He Started It

No such luck for Felix. I went back to camp and gathered up his things before Eddie and Portia were awake. It wasn’t even seven in the morning. Sometimes daylight savings is a good thing.

I hid his things in the bushes near where we went swimming. They were buried well, so no one would stumble across them anytime soon. Last, I went back to our camp and made more instant coffee, like I had just woken up and hadn’t gone for a walk, hadn’t gone swimming, hadn’t killed my husband.

I make it sound easy, right? Like killing someone is an everyday thing for me. It isn’t, I promise.

What I can tell you is that the killing is the easy part. It’s the getting away with it that makes it so difficult. Eventually, Felix will be found. That’s a different set of problems than having him here.

Portia wakes up first. She holds her head as she walks over to me, obviously hung over.

‘Hey,’ she says.

‘Hi.’

She grabs a bottle of water and downs half of it. I drink my second cup of coffee. I did bring Felix’s cup back with me, I even washed it out with our antibacterial spray to get rid of any residue from the sleeping pills.

‘Is that coffee as bad as it smells?’ Portia says.

‘Yes.’

‘Can I have a cup?’

She doesn’t move to make it herself, she asks me to do it for her. Like she’s still a child, the baby.

I make her the cup. Portia takes a sip, makes a face. ‘Wow.’

‘Told you.’

She glances over to Eddie’s sleeping bag. ‘Of course the guys are still asleep.’

‘One is.’

‘Oh right. Felix gets up early.’ She glances around. ‘Is he already packed and ready?’

I take another sip of coffee. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Gone,’ I say. ‘He left.’

She is stunned, and then she gets it. ‘Oh shit. I knew you guys were fighting, but …’ She scuffs her toe in the dirt, scratching out a circle. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Did he say anything?’

I pull the note out of my pocket, the one I wrote yesterday. That’s how long I’ve known for sure. I also knew phones wouldn’t work out here. He couldn’t send me a text.

I can’t stay on this trip. It’s not doing us any good.

We’ll talk at home.

‘What a dick,’ Portia says. ‘Did he just walk out of the woods?’

‘Probably. I bet he called an Uber from the road. He can fly home from … I don’t know, Portland or wherever.’

‘Dick.’

I shrug. ‘Yeah. But you know, it’s comforting in a way.’

‘Is it?’

‘Sometimes it’s good to be reminded they can all be assholes. Like a genetic thing. So I don’t forget.’

‘Cheers,’ she says, holding up her coffee. We tap cups.

Do I think it’s going to work? That I’ll get away with it? Timing. It always comes down to timing.

I’ve laid the foundation, put everything in its place. The arguing everyone saw. The road trip no one wants to be on. The note. The plan to see him at home. When I get there and he’s not around, I’ll call the police and report him missing.

Without a body, a crime scene, or any suspicion of foul play, they’ll assume he has left me. They’ll have nothing to go on, no reason to suspect Felix is anything but a husband who had enough of his wife. I plan to be extra annoying to the cops to solidify that belief. I can be the woman no one wants to marry.

Maybe they’ll ping his phone. They won’t find it. What they will find, if they bother to get his phone records, is a bunch of calls and texts from me, from his boss, from his friends. He’ll be the man who just walked away and went on a road trip of his own.

That’s assuming Felix’s body doesn’t show up first.

One day it will. He will be a drowning victim. A husband was on his way to leaving his wife, he stopped to take a little bath in the lake before splitting.

That’s when things could get tricky. Maybe I’ll get away with it, or maybe I’ll have to use money to buy my way out of it. Good thing I’ve got that inheritance coming.

Down to the three of us, the Morgan siblings. We’re the only ones left.

‘I knew he wouldn’t make it,’ Eddie says. He’s rolling up the sleeping bags, including Felix’s. ‘He’s not the road-trip kind of guy.’

‘Shut up,’ I say. ‘Stop talking about him.’

We finish gathering everything up in silence. Before we leave, I head out to the woods to use the facilities. Also to check for that cell phone.

I may have been preoccupied with Felix, but I didn’t forget that music. I never could.

I dig around in what I think is the same spot, wishing I had picked up the phone the night before. Stupid me.

‘Lose something?’

Portia. She has followed me out here, maybe to retrieve that wallet or bury it a little better.

‘I hid some toilet paper out here last night,’ I say. ‘I didn’t want to leave it behind.’

‘Ah. Okay. Well, don’t let me interrupt.’ She keeps walking past me, carrying her own toilet paper roll.

I do not find the phone.

My nerves get to me before we leave. I keep checking and double-checking everything in my bag, in my head, around the campsite. Making sure I didn’t forget anything.

This is the part not many talk about. The nerves. They feel electric, almost painful. I’m convinced it’s a form of panic because, really, it’s fear. Fear that I’ll be caught, fear that I’ve screwed up. Fear that everyone is in on it but me.

That last one is the worst.

But I don’t throw myself on the ground and scream. I don’t hyperventilate. No tantrums, just movement. I cannot be in this place for one second longer.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Eddie says. He spits out the instant coffee. ‘This is like … mildewed water or something.’

‘Mildewed water?’ Portia says.

‘Yeah.’ He doesn’t explain further.

Once all our things are picked up, we stop at the path and take one last look. The area is as pristine as we found it. You’d never know anyone was here.

‘Come on,’ Portia says. She leads the way, Eddie goes next. I’m last.

‘These road trips are so screwed,’ Eddie says. ‘We always lose people along the way.’

Indeed.

The path out is uneventful. We don’t talk until we get to the car, which is right where we left it. Nothing looks amiss, there are no flat tires, and I hear the doors unlock when Eddie hits the button. Even the chirp sounds perky.

Two more days. That’s what I’m thinking. Two. More. Days.

The first time, I had no idea how many more days we’d be on the road, or how long it would take to reach the ocean. It didn’t matter after Nikki ran away, because we had to go to the desert. The ocean had to wait.

I talked about the desert like it was a town. Eddie never told me I was wrong or stupid, which should have tipped me off. Geography was never my strongest subject. Maybe Eddie didn’t know or maybe he just kept his mouth shut. Grandpa knew, though. He never said a word, just let me go on and on like there was a place called Desert.