My Lovely Wife

“Oh. Her.” Jenna shrugs and looks over at her phone. “So are we done?”

Millicent nods, and they pick up their phones, clearing the table while texting. I rinse off the dishes, Jenna helps put them in the dishwasher, and Millicent gets rid of whatever is left of the tacos.

* * *

• • •

While we get ready for bed, Millicent turns on the local news. She watches the press conference highlights and then turns to me. Saying nothing, she asks if I had something to do with it.

I shrug.

She raises an eyebrow.

I wink at her.

She smiles.

Sometimes, we do not have to say anything.

We weren’t always like this. In the beginning, we spent entire nights talking, just like all young couples do when they fall in love. I told her all my stories. Couldn’t get them out fast enough, because I had finally found someone who thought they were fascinating. Who thought I was fascinating.

Eventually, she knew all my old stories, so we traded only new ones. I texted her in the middle of the day to tell her the smallest things. She would send me a funny picture depicting how her day was going. I had never known someone so well, nor shared my life so completely with another. This continued until we got married, even afterward when Millicent was pregnant with Rory.

I still remember the first thing I didn’t tell her. The first thing of any importance, I mean. It was the car. We had two; hers was the newer one, and mine was a beat-up old truck that held all my tennis equipment. When Millicent was eight months pregnant, my truck broke down. It needed a thousand dollars in repairs, and we didn’t have the money. Any money we did have had been squirreled away, bit by bit, to afford a crib and a stroller and the mountains of diapers we were going to need.

I didn’t want to upset her, didn’t want to make her worry, so I made a choice. I told her the truck broke down but not how much it would cost. To pay for the repairs, I opened a new credit card only in my name.

It took more than a year to pay it off, and I never told Millicent. I never told her about the rest of the charges, either.

That was the first big thing, but we both stopped talking about the small things. We had a baby, then another, and her days became more exhausting than funny. She no longer recounted every little thing, nor did I tell her all the details about my clients.

We both stopped asking, stopping sharing the minutiae, and instead we stuck to the highlights. We still do.

Sometimes a smile and a wink is all we need.

Sixteen

Within twenty-four hours, Owen Oliver Riley is everywhere. His face is all over our local news and websites. My clients want to talk about him. Those who aren’t from here want more details. Those who are from here have not decided it he’s really back. Kekona, the local gossip, is in the middle on both counts.

Though she was born in Hawaii, she has been living here long enough to know all our legends, myths, and infamous residents. She doesn’t believe Owen Oliver is back. Not for one second.

We are on the court, and Kekona is working on her serve. Again. She thinks if she can just serve one ace after another, she doesn’t need to play the rest of the game. In theory, she is right. In reality, no one can do that. Not unless her opponent is a five-year-old.

“Owen could go anywhere to kill women, but they think he’s back here?” she says.

“If by ‘they’ you mean the police, then no, they haven’t said anything about Owen Oliver. It was just some reporter’s question.”

“Pfft.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“It means that’s ridiculous. Owen got away once. He has no reason to come back.”

I shrug. “Because it’s home?”

Kekona rolls her dark eyes. “Life is not a horror movie.”

She is not the only one who feels this way. Anyone who didn’t live through it the first time thinks it would be ridiculous for him to come back. They see this as Kekona does, like a choice that makes no rational sense.

But those who did live here, and are old enough to remember, believe Owen has returned home. Especially the women.

They remember what it was like to be scared whenever they were alone, indoors or out, because Owen snatched his victims from almost anywhere. Two disappeared from inside their own homes. One was in a library, another in a park, and at least three had been in parking lots. Two of these had been caught on security video. The footage was old and grainy; Owen looked like a big blur dressed in dark clothes and wearing a baseball cap. The videos have been on the news all day, all over again.

Today, I have a tennis lesson with Trista, Andy’s wife, but as I walk through the clubhouse I see her in the sports bar. She is watching the news on one of the big screens. Like her husband, she is in her early forties and couldn’t pass for younger. The ends of her hair are too blond, her eyes are always rimmed in black, and she has a deep, disturbingly natural tan. She is alone and drinking red wine at one o’clock in the afternoon. The bottle sits on the table.

I guess we are not having a lesson today.

From a distance, I watch her, unsure if I should get involved. Sometimes, my clients tell me more than I want to know. I’m like the hairdresser of exercise.

But I have to admit, it can also be interesting.

I walk up to Trista. “Hey.”

She waves and points to an empty chair, never taking her eyes off the TV screen. I have seen her drink plenty of times at parties and dinners, but I’ve never seen her like this.

At the commercial break, she turns to me. “I’m canceling our lesson today,” she says.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

She smiles, but it doesn’t make her look happy. It occurs to me that she might be upset with Andy. Maybe he has done something wrong, and I don’t want to get in the middle of it. I start to get up from the chair when she speaks.

“Do you remember what it was like back then?” she says, pointing at the TV. “When he was killing?”

“Owen?”

“Who else?”

“Of course. Everyone from here remembers.” I shrug and sit back down. “Did you ever go to The Hatch? A bunch of us used to drink there on Saturday nights, and all the TVs were tuned into the news. I think that’s where I—”

She takes a deep breath. “I knew him.”

“Who?”

“Owen Oliver. I knew him.” Trista picks up the bottle and refills her glass.

“You never told me that before.”

She rolls her eyes. “Not exactly something to be proud of. Especially because I dated him.”

“No way.”

“I’m serious.”

My jaw drops. Not an exaggeration. “Does Andy know this?”

“No. And don’t even think about telling him.”

I shake my head. No way would I tell him. I am not about to be the bearer of that news. “But how did you—”

“First, have some of this.” Trista pushes the bottle of wine toward me. “You’re going to need it.”

* * *

• • •

Trista was right. The wine dulled the horror of the story she told.