AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My phone has been pinging nonstop with calls and texts from nearly everyone. Lily is practically the only one who hasn’t called or texted to express her condolences, which is revelatory. The truth sometimes lies in what we don’t say, rather than what we say.
My mother comes to me in the afternoon and gently says, “There are things that we’ll need to do, Nina, when you’re ready. We’ll need to go to the funeral home to make arrangements and pick out a casket for Jake. We’ll have to call the hospital and let them know that he’s gone, and call the life insurance company.” I appreciate that she sayswe. I am not alone. She and I will do these things together, though Jake’s funeral will have to wait, because for now, my husband’s body is evidence in a murder investigation.
“You just look so tired, Nina,” my mother then says, reaching out to stroke my hair. “We don’t have to do any of this today. Why don’t you go back to bed for a while. Sleep. It doesn’t matter if we do these things now or later.”
She’s right, it doesn’t, because either way Jake will still be dead.
CHRISTIAN
That night after Lily is asleep, I search the house for a gun.
I leave the lights off. I don’t want to risk waking her. I start in the bedroom, where Lily sleeps less than ten feet from me. I inch open a dresser drawer, though my eyes remain fixed on Lily lying in bed to make sure she sleeps through the sound of it.
I open the drawer only as far as necessary to slip a hand inside, running my hand under and over her clothes and along the niches of the drawer. I feel between articles of clothing, and then I inch the first drawer closed and guide a second drawer open. Lily’s is an upright five-drawer dresser. I start at the bottom, working my way to the top, feeling less conspicuous as I search the bottom drawers but then, the higher I go, the more upright I stand, the more fully exposed I become. I don’t want Lily to know what I’m doing.
The fourth drawer is open when suddenly Lily flounders in bed. She’s like a fish out of water, suffocating, kicking its fins. I watch her struggle, the white sheet getting tangled around her legs and feet. She mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep. I push the drawer gently closed as Lily bolts upright in bed and she gasps, though I can see in her unfocused eyes that she’s not conscious, that she’s still somehow asleep and dreaming, having a nightmare.
I go to her. I press lightly against her shoulders and lay her back into bed, where she rolls by instinct onto her side, pulling her knees into her. I draw the blanket over her, and then I lie there beside her, flat on my back, biding time until her breath evens and I can get back out of bed and resume my search.
I finish the last two drawers. I search her bedside table. I check her vanity.
Downstairs I drift around the house. I search in drawers and cabinets. I carry a chair over and search things like above the kitchen cabinets where neither of us go. I lift up the floor registers. I look inside a wide vase, beneath flowers. I come up empty.
I don’t find a gun.
But just because I don’t find a gun, doesn’t mean there isn’t one here.
Lily’s work bag is on the floor by the garage door. It’s a large tan leather tote bag, big enough to hold textbooks and a laptop. I go to the bag. I crouch down beside it and unzip it. It has pockets, both on the inside and the outside of the bag, which Lily was ecstatic about when I bought her the bag for her birthday years ago. Now I run my hand along the inside of the leather, rubbing up against a book, a wallet, keys, feeling for something hard and cold like gunmetal.
I hear the rustle of something from behind me.
“Christian,” she says.
I rise up, looking slowly back over a shoulder, blinking the world into focus.
I turn to find Lily behind me. She stands ten feet away, by the window in the moon’s infinitesimal glow. She wears a thin white nightgown that hangs to the upper thigh, though in the near absence of light, she’s almost translucent, like a ghost. Her hair hangs long. It’s tangled, falling into her face where she leaves it, not bothered by the fact that she can barely see past the bangs. I can just make out the whites of her eyes. Her head is at an angle and her hands are hidden behind her back.
I realize that I’m both fascinated by and terrified of my wife.
“What are you looking for in my bag, Christian?” she asks. Her voice is the exact opposite of a balm, whatever that is. It isn’t soothing or restorative, though the tone itself is melodious and sweet. But it’s in what I know, or what I think I know, that I find it so disturbing.
Lily steps closer. My eyes are on her hands, which I can’t see.
Bludgeoning someone to death with a rock in self-defense is one thing. But bringing a gun to a forest preserve requires forethought, and the intent to harm or kill. It means killing someone in cold blood. If Lily went there intending to harm Jake, it means she knew Jake would be there. It wasn’t a coincidence that they were both there at the same time.
Maybe Jake didn’t lead Lily down that secluded path and into the woods.
Maybe Lily led Jake.
This raises doubt about everything I ever believed about my wife.
“I have to know,” I breathe out. “Did you shoot him, Lily?”
Lily watches me, unspeaking.
“Did you?” I ask again.
“That hurts, Christian,” she says, her voice quivering, on the verge of tears when she finally speaks. What I can see of her face is pained. Deep ruts form between the eyes. The edges of her lips point downward. She takes another step toward me, her feet so light and airy on the floors that if I didn’t know any better, I’d think she had levitated. “Do you really think I could do something like that?” she asks, coming even closer now so that I could touch her if I wanted to, though my arms remain stationary at my sides, while Lily’s hands are fixed behind her back.
