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“No shit. Can I see it?”
“No.”
“You want to make love again?”
She tried to focus on him. It was difficult. He seemed remarkably sober all of a sudden. “I gotta figure out whad ta do already.”
“You mean, like the morning-after pill? Hey, maybe we’re making a baby. Would that be so bad?”
“You’re nuts, Penske.”
“You got any handcuffs?”
“Left ’em at the station. We’re here . . . the reune . . . the reune,” she tried to explain.
“You’re really messed up.” He laughed. “How much did you drink?”
“You know . . . you . . .”
But then he was kissing her, and she was passing out.
I need help. . . was her last thought.
* * *
Delta looked at the clock. 1:00 a.m.
She lay in the bed beside her husband, who was snoring to beat the band—the same song that always played when he drank too much. She’d left the drapes open and cracked the window, and outside a shy three-quarter moon was playing hide-and-seek behind trails of wispy clouds. When the clouds would disappear, the view of their backyard and Owen’s play structure—mostly constructed for use when he was older—was thrown into sharp relief.
She threw back the covers after a few more minutes when she realized she would never fall asleep. It was still fairly early, anyway. Tanner had just gone deep with the drinks and flamed out early, while she’d come home and relieved her mother from babysitting duty, then made herself a cup of chamomile tea. She hadn’t drunk enough wine to feel the effects, but she’d ended up with a blasting headache anyway. She’d then looked in on Owen, who slept on his stomach with his legs tucked in and his little butt pushed upward, one arm slung around his favorite stuffed dog, Doggie. She’d tried to keep him sleeping on his back, as recommended, but once he’d found he could flip over, that was the way he stayed, no matter how many times she tried to put him on his back again. This time, she checked his breathing and determined he was fine.
She’d been half-asleep when Tanner stumbled in, declaring loudly, “You left me,” as he moved into their en suite bath, as if it had been some kind of surprise. Or maybe it was a rebuke that she’d taken the car and forced him to find another way home. When he climbed into bed and threw an arm over her and promptly fell asleep, she picked up his limp hand and flung it away from herself. Sleep had eluded her after that, so that was the first time she’d tiptoed down the hall and peeked into Owen’s room. She settled him on his back that time as well, only to watch him snuggle into his favorite position, with his legs tucked under and his butt upward.
Her love for her husband might have faded away, but her love for her son was monumental. Mega-fierce. All she lived for.
Now she asked herself: Could she imagine a world without Tanner but with Owen? Would Tanner even allow it? He professed to love Owen, and did, probably, as best he could, given that all love was a diluted emotion for Tanner Stahd.
But could she do it . . . manage without him?
The thought of just her and Owen was heady indeed.
She wished Tanner was just gone.
Dreamily, she thought about how convenient it would be if Tanner should die. Poof, gone, leaving her with his business and, most of all, Owen, with free rein to rear him any way she chose.
There was a scratch pad on the end of the kitchen counter near the door to the garage. Her eye fell on it, and she picked it up. A moment later, she searched through the junk drawer next to the stove for a pen. She found one that advertised Woody’s Auto Body.
Sitting back down, she thought for a moment, then wrote:
She wanted him dead. It was much simpler than divorce, much cleaner, and she would end up with so much more than if they had to split up what they owned together. She thought about poison, or a drug overdose, but that seemed much too risky. Too traceable. An accident of some kind would be best. He owned a gun, though he didn’t keep it loaded now that they had a child, a little boy named . . . Zachary . . . but no one knew he’d taken the bullets out. He kept the gun at work, in a hiding place in his desk. If the nurses and receptionist at the clinic knew of it, they kept their mouths shut.
She planned his murder. Every day, every moment when she was awake, she planned and planned and planned. And every day that went by just convinced her more that he had to go. Her anger grew as she plotted. A gun didn’t seem like the right weapon. She wanted to bash him over the head with a candlestick . . . the fireplace poker . . . the baseball bat he still revered from his long-ago days in Little League.
Delta sat up and looked at the words, scratching out the candlestick and fireplace poker. Too old-time melodramatic. She moved into Tanner’s office—her office, where she did all the bookkeeping, but they called it his, naturally—and opened the laptop on the desk, quickly inserting what she’d just written into the word-processing program.
But as her rage grew, so did her impatience and a sense of macabre need for pain.
And one day, while she was cutting up an apple, the knife slipped and nicked her finger. Blood oozed up in a perfect, circular drop. She sucked on her finger and looked at the knife and dreamed.
