The Couple Next Door

The man she married.

And then he sat there, in their kitchen, and told her that the dead man looked familiar.

She’s suddenly afraid of her own husband. She doesn’t know who he is or what he is. She is starting to understand what he’s capable of.

Had he ever loved her, or had he only married her for her money?

What does she do now? Does she go to the police with what she knows? What might happen to Cora if she did?

After a long time, Anne pulls herself up off the floor. She forces herself to walk quickly upstairs to the bedroom. Trembling, she pulls out an overnight bag and starts packing.

? ? ?

Anne gets out of the cab at the foot of her parents’ circular gravel drive. This is the house she grew up in. It is very grand. The large stone house with its lush, professionally tended gardens backs onto a wooded ravine. She pays the cabdriver and stands there for a minute with her overnight bag at her feet, looking at the house. The homes are set far apart here. Nobody will see her, unless her mother is home and happens to look out the window. She remembers vividly the day she stepped out of this house and climbed onto the back of Marco’s motorcycle and decided that she was in love.

So much has happened. So much has changed.

She hates to go back to her parents. It’s an admission that they were right about Marco all along. She doesn’t want to believe it, but she’s seen the evidence with her own eyes. She’d gone against their wishes when she’d married Marco—she’d known her own mind then, and her own heart.

Now she doesn’t know anything.

There at the end of her parents’ drive, from out of nowhere, Anne suddenly remembers where she saw the dead man. She trembles like a leaf in the wind, trying to make sense of this new information. Then she takes out her cell phone and calls another cab.

? ? ?

Marco tries Richard again, leaves another terse message on his voice mail. Richard is punishing him, keeping him out of the loop. He’s going to handle it himself and not let Marco know until it’s all over, when Cora is back safe and sound. If she does come back.

Even Marco admits to himself that maybe it’s better this way. If anyone can pull this off, it’s Richard. Richard with his bags of money and nerves of steel. Marco is exhausted, physically and emotionally. He wants nothing more than to lie down on his office couch, sleep for a few hours, and wake up to a phone call that Cora is home again, safe. But then—what happens after that?

He remembers there’s an open bottle of scotch in the back of one of his filing-cabinet drawers. He stops pacing, moves over to the filing cabinet, and pulls open the drawer. The bottle is half empty. He grabs a glass, also hidden in the filing cabinet, and pours himself a stiff one. Then he resumes his pacing.

Marco can’t face the possibility of never seeing Cora again. He is also terrified of being arrested and going to prison. He’s sure that if he is arrested, the lawyer most likely to be able to get him acquitted, Aubrey West, will no longer be acting for him. Because Anne’s parents won’t pay, and Marco doesn’t have the money to pay for a top-notch lawyer himself.

He refills his glass from the bottle, which is now sitting open on the blotter on his expensive desk, and realizes that he’s already thinking about what to do after he’s arrested. Arrest now seems inevitable. Anne won’t stand by him, not once she hears the truth from her own father. Why would she? She’ll hate him. If she had done this to him, he would never forgive her.

Then there’s Cynthia and the video.

His nose deep into his third drink, Marco for the first time considers telling the police the truth. What if he simply told Rasbach that yes, he met with Bruce—who turned out to be Derek Honig. Yes, he had business troubles. Yes, his father-in-law refused to help him out. Yes, he planned to take and hide his own baby for a couple of days to get the ransom money out of his wife’s parents.

But it wasn’t actually his idea. It was Derek Honig’s idea.

Derek Honig was the one who suggested it. He planned it. In Marco’s mind it was just a way to get a bit of an advance on his wife’s inheritance. No one was supposed to die. Not his accomplice. Certainly not his baby.

Marco is a victim in this, too. Not blameless, but still a victim. He was desperate, and he fell in with someone who gave him a false name, who manipulated him into the kidnapping for his own gain. A good lawyer like Aubrey West could spin it.

Marco could come clean with Detective Rasbach. Tell him everything.

Once Cora is back home.

He would go to prison. But Cora, if she survives this, would be with her mother. Richard would no longer have anything to hold over him. And Cynthia would be shit out of luck. Maybe he could even make sure she went to jail for attempted blackmail. For a minute he imagines Cynthia in a shapeless orange jumpsuit, with unwashed hair.

He looks up from his pacing, catches his reflection in the large mirror hanging on the wall across from the window, and barely recognizes himself.

THIRTY-TWO

Marco finally returns home, once it’s dark. He’s had too much to drink, so he leaves the car behind and takes a cab. He arrives home disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, his body racked with tension, even with all the alcohol in it.

He lets himself in the front door. “Anne?” he calls, wondering where she is. The house is dark and feels empty. It’s very quiet. He stands still, listening to the silence. Maybe she isn’t here. “Anne?” His voice is louder now, worried. He walks farther into the living room.

He stops when he sees her. Anne is sitting on the sofa in the dark, utterly still. There is a large knife in her hands; Marco recognizes it as the carving knife from the wooden block on their kitchen counter. The blood drops from his heart and pools in his feet. He takes a cautious step forward and tries to see her more closely. What is she doing sitting in the dark with a knife?

“Anne?” Marco says, more quietly. She appears to be in some kind of trance. She’s scaring him. “Anne, what happened?” He speaks to her the way someone might try to talk to a dangerous animal. When she doesn’t answer him, he asks, in the same gentle voice, “What are you doing with the knife?”

He needs to turn on the light. He moves slowly toward the lamp on the side table.

“Don’t come near me!” She holds up the knife.

Marco stops in his tracks, staring at her, at the way she’s holding the knife, as if she means to use it.

“I know what you did,” she says in a low, desperate voice.

Marco thinks quickly. Anne must have been talking to her father. Things must have gone horribly wrong. Marco is flooded with despair. He realizes how much he was relying on his father-in-law to save the day, to get Cora back for them. But clearly everything has fallen apart. Their baby is gone forever. And Anne’s father has told her the truth.

And now this last part, this final piece—his wife has lost her mind.

“What’s with the knife, Anne?” Marco asks, forcing his voice to stay calm.

“It’s for protection.”

“Protection from who?”

“From you.”

“You don’t need protection from me,” Marco says to her in the dark. What has her father been telling her? What lies? He would never intentionally harm his wife or child. It’s all been a terrible mistake. She has no reason to be afraid of him. You’re dangerous, Marco, with your plans and schemes. “Have you seen your father?”

“No.”

“But you’ve talked to him.”

“No.”

Marco doesn’t understand. “Who have you been talking to?”

“No one.”

“Why are you sitting here in the dark with a knife?” He wants to turn on the light but doesn’t want to startle her.

“That’s not true,” Anne says, as if remembering. “I did see Cynthia.”

Marco is silent. Terrified.