The Other Mrs (ARC) Read online

  questions. “What kind of questions?” I ask.

  “Can you tell me, Dr. Foust, where you were last night around

  eleven o’clock?” the officer asks. In other words, do I have an

  alibi for the time the homicide occurred?

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  MARY KUBICA

  Last night Will and I watched TV together, after we’d put

  Tate to bed. We’d lain on different sides of the room, him spread

  out on the sofa, me curled up on the love seat as we do. Our al-

  located seats. Shortly after we’d gotten situated and turned on

  the TV, Will brought me a glass of cabernet from the bottle I’d

  opened the night before.

  I watched him for awhile from my own seat, remembering

  that it wasn’t so long ago that I would have found it impossi-

  ble to sit this far away from Will, on separate sofas. I thought

  fondly of the days that he would have handed me the wine with

  a lengthy kiss to the lips, another hand feeling me up as he did

  so, and I would have found myself easily wiled by the persua-

  sive kiss and the persuasive hands and those eyes. Those eyes!

  And then, one thing would have led to the next and, soon after,

  we would have giggled like teenagers as we tried to hastily and

  noiselessly make love on the sofa, ears tuned in to the creaks of

  the floorboards above us, the rasp of box springs, footsteps on

  the stairs, to be sure the boys still slept. There was a magnanim-

  ity about Will’s touch, something that once made me feel giddy

  and light-headed, drunk without a drop to drink. I couldn’t get

  enough of him. He was intoxicating.

  But then I found the cigarette, a Marlboro Silver with lip-

  stick the color of strawberries along its filter. I found that first, followed shortly after by charges for hotel rooms on our credit

  card statement, a pair of panties in our bedroom that I knew

  weren’t mine. I realized at once that Will was magnanimous

  and intoxicating to someone other than me.

  I didn’t smoke. I didn’t wear lipstick. And I was far too sen-

  sible to leave my underwear lying around someone else’s home.

  Will just looked at me when I shoved the credit card state-

  ment under his nose, when I asked him outright about the hotel

  charges on our bill. He appeared so taken aback that he’d been

  caught that he didn’t have the wherewithal to manufacture a lie.

  Last night, after I’d finished that first glass of wine, Will of-

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  fered to top me off and I said yes, liking the way the wine made

  me feel weightless and calm. The next thing I remember was

  the siren rousing me from sleep.

  I must have fallen asleep on the love seat. Will must have

  helped me to bed.

  “Dr. Foust?” the officer asks.

  “Will and I were here,” I tell him. “Watching TV. The eve-

  ning news and then The Late Show. The one with Stephen Col-

  bert,” I say as Officer Berg transcribes my words onto a tablet

  with his stylus. “Isn’t that right, Will?” I ask and Will nods his

  head and confirms that I am right. It was The Late Show. The one with Stephen Colbert.

  “And after The Late Show?” the officer asks, and I say only that after The Late Show we went to bed.

  “Is that right, sir?” Officer Berg asks.

  “That’s right,” Will says. “It was late,” he tells the officer. “After The Late Show, Sadie and I went to bed. She had to work in the morning and I, well,” he says, “I was tired. It was late,” he says

  again, and if he notices the redundancy, he doesn’t show it.

  “What time was that?” Officer Berg asks.

  “Must’ve been around twelve thirty,” I say because even

  though I don’t know for sure, I can do the math. He makes

  note of this, moving on, asking, “Have you seen anything out

  of the ordinary over the last few days?”

  “Such as?” I inquire, and he shrugs, suggesting, “Anything

  unusual. Anything at all. Strangers lurking about. Cars you don’t

  recognize, cruising by, surveilling the neighborhood.”

  But I shake my head and say, “We’re new here, Officer. We

  don’t know many people.”

  But then I remember that Will knows people. That when I’m

  at work all day, Will has been making friends.

  “There was one thing,” Will says, speaking up all of a sud-

  den. The officer and I turn to him at the same time.

  “What’s that?” asks Officer Berg.

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  MARY KUBICA

  But just as soon as he’s said it, Will tries to renege. He shakes

  his head. “Never mind,” he says. “I shouldn’t have brought it

  up. I’m sure it means nothing, just an accident on my part.”

  “Why don’t you let me decide,” Officer Berg says.

  Will explains, “There was a day not so long ago, a couple of

  weeks maybe. I’d taken Tate to school and headed out on a few

  errands. I wasn’t gone long, a couple of hours tops. But when I

  came home, something was off.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, the garage door was up for one. I would’ve bet my

  life I put it down. And then, when I came inside, I was nearly

  knocked over by the smell of gas. It was so potent. Thank God

  the dogs were okay. Lord only knows how long they’d been

  breathing it in. It didn’t take long to find the source. It was

  coming from the stove.”

  “The stove?” I ask. I tell Will, “You didn’t tell me this.” My

  voice is flat, composed, but inside I feel anything but.

  Will’s voice is conciliatory. “I didn’t want you to worry for

  nothing. I opened the doors and windows; I aired the house out.”

  He shrugs and says, “It probably wasn’t even worth mentioning,

  Sadie. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It had been a busy morn-

  ing. I was making French toast; Tate and I were running late.

  I must have left the burner on in a mad scramble to get out the

  door on time. The pilot light must have blown out.”

  Officer Berg dismisses this as an accident. He turns to me

  now. “But not you, Doctor?” he asks. “You haven’t noticed any-

  thing out of the ordinary?” I tell him no.

  “How did Mrs. Baines seem the last time you spoke to her,

  Doctor?” Officer Berg asks me now. “Was she…” he begins,

  but I stop him there and explain that I don’t know Morgan Ba-

  ines. That we’ve never met.

  “I’ve been busy since we arrived,” I say, apologizing though

  there’s really no need to. “I just never found the time to stop

  by and introduce myself,” I tell him, thinking—though I don’t

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  dare say it; that would be insensitive—that Morgan Baines also

  never found the time to stop by and introduce herself to me.

  “Sadie’s schedule is fast and furious,” Will interjects, so that the officer doesn
’t judge me for not making friends with the neighbors. I’m grateful for this. “She works long shifts, nearly every day of the week it seems. My own schedule is the opposite. I teach

  only three courses, which overlap with Tate’s school schedule. It’s intentional. When he’s here, I’m here. Sadie’s the breadwinner,”

  Will admits with no indignity, no shame. “I’m the stay-at-home

  dad. We never wanted our children to be raised by a nanny,” he

  says, which was something we came up with long ago, before

  Otto was born. It was a personal choice. From a financial stand-

  point, it made sense that Will would be the one to stay home.

  I made more money than him, though we never talked about

  things like that. Will did his part; I did mine.

  “I spoke to Morgan just a couple of days ago,” he says, answer-

  ing the officer’s question for me. “She seemed fine, well enough

  at least. Their hot water heater was on the fritz. She was waiting

  on a repairman to see if it could be fixed. I tried to fix it myself.

  I’m handy enough,” he says, “just not that handy.

  “Do you have any leads?” Will asks, changing topics. “Any

  signs of forced entry, any suspects?”

  Officer Berg flips through his tablet and tells Will that he

  can’t reveal too much just yet. “But,” he tells Will, “what I can

  say is Mrs. Baines was killed between the hours of ten and two

  last night,” and there, on the arm of the sofa, I sit up straighter, staring out the window. Though the Baines’s home is just out

  of view from where I sit, I can’t help but think about how last

  night as we were here, drinking wine and watching TV, she was

  there—just beyond my viewpoint—being murdered.

  But that’s not all.

  Because every night at eight thirty in the evening, the last

  ferry leaves. Which means that the killer spent the night among

  us, here on the island.

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  MARY KUBICA

  Officer Berg stands up quickly, startling me. I gasp, my hand

  going to my heart.

  “Everything alright, Doctor?” he asks, gazing down at me,

  trembling.

  “Fine,” I tell him. “Just fine.”

  He runs his hands down the thighs of his pants, straighten-

  ing them. “I suppose we’re all a bit jumpy today,” he tells me,

  and I nod my head and agree.

  “Anything Sadie and I can do,” Will tells Officer Berg as

  he walks him to the front door. I rise from my seat and follow

  along. “Anything at all, please let us know. We’re here to help.”

  Berg tips his hat at Will, a sign of gratitude. “I appreciate that.

  As you can imagine, the entirety of the island is on edge, people

  fearful for their lives. This kind of thing doesn’t bode well for

  tourism either. No one wants to visit when there’s a murderer

  on the loose. We’d like to get this wrapped up as quickly as we

  can. Anything you hear, anything you see…” he says, voice

  drifting, and Will says, “I understand.”

  The murder of Morgan Baines is bad for business.

  Officer Berg says his goodbyes. He hands Will a business card.

  He’s about to leave, but before he does he has one last inquiry.

  “How’s the house treating you?” he asks off topic, and Will

  replies that it’s been alright.

  “It’s dated and, as dated things go, has issues. Drafty windows,

  a faulty furnace that we’ll need to replace.”

  The officer grimaces. “A furnace isn’t cheap. That’ll run you

  a few grand.”

  Will tells him he knows.

  “Shame about Alice,” Officer Berg says then, meeting Will’s

  eye. Will echoes his sentiment.

  It isn’t often that I broach the subject of Alice with Will. But

  there are things I find myself wanting to know, like what Alice

  was like, and if she and I would have gotten along if we’d ever

  had the chance to meet. I imagine that she was antisocial—

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  though I’d never say that to Will. But I think that the pain of

  fibromyalgia would have kept her at home, away from any sort

  of social life.

  “I never would have pegged her for the suicide type,” Offi-

  cer Berg says then and, as he does, I get the sense that my in-

  stinct was wrong.

  “What does that mean?” Will asks, a hint of defensiveness

  in his voice.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Officer Berg says, though clearly he does

  because he goes on to tell us how Alice, a regular at Friday night

  bingo, was affable and jolly when he saw her. How she had a

  smile that could light up a room. “I guess I just never under-

  stood how a person like that winds up taking their own life.”

  The space between us fills with silence, tension. I don’t think

  he meant anything by it; the man is a bit socially awkward. Still,

  Will looks hurt. He says nothing. I’m the one to speak. “She

  suffered from fibromyalgia,” I say, realizing Officer Berg must

  not know this, or maybe he’s one of those people who thinks

  it’s more of a mental disorder than a medical one. Fibromyal-

  gia is highly misunderstood. People believe it’s made up, that

  it isn’t real. There is no cure, and, on the surface, a person ap-

  pears to be fine; there’s no test that can be used to diagnose fi-

  bromyalgia. Because of this, the diagnosis is based on symptoms

  alone—in other words, widespread pain that can’t otherwise be

  explained. For this reason, a large portion of physicians them-

  selves question the credibility of the condition, often suggesting

  patients see a psychiatrist for treatment instead. It makes me sad

  to think about, Alice in so much pain and no one believing it.

  “Yes, of course,” Officer Berg says. “It’s such a terrible thing.

  She must have really been hurting to do what she did,” he says,

  and again, my eyes go to Will. I know that Officer Berg doesn’t

  mean to be rude; in his own, awkward way, he’s offering his

  sympathy.

  “I liked Alice a lot,” he says. “She was a lovely lady.”

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  MARY KUBICA

  “Indeed she was,” Will says, and again Officer Berg mum-

  bles, “Such a shame,” before he says a final goodbye and goes.

  Once he’s gone, Will heads quietly to the kitchen to start din-

  ner. I let him go, watching out the narrow pane of glass along-

  side the door as Officer Berg pulls his Crown Vic from our

  drive. He heads uphill, about to join his cohort at the Baines’s

  home, or so I think.

  But then he doesn’t go to the Baines’s home. Instead he pulls

  his car to the end of the drive across the street from theirs, at

  the home of the Nilssons. Officer Berg steps out. He leaves the

  car running, red taillights bright against the darkness of night. I watch as Berg places something inside a mailbox and closes the

  door. He returns to his car, disappearing over the
crest of the hill.

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  Camille

  I disappeared that night after Will and Sadie met. I was full of

  anger, of self-loathing.

  But I couldn’t stay away from Will forever. I thought about

  him all the time. He was there every time I so much as blinked.

  Eventually, I sought him out. A little internet surfing told me

  where he lived, where he worked. I looked for him. I found what

  I was looking for. Though by then he was older, grayer, with kids,

  while in all those years, I hadn’t changed much. My gene pool

  was apparently a good one. Age couldn’t touch me. My hair was

  still was the color of rust, my eyes an electric blue. My skin had

  yet to betray me.

  I put on a dress, a black off-the-shoulder dress. I put on

  makeup, perfume. I put on jewelry. I did my hair.

  I followed him for days, showed up where he least expected

  to see me.

  Remember me? I asked, cornering him in a deli. I stood too close. I grasped him by the elbow. I called him by name. Because there’s nothing that excites us more than the sound of

  our own name. It’s the sweetest sound in the world to us.

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  MARY KUBICA

  Corner of Madison and Wabash. Fifteen years ago. You saved my

  life, Will.

  It didn’t take but a moment for him to remember. His face

  lit up.

  Time had taken its toll on him. The strain of marriage, of

  parenting, of a job, a mortgage. This Will was a burned-out

  version of the Will I met.

  It was nothing I couldn’t fix.

  He just needed to forget for awhile that he had a wife and kids.

  I could help him with that.

  I gave him a wide smile. I took him by the hand.

  If it wasn’t for you, I said, leaning in to whisper the words in his ear, I’d be dead.

  There was a spark in his eyes. His cheeks flushed. His eyes

  swept me up and down, landing near my lips.

  He smiled, said, How could I ever forget?

  He lightened up, he laughed. What are you doing here?

  I tossed my hair over a shoulder, said, I was outside, just passing by. I thought I saw you through the window.

  He touched the ends of my hair, said it looked nice.

  And that dress, he said, followed it up with a long, low whistle.

  He wasn’t looking at my lips anymore. Now he was looking