make it all the way there. I clap again; I call to them. They don’t come. If Will was here, they would come.

I force myself to go on. It hurts to breathe; the air is so cold it burns my throat and lungs.

The dogs bark again and I run the last twenty feet to them. They look sheepishly at me as I come, and I expect to find a half-eaten cadaver lying between their feet.

I reach out, grabbing ahold of one of the girls’ collars and pulling, saying, “Come on, let’s go,” not caring if there’s a maimed squirrel there, but just needing to be back inside. But she just stands there, whining at me, refusing to come. She’s much too big for me to lug all the way home. I try, but as I do I stagger from the weight of her, losing balance. I fall forward to my hands and knees where there, before me, between the dogs’ paws, something sparkles in the snow. It’s not a rabbit. It’s not a squirrel. It’s much too small to be a rabbit or a squirrel.

And then there’s the shape of it, long and slender and sharp.

My heart races. My fingers tingle. The black specks return, dancing before my eyes. I feel like I could be sick. And then suddenly I am. On my hands and knees, I retch into the snow. My diaphragm contracts but it’s a dry heave only. I’ve had nothing to eat but a few sips of coffee. My stomach is empty. There’s nothing there to come back up.

One of the dogs nudges me with her nose. I latch on to her, steadying myself, seeing plainly that the object between the dogs’ feet is a knife. The missing boning knife. The blood on it is what’s piqued the dogs’ interest. The blade of the knife is approximately six inches long, same as the one that killed Morgan Baines.