AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My phone buzzes in my palm. An unlisted number flashes on the screen. “Hello?” I answer, praying it isn’t a reporter.
All I hear is breathing. “Hello?” I say again. “Who’s there?”
“I know you did it,” says a voice. A gravelly voice, asexual and slinky like a snake.
“Did...what?” I ask. The hotel room strobes in my mind. My limbs entangled with Patrick’s. I think of the desk clerk’s eyes on mine, seeing me, knowing me.
“You killed him,” says the voice.
My heart drops. “What?”
“You know you did it,” it repeats. “And I know, too.”
There’s a click,and the line is disconnected. I let the phone fall from its cradle between my shoulder and ear. My fingers curl tightly around the steering wheel.You know you did it.
I glance out the window to the dark square of asphalt. Those clicks, those footsteps—is that who called me?Issomeone watching me?
I hit the start button, and the engine roars to life. The headlights illuminate the chain-link fence, the building next door, a line of dumpsters. As I back out, the headlights bounce off the cars, the attendant’s little kiosk, the pay machine. No one is there. No one is hiding, at least no one I can see.
32
LYNN
FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2017
It’s past nine by the time Patrick gets home. I arrange myself in a casual pose, but I feel anything but casual right now. My brain is a swarm of bees. My heart is like a hamster running frantically on a wheel. It’s Friday night. There’s no way Patrick can use working late as an excuse. He was with her. I can tell.
Patrick walks through the hall but stops when he spies me in the living room. “Hey?” He sounds uneasy. I’m sitting in the dark. Unmoving. Just staring.
“W-Where are the kids?” Patrick asks.
“Sleeping.”
“Already?”
I sip from my glass of wine. “I drugged them.”
“Youwhat?”
I set the glass down on the table with a sharp clink. “With melatonin. It’s perfectly safe. I figured they wouldn’t want to hear this. And don’t look at me like that. You’ve done far worse.”
The grandfather clock, a gift from my parents for our first anniversary, ticks in the hallway. Next door, I hear our neighbor’s weed whacker—that psycho tends his lawn at the weirdest hours. I don’tlike how caught Patrick looks. I want to say my heart is breaking, but I’ve become so convinced that Patrick is a shithead that I’m almost desensitized to all feeling.
“I know what you did to Greg Strasser.” My hand curls around the pocketknife I found in the drawer. I have it with me just in case. “You disgust me.”
Patrick’s mouth drops open. A choked laugh escapes from his throat. “Lynn...”
“You were with his wife tonight, too. Don’t try and deny it. And you weren’t home when I got back from the benefit. Where did you go?”
“I-I told you.” His eyes search my face. He looks trapped. “I was getting Pepto. For my stomach.”
I cross my arms. He’s not a good liar. “I could tell them you have motive. I could tell them you were missing when I got back. I could put you away for life.”
“What the fuck, Lynn?” Patrick’s voice is a string held taut. “Why are you doing this?”
“Or I could keep this all to myself. But only if you stop seeing her. She’s not a good person, Patrick. She arranged with Greg to kill her first husband on the operating table. Did you know that?”
Patrick’s eyes roll back in his head, revealing slick, white membrane. In a blink, he’s advancing toward me, his steps long, his nostrils flaring. I reel back, surprised by his sudden movements, my fingers grappling around the knife’s shaft. “Don’t you say that about her,” he growls. His breath smells like wine. “Don’tever.”
