My Lovely Wife

Millicent was right about that.

“Oh my god,” Holly said. She clasped her hands on her head and closed her eyes, as if trying to block out the world. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”

Millicent took a step back.

I stepped forward. “Holly,” I said. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t stop. It was like she couldn’t even hear me. When she smacked the side of her head with an open hand, I glanced back at Millicent. She was staring at Holly and looked too scared to move. Millicent had frozen.

I raised my voice. “Holly.”

Her head jerked up.

She dropped her hands.

Holly’s face had contorted into something angry, something almost feral. It felt like I was seeing what Millicent was so afraid of.

“You should have died in that accident,” she said to Millicent. It sounded like a growl.

Millicent moved closer, using me as a shield, and she gripped my arm. I half turned to tell her to call the police, but she spoke first. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Thank god the kids aren’t here to see this.”

The kids. A picture of them flashed in my mind. I saw Rory and Jenna in the room instead of us. I felt their fear as this insane woman confronted them.

“Holly,” I said.

She couldn’t hear me. She couldn’t hear anyone. Her eyes were fixed on Millicent, who was trying to hide behind me.

“You bitch,” Holly said.

She lunged toward me.

Toward Millicent.

In that moment, I did not make a decision. I did not run through the options in my mind, weighing the pros and cons, using logic to arrive at the best possible course of action. If I had gone through all that, Holly would still be alive.

Instead, I did not think, did not decide. What I did next came from somewhere much deeper. It was biology, self-preservation. Instinct.

Holly was a threat to my family, so she was a threat to me. I reached for the closest thing. It was right next to me, leaning against the wall.

A tennis racket.

Fifteen

A few days pass before someone on TV asks about Owen Oliver Riley.

Josh, my earnest, young Josh, brought up the serial killer’s name during a press conference. Ever since Lindsay was found, the police have been holding press conferences at least every other day. They are held in the late afternoon so the highlights can be replayed on the evening news.

Josh’s question will be today’s highlight.

“Has it occurred to you that Owen Oliver Riley is back?”

The lead detective, a balding man in his fifties, did not look surprised at the question.

Josh is far too young to remember any details about Owen Oliver, but he is an intelligent, ambitious reporter, capable of surfing the Internet at light speed. He just needed someone to give him a starting point.

For this, I went back to some of the most famous serial killers. Several communicated with the press, sometimes even the police, and that was long before e-mail was invented. But given how easy it was to track anything electronic, I decided against using e-mail. I went old-school.

Owen never wrote letters to anyone, so all I had to do was create something just plausible enough to be real. After several attempts, from long to short, poetic to rambling, I ended up with a single line:

It’s good to be home.

—Owen

I wore surgical gloves while handling the paper, envelope, and stamp. When it was sealed and ready to go, I spritzed the envelope with a cheap drugstore cologne. It smelled like a musky cowboy.

That was just to mess with Josh.

Then I drove across town and dropped it in a mailbox. Three days later, Josh brought up Owen at the press conference but not the letter. Maybe Josh is keeping this to himself, or maybe the police have asked him not to mention it.

For now, I am content to wait and see, because there is something else I need to do. Last night, I was out watching Annabelle Parson’s apartment. Finally. The meter maid who’d caught my eye was more difficult to find than the others. For Lindsay and Petra, all I had to do was look up their names on the Internet. Annabelle was smarter than that, no doubt to hide herself from all those angry people who got a parking ticket from her. To find out where she lived, I had to follow her home one evening. It was a little annoying.

Last night, I waited outside her apartment to see if she would return home alone or if she was seeing someone. Around midnight, I received a text from my son.

Out again? It’s going to cost you.

What do you want?

You mean, how much do I want?

This time he doesn’t want another video game. He wants cash.

The next day, I meet him at home after work. He is already on the couch, channel surfing, texting, and playing a game. Millicent is not home yet. Jenna is upstairs.

I sit down next to him.

He glances up, eyebrows raised.

This is a mistake. I should have told Millicent everything. We could have sat down with both Rory and Jenna, and explained that nothing is going on.

Dad just likes to take long drives in the middle of the night. Occasionally while wearing a suit.

I hand Rory the cash.

He is so busy counting the money he isn’t paying attention to the TV, where they are replaying press conference highlights on the news. Rory is oblivious to the real reason his father is out at night. All he has to do is look up.

* * *

• • •

We have tacos for dinner, made with leftover chicken, and they are delicious. My wife is a good cook and insists on making dinner every night, but the quicker she throws something together, the better it seems to be.

I don’t tell her that.

Dessert is peach slices sprinkled with brown sugar, and we each get one snickerdoodle cookie. Rory is the first to roll his eyes, though Jenna is right there with him. Millicent has always been stingy with dessert.

We all eat it differently. Jenna licks the brown sugar off her peaches, then eats the cookie and finishes the rest of the peaches. Rory eats the cookie first, then the peaches, although it’s all sort of a blur, because he inhales everything so fast. Millicent alternates between the fruit and the cookie, a bite of one and then a bite of the other. I mash the peaches and cookie together and eat it all with a spoon.

Tomorrow is our movie night, and we discuss what we will watch. Last week, it was a talking animal movie. Rory always groans at first, but he loves those as much as anyone. Both of the kids like sports movies, so we pick one about a baseball youth league trying to make it to the world championships. We vote on this like it’s a serious election, and Batter Up wins by a landslide.

“I’ll be home by five thirty,” I say.

“Dinner at six,” says Millicent.

“Are we done here?” Rory asks.

“Who’s Owen Oliver Riley?” Jenna says.

Everything stops.

Millicent and I look at Jenna.

“Where did you hear that?” Millicent says.

“TV.”

“Owen is a horrible man who hurt people,” I say. “But he can never hurt you.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry about Owen.”

“But why are they talking about him?” Jenna asks.

“Because of that dead girl,” Rory says.

“Woman,” I say. “Dead woman.”