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We did have three children together. No one knew that Simon had never even met Clara.
I did cook and clean and take care of this house. I used his credit cards. I drove a car in his name, though my name was also on the insurance.
Everything circled back to us being a nice, normal family.
I looked down at my hand the following morning, after doing more housework, then putting something in the slow cooker for dinner since I would have to eat eventually, no matter how wobbly my stomach felt.
There was a ring there now.
On the fourth finger of my left hand.
Seth had passed it to me with a sigh.
“I can’t put it on you,” he’d said. “When I do it, I want it to be different.”
We’d both decided that an engagement ring would also further cement the idea that we were happy, that we were working toward marrying eventually. The kids just take up so much of your time, y’know? Who has time to plan a wedding?
See, it wasn’t just about an alibi for myself, though that was important.
It was about getting what was owed to me. Or, rather, to the kids. For this shitty lot they’d been dealt.
Simon was rich.
The kids were biologically his.
They deserved an inheritance.
And any woman who was legitimately with a man would ensure that her children got that.
So, yeah, I had on an engagement ring that felt strange and wrong on my finger as it finally happened.
There was the chime of the doorbell.
I stopped to scoop up Clara, just trying to further drive home the image of a woman waiting at home for her man, as I went to the door, opening it to the police.
I did everything right.
I acted surprised, then devastated at the news of Simon’s murder. Though the tears I mustered? Yeah, they were unadulterated relief. Like some part of me had been looking for the third-party confirmation that this man would never come near me or my kids again.
I didn’t have to worry about the makeup.
It was waterproof.
My mascara, not so much.
“Do you have any idea why your partner was in that area, ma’am?” the detective asked, having tripped over almost calling me Mrs. Dunn several times, which only confirmed that I’d put on a convincing show.
“No! He was supposed to be on a business trip to D.C.,” I said, brows pinching. “I can’t imagine what he would be doing in New Jersey, of all places,” I added, shaking my head.
It was there under the words.
I mean, we live in Rhode Island!
The questioning went on for a head spinning amount of time. Not, I felt, that they suspected me, but just trying to get a clearer image of Simon to try to figure out who’d killed him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, trying to jostle an increasingly hysterical Clara. “She’s overdue for a nap,” I said with an apologetic smile as the men winced at her wails.
They’d excused themselves, handing me a card, telling me they would be in touch.
I’d rushed to get Clara a bottle, then slumped down on the couch, completely exhausted.
Lying, it turned out, took a lot out of you.
I felt five years older suddenly.
But the worst part was over.
They wouldn’t have anyone else to question. Not really.
He had no friends.
His only living relative was in a nursing home with very progressed Alzheimer’s disease.
Who would they talk to?
People at his work?
Those same people that Simon would talk shit about constantly, would call dull and stupid and trashy?
They’d have nothing nice to say about him now that he was dead. Some might even have a good, therapeutic brain dump about what an awful man he was, how mean, how exacting.
The kind of man who would get himself murdered.
It was only a matter of time before they would let the case go cold, and all the paperwork was figured out.
I wouldn’t get the company. There were shareholders. I didn’t want it anyway. I just wanted what was in the bank, what the house was worth.
It would make sense, too, for a grieving woman with three small children to move, to downsize, to start over.
It wasn’t like the cops would be watching me at that point. There were always more murders to solve.
I didn’t dare move out of the house at first, though. And Seth and I had decided that it just made more sense for him to bring the kids up to Rhode Island, to a rental house, where we could spend the days and nights together, while still letting me escape “to work”—as we told the kids—during the day, when in reality, I was in the house with Clara, making mental plans for everything inside of it.
It happened slowly, then all at once.
The body was released.
The funeral arrangements were made.
Then all the business stuff rolled in, and got handled.
Everyone forgot about Simon Dunn.
