The Couple Next Door

“So maybe we need to show Anne the video, too.”

Marco takes a sudden step toward her. He doesn’t have to play the part of a desperate man—he is a desperate man. He could throttle her right now if he wanted to. But she doesn’t look scared, she looks excited. Her eyes glitter, and he can see her breasts rising and falling rapidly as she breathes. Perhaps it’s danger she wants, more than anything else. The thrill. Perhaps she wants him to throw her onto the bed they’re both standing beside. For a brief moment, he considers it. Would she not blackmail him then? Not likely.

“You’re not showing that video to anybody.”

She takes her time responding. She looks right in his eyes. Their faces are mere inches apart. “I would rather not show it to anybody, Marco. I would like this to be just between the two of us. But you’ve got to work with me here. You must be able to get some money.”

Marco thinks furiously. He doesn’t have any money. He doesn’t know how to get any. He will have to buy time. “Look, give me some time to figure things out. You know what a shit show my life is right now.”

“Things haven’t exactly turned out as you planned, have they?” she says. “I presume you expected to get the baby back?”

He wants to hit her, but he stops himself.

She looks at him appraisingly. “Fine. I’ll give you some time. I won’t show anyone the video—for now.”

“How much money are we talking about here?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

It’s less than he was expecting. He would have expected her to ask for more, an amount more in keeping with her flamboyant nature. But if he pays her, she’ll ask for more, and more—that’s the way it is with blackmailers. You never get out from under them. So the amount she’s naming now is meaningless. Even if he pays her and she destroys the video in front of him, he’ll never be certain there are no copies. His life is totally destroyed, on so many fronts.

“I think that’s fair,” she says.

“I’m leaving now. Stay away from Anne.”

“I will. But if I get impatient, if I don’t hear from you, I might call.”

Marco pushes past her out of the bedroom and goes down the stairs and out the sliding glass kitchen doors without looking back. He’s so angry he can’t think straight. Angry and scared. There’s proof. Proof that he took the baby. This changes everything. Anne will know. And he could go to jail for a very long time.

At that moment he doesn’t see how things can get any worse. He enters his own backyard through the gate from Cynthia’s patio. Anne is out there watering some plants.

Their eyes meet.

TWENTY-FIVE

Anne sees Marco come from Cynthia’s backyard, and her eyes go wide. She is shocked into perfect stillness, the watering can in her hand. Marco has been at Cynthia’s. Why? There’s only one reason he would be at Cynthia’s. Anne asks him anyway, from across the yard. “What were you doing over there?” Her voice is cold.

Marco’s got that deer-in-the-headlights look, when he’s caught red-handed and doesn’t know what to do. He’s never been good at improvising. She almost feels sorry for him. But she can’t feel sorry for him, because right now she hates him. She drops the watering can and runs past him and through the back door into the house.

He follows after her, calling desperately, “Anne! Wait!”

But she doesn’t wait. She runs upstairs; she’s sobbing loudly now. He follows on her heels up the stairs, pleading with her to talk to him, to let him explain.

But he has no idea how he will explain. How will he explain why he was sneaking over to Cynthia’s without revealing the existence of the video?

He expects Anne to go into their bedroom and throw herself down on the bed in tears, which is what she usually does when she’s upset. Maybe she’ll slam the door in his face and lock it. She’s done it before. She’ll come out eventually, and it will give him time to think.

But she doesn’t run into their bedroom and fling herself, crying, onto their bed. She doesn’t lock him out of their bedroom. Instead she runs down the hall into the office. He’s right behind her. He sees her drop to her knees in front of the air-intake grate.

Oh, no. God no.

She tears the grate off, sticks her hand inside, and rips the cell phone off the side of the air duct. He feels sick. She puts the phone in her palm, holds it up to him, the tears streaming down her face. “What the hell is this, Marco?”

Marco freezes. He can’t believe this is happening. Suddenly he has to fight the urge to laugh. It’s comical, really, all of it. Cynthia’s video. This. What the hell is he going to tell her?

“This is how you’ve been communicating with Cynthia, isn’t it?” Anne accuses him.

He stares at her, momentarily baffled. Just in time he stops himself from saying, Why would I use a cell phone to call Cynthia when she’s right next door? His hesitation suggests something else to her.

“Or is it someone else?”

Marco can’t tell her the truth—that the hidden cell phone she now has in her hand was the only way he could communicate with his accomplice in the kidnapping of their baby. With the man who is now dead. Marco has hidden an untraceable, prepaid cell phone in the wall, to use for calling his partner in an unforgivable crime. She thinks he’s been having an affair—with Cynthia or someone else. His immediate instinct is to keep her away from Cynthia. He will make something up.

“I’m so sorry,” he begins. “It’s not Cynthia, I swear.”

She screams and throws the phone at him, hard. It clips him on the forehead and bounces to the floor. He feels a sharp pain above his right eye.

He pleads with her. “It’s over, Anne. It meant nothing. It was just a few weeks,” he lies, “right after Cora was born and you were so tired. . . . It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do it—it just happened.” He’s blurting out every excuse he can think of.

She glares at him in disgust and rage, tears smearing her face, her nose running, her hair a tangled mess. “You can sleep on the couch from now on,” she says bitterly, her voice edged with pain, “until I figure out what to do.” She pushes past him into their bedroom and slams the door. He hears her turn the lock.

Marco slowly picks the phone up off the floor. He touches his forehead where the phone struck him; his fingers come away bloody. Absently, he turns the cell phone on, automatically swipes the pattern to unlock the phone. There is a record of his calls—all are to one number. All unanswered.

Marco tries to find a way through his fear and confusion. Who could have known that Bruce had Cora? Had Bruce told someone else about their plan, someone who then turned on him? It seemed unlikely. Or had he been careless? Had someone seen the baby and recognized her? That also seemed unlikely.

Idly, Marco looks down at the cell phone in his hand and, with a jolt, notices the missed-calls symbol. It wasn’t there the last time he looked. The ringer is turned off, of course. Who would be calling him from Bruce’s phone? Bruce is dead. Marco presses REDIAL, his heart hammering behind his ribs. He hears the phone ring. Once, twice.

And then a voice he recognizes. “I was wondering when you’d call.”

? ? ?

Anne cries herself to sleep. When she wakes, it’s dark outside. She lies in bed, listening carefully for sounds in the house. She hears nothing. She wonders where Marco is. Can she even stand the sight of him? Should she kick him out of the house? She hugs her pillow close to her body and thinks.