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At 6:00P.M., Ollie opens the refrigerator and proclaims we have nothing for dinner. “I can cobble something together,” I tell him. “There’s some chicken breasts in the freezer.”
“Nah, that’s okay. We need other things, too. I’ll go out. You look tired.”
I certainly can’t argue that. Before he leaves, Ollie pulls me into a half hug and kisses the top of my head. I try to relish the affection, but all I feel is numb panic. Then I watch him shrug on his coat and head out the front door. After his car is gone, I collapse against the doorframe as though all my bones have broken. Ollie worked from home today, and because I’ve had the day off, too, we’ve been under one another’s noses in this little house for hours. With him gone, it feels like I can finally breathe again. Finallythink.
Except ten minutes later, I hear the keys in the lock again. The front door squeaks open.
“That was quick!” I chirp as I clomp down the stairs. “Did you just get takeout?”
But Ollie has no shopping bags in his hands. He’s even left the front door open, a cold wind blowing in stray bits of leaves. Whenhe sees me, he just stares. Except there is something empty about his gaze. It seems like he’s looking through me.
Horror carves through me. “I-Is everything okay?”
“Give me the baby,” Ollie says in a low voice.
I start. Then I press Freddie to my chest, my hand against his back. “W-What? Why?”
“Give me the baby.” He holds out his arms.
Something in his voice makes my stomach drop. I hand over the baby, staring down at my trembling hands. Ollie stands over me, his nostrils silently flaring. My heart hammers.
“I just got a group e-mail from Reardon about the Greg Strasser murder case—I guess they’re looking for any tips they can get,” Ollie says in a low voice. “Some images from a neighbor’s security camera show the cars in the cul-de-sac the evening he was killed.”
He sets his mouth in a wobbly line. My brain goes dark.
“Why, Laura?” Ollie’s gaze is pointed toward the front wall. His hands look huge against our child’s tiny body. “Why is itour license platein one of the images?”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. My body feels hot with shame and terror. I don’t want this to be the way I break the news. I wanted to do it onmyterms, not with it forced upon me. But here it is, and here we are, and I have to.
“Because I was there,” I admit.
Ollie’s brown eyes blink rapidly, as if I’ve spit in his face. “You?”
“It’s not what you think!” I cry.
“Then whatwasit?”
Years from now, I will see this moment as a great divide separating our relationship from what it once was to the muckish mess it becomes. Years from now, I’ll also wonder why I didn’t just say I was suffering from postpartum depression, or that I’d been seized with a bout of mania, or, hell, that I had a split personality and it was theotherLaura who did what she did that night. But the truth was also polluting me, stabbing at me, scooping me hollow.
“J-Just a second,” I say. And then I turn up the stairs. Ollie lurches toward me as though afraid I’m going to use this as an opportunity to escape. Is this how he sees me now? As a criminal? “I’m going into the office,” I protest. “I just need to get something.”
The office desk drawer groans as I pull it open. Through tear-streaked vision, I fumble to the very back and find the scrunched-up piece of paper I’ve hidden there. I’d hoped to never read this again.
The afternoon before the Aldrich benefit, I’d received three directives from Greg in my work locker. The first was about the pitfalls of co-sleeping. The second the benefits of a stay-at-home parent. And the third was an unsigned, typewritten missive that read,I want to have more of a role.
Like a goddamn ransom note. It felt like a death sentence.
I’d stood there, paralytic. If I denied Greg contact with Freddie, he would tell Ollie. He would demand a paternity test. When the test came back positive, he would go to the court and ask for fifty-fifty custody. Hell, maybe he could make a case for gettingfullcustody. I didn’t know how family court worked. Maybe judges favored the wealthier parent. Maybe judges favored the parent who didn’t lie. I needed to talk some sense into Greg. We couldn’t keep communicating through these messages; I needed to confront him and make himstop this.
And so I’d written him that text the morning of the benefit about talking face-to-face. I’d explain to him that he was scaring the shit out of me. He’d understand he was being irrational.
I remember walking into the benefit alone. It might have been the party of the year, but I was too anxious to notice. I barely took my gaze off the door, wanting to know the exact moment Greg entered so that I could immediately corner him. After about thirty minutes of anticipation, my stomach in knots, there was a flurry of activity at the entrance. Kit Manning-Strasser entered wearing a gray dress and perfect makeup. People surrounded her as though she was a celebrity, and Kit smiled and trilled and chirped, but her eyesseemed distracted. I thought of Greg’s e-mails, that thing with Lolita.Little do you know,I’d thought with disdain.That’s only the tip of the iceberg of the secrets he’s been keeping.
Kit made a zigzag across the floor, dazzling donors, speaking privately to an older man in a tux, gulping down a martini. I kept my gaze pinned to the front doors, but Greg never appeared. And then it hit me:He stayed home.I was so stupid. Greg wouldn’t want to come to this after the Lolita bullshit. He wouldn’t want to face the whispers.
I felt like I was drowning in guilt and doom. And so I decided: If Greg wouldn’t come to me, then I would go to him. I knew where he lived. I would leave the benefit and go.
I felt sudden, revived courage. Yes.Yes.It was good to have a plan.
