The Wife Before

“They were in her shed, out in the open. If I found them, I’m sure someone else came across them too. I always suspected someone had. They were too visible and way too easy to find. And one night I heard someone outside the shed. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Dylan’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and as the fire kept roaring, turning the pages to ashes, a shadow seemed to pass over his face. No longer was he smiling. His features stiffened and his eyes locked right on mine.

“Enough with the questions, Samira.” His voice was different. Deeper. “Melanie is gone. Calvin is dead. The journals are burning. Just let it go.”

My heart sank. “Dylan . . . did you have something to do with what happened to Melanie?”

He tossed his head back and drew in a deep breath, then lowered his head with a slow exhale. “You and Roland are happy now, right? Your husband is innocent and you’ve proved it. He’s about to make millions off of this crazy-as-hell comeback story, and you can sleep peacefully knowing that. Isn’t that all that matters? Why backtrack?”

“You’re still stealing from him, aren’t you?”

Dylan was quiet, but his jaw was set and his left eye was twitching.

“What did you do?” I asked, nearly breathless. I could hardly hear my own voice, my heart was beating so loudly.

“I didn’t do shit.”

I closed my eyes briefly and shook my head. “You know, this whole time I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure how the hell Calvin could have even found Miley. I mean, me and my brother searched her name high and low and not much came up for her. And I kept asking, how did Calvin even figure out where to find them? After finding out what they did to him, I know for a fact they wouldn’t have reached out to him. He was deranged as fuck.”

Dylan’s eyes were glistening now. He looked down at the fire, but I clapped my hands, forcing his attention back on me. “Nah-uh! You tell me now, or I swear to God I’ll tell Roland you stole from him—that you’re probably still stealing from him, you shady motherfucker!”

He shot to a stand and walked around the firepit, bending low to get in my face. “It’s not about what I did, okay?” he hissed through gritted teeth. “It’s about Melanie always trying to ruin everyone’s lives for her own personal gain. She was a selfish fucking bitch and she needed to go away, and I remembered Miley telling me about this Calvin guy all the time and how she felt bad for what they did to him. She told me Melanie told on him because he didn’t want her anymore and that clearly made Melanie angry. She made Miley lie too. Why do you think she was so fucked up? She was reckless, Samira, and she ruined that man’s life. It was no wonder he was so goddamn deranged. Then it turns out that I stopped wanting Melanie and she was threatening to tell Roland that I’d taken advantage of her. Then she mentioned the money, threatened my sister, and like always, she took shit too far, and you don’t fuck with my family. She threatened to sue Yvette, but Yvette didn’t know shit. Yvette thought it was my money—my account. It was all on me, but do you think Melanie cared about that? Do you think she showed sympathy? No. She only wanted to hurt me, and she knew in order to do that, she had to attack my family—and that shit? That’s what really pissed me off.” He sat down beside me and I froze, pressing my back against the arm of the seat with wide, damp eyes. “When I found Calvin on Facebook, I set up a fake account and messaged him. I pretended to be a guy Melanie had accused too. We connected that way and he told me all these things about how if he could find her, he’d make her pay. Set her straight. So, I brought him to her. As soon as he was off parole, I booked a rental car for him so he could drive here. I told him how to find Miley and told him to have Miley text Melanie to so they could both be at her apartment. I was surprised he even showed up. Of course Melanie didn’t show up for her sister and was even trying to pack up and run away, so I took matters into my own hands and brought her to him myself.”

“But why? Why would you do something like that?”

“Because I was fed the fuck up, and if she was going to blow up my life, I wanted to blow hers up too. But I didn’t think he’d kill her. Maybe just scare her, rough her up a bit, give her the reminder that she too had demons and needed to mind her own goddamn business. I even thought she’d keep the money going to my sister, let it be a secret between us. I mean, I assumed Calvin would demand money or do something to ruin her life, not end it. His crazy ass drove her all the way home and only God knows what he did to her before he actually killed her. Hell, I’m surprised he even made it that far with her.” Dylan’s Adam’s apple bobbed again and he scratched the stubble on his jaw. “Didn’t think he’d hurt Miley at all, but he did. He forced her to overdose. I was the one who found her body. I cleared her apartment. Scrubbed the hell out of it. Turned in those keys. At this point, Melanie was missing and hadn’t come back to the mansion, Miley wasn’t answering the phone, so I went to check things out. That’s when I found Miley facedown on the table with a needle in her arm. My plan had backfired. Melanie was gone and he obviously had something to do with it, and I knew it could trace back to me if he’d fucked up or had gotten caught with her, so in order to throw the scent off the both of us, I changed Miley’s clothes to something Melanie would have worn—which was much harder than I thought it would be, considering they had two very different styles. Fortunately, I did find something, and after that, I put her body in Melanie’s car, which was still in the parking lot, and drove to the nearest cliff. It was tough to do it, but once I got Miley’s footing right on the gas pedal, it handled itself. The car went full speed and drove right over the cliff.”