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He hung up on her. Her husband. Her cheating, cheating husband. Tanner Stahd, the teenage god.
Well, you knew what he was when you married him, right?
They had a lot of things to work out. More, since their fateful ten-year reunion. But she’d stood by him through all these fifteen years since high school graduation, even though there had been plenty of rough patches. Ha. Rough patches? They’d been through rough landscapes, planets . . . universes.
But . . . he’d given her Owen. Her child. The love of her life. She smiled, but then her thoughts returned to Tanner, and her features set. Their last fight had been a real doozy. Screaming and yelling, and Delta had even swept their wedding photo to the hardwood bedroom floor, where it had smashed down and shattered when she’d found further proof of his dallying, this time with one of his receptionists. Hell, maybe it was with both of them. Maybe at the same time. That’s what she’d coolly thrown at him, and he’d been so infuriated, he’d kicked the wedding picture into the wall, where a corner of the metal frame had punched into the sheetrock. The noise had woken Owen. Delta had rushed to soothe him back to sleep and then had stalked back to the bedroom she still shared with Tanner.
“It’s the last time,” she’d told him through gritted teeth.
“I’m not having an affair with Amy or Tia,” he shot back in cold fury. “And I’m certainly not having a threesome. They work for me, and they’re professional, just like Candy.”
Candy was his nurse at the nutrition clinic he ran using his father’s health products, which had actually seen their day and, after a scare of traces of lead and God knew what else found in the mix, had fallen out of favor and off the shelves. Les Stahd had lost nearly all his fortune, but he’d managed to hang on to his business, such as it was at that point, but not his wife. Lori had swanned off to greener pastures with an older gentleman still in control of his money. Les had then made a play for his first wife, Tanner’s mother, again, who’d seemed interested for a while, but had then also drifted away. Luckily for Les, Lori’s greener pastures had turned out to be dried-up wasteland, apparently. Her new man cut her loose, and she’d returned to Les, wiser and contrite. Delta wasn’t entirely convinced of Lori’s conversion, but whatever. Les and Lori were together again.
Tanner didn’t see either of his parents or his stepmother any longer. And so far, he’d kept his hands away from Candy, but maybe because she was about six feet tall with an even taller, larger husband and two teenage boys, also tall and large. Amy and Tia were young and luscious, barely older than Delta had been that last year of high school. The kind of women Tanner invariably eyed lasciviously.
Prior to the high school reunion, she’d made herself believe she and Tanner were a team. But then everything had blown apart. Amanda had been there. Cool, blond, and still beautiful, with a wealthy, far less attractive husband whom she ignored most of the night and whom she’d since divorced. Amanda had hung up her acting aspirations and become a lawyer. Her husband was one, too. Delta had caught Tanner and Amanda in a tight embrace, even though Tanner had sworn he despised her for lying about being pregnant, which was the way Tanner wanted to remember those weeks after graduation, when she’d supposedly been pregnant and miscarried. To this day, Delta wasn’t sure whether Amanda had miscarried or simply lied to steal Tanner away from her. Either one could be the truth, but what did it matter? Tanner Stahd was a liar and a cheat.
Amanda hadn’t explained the reunion embrace, but then Amanda never explained anything, and Tanner had said she was reading too much into two old friends catching up. Oh, was that what it was? It had been up to Delta to decide what to do, but as Owen was only a year old at the time, she just couldn’t up and leave her husband. She wanted them to try to be a family, so she determined she would work things out with him.
Fast-forward to now. Tanner’s infidelity had only increased since the reunion. It was almost as if he didn’t care enough anymore to even put up a pretense. He was an inveterate cheater and always would be. The marriage was on a long, slow road to destruction and probably had been since the beginning.
So she was going to stop by the clinic, quickly, and see what he had to tell her. It was unlikely to be anything she cared to hear. Excuses, most likely. She still didn’t want to go, but it was after hours, and the clinic would be empty, so . . . sure. Might as well see what he had to say one more time.
She pulled into the Stahd Clinic and drove her Audi into the back of the lot, out of the expanded circle of illumination from the streetlight, in a space by the back doors. She hurried up the steps and found them locked. Well, hell. If he hadn’t left the front doors open, then she was out of here. She didn’t have time for this. Her father was in the early stages of some kind of mental decline, and Mom didn’t like to leave him alone for too long. This meeting of the Englewood Academy’s kindergarten parents had been set for weeks, and she’d agreed to babysit, though Delta had promised she and Tanner wouldn’t be late. Then Tanner had begged off at the last minute, claiming he had to work—par for the course—so Delta had gone by herself . . . and been entertained and flattered by that single dad, Jonah Masters . . . or Masterer . . . something like that.
She threw the strap of her purse over her shoulder, circled the building by its brick-lined, cement walkway, and entered through the first set of double doors that led into the clinic. They were open, as were the inner doors, as it turned out, and she pushed into the clinic’s waiting room. Toward the left was the reception counter, its silver metal curtain pulled down and locked as it was nearly 8:00 p.m. The waiting room’s gray upholstered, steel-framed chairs were tucked against the wall; an array of dog-eared magazines had been stacked neatly on tables and filed in a rack attached to the wall in tidy rows.
Delta walked toward the door that led to the inner sanctum, grabbed the knob, twisted and pushed, but met resistance. For a moment, she wondered if she’d been locked out, which instantly annoyed her. Had he already forgotten he’d asked her to stop by? But then she realized the knob was turning in her hand.
She pushed again, and the door opened a crack. Something was up against it.
“Tanner!” she called through the crack in the door. With a sound of disgust, she pressed harder, throwing her shoulder into it to shove back whatever was holding the door closed. Her force caused it to suddenly give way, and she stumbled into the room, hanging on to the knob, but slipping, the heel of her right foot twisting. She fell forward, and her right hand hit a stain on the carpet; she felt moisture. Her left hand went down, and something sliced into her palm. A knife. She yanked her hand back and, in that same moment, saw the body. Lying on the floor. Smashed between the door she’d thrust open and the wall.
She’d fallen onto her hands and knees. Her ankle throbbed, and she’d lost her heel. Her left hand was bleeding. She stared at the body in total shock.
“Tanner,” she whispered.
His chest was covered in blood, his white shirt stained with spreading red spots in a half-dozen places. Knife wounds? In a daze, she picked up the knife that had cut her. It was one from their set at home. A steak knife he’d taken to work to cut the apples and pears he took for afternoon snacks. Her brain couldn’t connect.
“Tanner,” she whimpered. She dropped the knife. Her pulse rocketed into high gear. “Tanner!”
His eyes were closed, but he was breathing.
She hesitated. Was this some kind of gruesome, sick prank?
But no. Blood was still seeping, soaking into the cloth. Oozing up between the tiny rips in the shirt. Knife slits. Real. It was all real. Oh, God. Oh, God!
“Tanner!” she shrieked. His breaths were shallow. Labored. Slowing . . .
Her phone.
She staggered back to her feet. Her right ankle throbbed. She’d done something to that foot. She was always injuring that foot.
Her purse had flown off her shoulder when she’d fallen to her knees. She stumbled forward, scooping it up. Her phone was in there . . . somewhere . . . somewhere . . .
Someone stabbed him.
Fear sliced through her. She dropped the phone. Picked it up, gazed at her husband, her breath coming fast, quaking.
