The Other Mrs.(99)

I rise to my feet, foraging inside the dresser, under the bed, behind the curtain panels. And that’s when a fifth electrical outlet catches my eye, tucked behind the heavy drapery.

This outlet is not evenly placed as the others are—in the dead center of each wall—but disproportionately placed in a way that doesn’t make sense to me. It’s mere feet to the left of another outlet and, on close examination, looks slightly different than the rest, though an unsuspecting person would never notice. Only someone who very much believed her husband had something to hide.

I let my gaze fall to the doorway. I listen, making sure Will isn’t on his way up. The hallway is dark, empty, but it’s not quiet. Tate is wound up tonight.

I drop to my hands and knees. I don’t have a screwdriver, and so I plunge a thumbnail into the head of the screw. I turn and turn, warping the nail, tearing it low enough that it makes my finger bleed. The screw comes out. Instead of peeling the outlet cover away from the wall, it opens, revealing a tiny safe behind. There is no knife, no washcloth, no necklace there. Instead there’s a roll of cash, hundred-dollar bills mostly, which I quickly, ham-fistedly tally up, losing count, landing somewhere well into the thousands of dollars. My finger bleeds on the dollar bills. My heart races inside of me.

Why would Will be hiding this money in the wall?

Why would Will be hiding this money from me?

There’s nothing else there.

I don’t replace the contents of the safe. I hide that in my own dresser drawer. I drop the drapes back into place. I stand from the floor, press a hand to the wall to steady myself. Around me, the world spins.

When I get control of myself, I walk lightly from the bedroom and down the stairs. I hold my breath. I bite down hard on my lip as I descend the steps one at a time.

As I approach the bottom steps, I hear Will humming a happy tune. He’s in the kitchen, washing dishes, I think. The sink water runs.

I don’t go to the kitchen. I go to the office instead, turn the knob and softly close the door behind myself so there is no audible noise of the latch bolt retracting. I don’t lock the door; it would rouse suspicion if Will found me in the office with the door locked.

I check the search history first. There’s nothing there. It’s all been wiped clean, even the earlier search I found on Erin’s death. It’s gone. Someone sat at this computer after me, got rid of the internet search just like the knife and the washcloth.

I open a search engine. I type in Erin’s name for myself and see what I can find. But it’s all the same as I saw before, detailed accounts of the storm and her accident. I see now that there was never an investigation into her death. It was ruled an accident based on the circumstances, namely the weather.

I do a search into our finances. I can’t understand why Will would be hiding so much money in the walls of our home. Will pays the bills for us. I don’t pay much attention to them unless he leaves a bill lying around on the counter for me to see. Otherwise the bills come and go without my knowledge.

I go to the bank website. The passwords for our accounts are all nearly the same, some variation on Otto’s and Tate’s names and birth dates. Our checking and savings accounts seem to be intact. I close the site and look into our retirement accounts, the kids’ college savings, the credit card balance. These seem reasonable, too.

I hear Will call for me. Hear his footsteps go up and then down the stairs, looking for me. “I’m here,” I call out, hoping he doesn’t hear the tremor in my voice.

I don’t minimize the screen. Instead I enter another search: dissociative identity disorder. When he comes into the room and asks, I tell him I’m trying to learn more about my disease. We haven’t yet talked about how he knew and I didn’t. It’s just another thing he’s been keeping from me.

But now that I know about it, there’s a new worry: that I’ll simply up and disappear at any moment and someone else will take my place.

“I poured you a glass of Malbec,” he says, standing in the office doorway with it, carrying it in a stemless glass. He comes farther into the room, strokes my hair with his free hand. My skin crawls as he does and it takes everything in me not to pull away from his touch. “We were out of the cabernet,” he says, which he knows is my favorite wine. Malbec is decidedly more bitter than I like, but it doesn’t matter tonight. I’ll drink anything.

He peers over my shoulder at the website I’ve landed on, a general medical site that lists symptoms and treatment. “I hope you aren’t upset that I didn’t tell you,” he says by means of an apology. “You’d take it hard, I knew. And you were managing the condition quite well. I kept an eye on you, made sure you were fine. If I’d have ever thought things were turning problematic...”

He stops abruptly there. I glance up to face him.

“Thank you,” I say, for the wine, as he sets the glass on the desktop and tells me, “After everything you’ve been through today, I thought maybe you could use a drink.”

I could most certainly use a drink, something to calm and soothe me. I reach for the glass and angle it toward my lips, imagining the anesthetizing sensation as it slips down my throat and dulls my senses.

But my hand shakes as I do, and so I put the glass instantly back, not wanting Will to see how nervous I am because of him.

“Don’t worry yourself over this,” he says. With two free hands, he massages my shoulders, up my neck. His hands are warm and assertive. His fingers worm their way onto my scalp, through my hair, kneading the base of my skull where I’m prone to tension headaches.