Mrs. Haggerty had been the one who’d first discovered Steven and Theresa’s affair when Steven had made the mistake of bringing Theresa to our house while I’d taken the kids to visit my parents. The old woman had cornered me against the mailbox as soon as I’d returned home, asking me if I knew about the attractive blond woman my husband had been entertaining while I was gone. I know they say “don’t shoot the messenger,” but I’m pretty sure whoever came up with that line of horseshit didn’t live across the street from someone like Mrs. Haggerty.
Exhaust bloomed hot around my ankles as Vero’s Honda inched past me into the garage. As soon as the car was safely inside, I let go of the door.
The full weight of it came slamming down, the clang of metal on concrete loud enough to rattle the walls. If Mrs. Haggerty hadn’t been watching us from her kitchen before, I was certain she was watching us now.
Vero got out of the car and threw me a sharp look as Zach and Delia stirred in their seats. We leaned back against the side of the car, waiting through the fragile silence as the children settled back to sleep. When their breaths became long and even, Vero hauled Delia into her arms, frowning at the uneven spikes of tacky, clipped hair sticking up around my daughter’s face. I hugged Zach to me, nudging the car door shut with my hip.
A pale, watery dawn was just beginning to seep around the edges of the curtains of their rooms as we tucked them into their beds. If we were lucky, Vero and I might have time for a hot shower and a cup of coffee before they roused for the day, and I groaned, remembering the mess of spilled grounds I’d left on the kitchen counter just yesterday.
Without a word, Vero and I stripped down to our underwear in front of the washing machine. We loaded in our clothes, dumping the table linens and gardening gloves and our shoes on top, pouring in two capfuls of color-safe bleach, and finishing it off with a mountain of powdered soap. Vero set the machine running before disappearing into the spare bedroom. She locked herself inside with a soft click.
I padded to the kitchen, determined to clean up at least one mess I’d made before trying to sleep. Careful not to draw unwanted attention from Mrs. Haggerty’s house, I left the lights off, searching for the spilled grounds by the dusky morning light filtering through the kitchen curtains, but the mess was gone. The floor and counters were already wiped clean, the dirty dishes that had filled the sink already rinsed and put in the machine. Vero must have tidied up last night as she was packing my frying pan into her cardboard box. Right before she’d found me trying to resuscitate a corpse.
Maybe Vero was right.
Maybe Harris Mickler did deserve what had happened to him. Maybe his wife would show up tomorrow with an envelope full of money and we would actually get away with murder. But as I scraped the loose grounds from the inside of the coffeepot and dumped them into the overflowing trash can under the sink, I wasn’t feeling optimistic. I’d killed a man. Whether or not I had done it intentionally hardly seemed to matter anymore. I’d buried him, which made me guilty of something, even if I wasn’t entirely sure what that something was. Or what it would become if I took Mrs. Mickler’s money.
* * *
I woke to the clank of silverware against cereal bowls in the kitchen. The chatter of cartoon voices from the TV was almost loud enough to drown out the low thrum of the vacuum downstairs. Bright sun seared through the blinds of my bedroom. I checked the time on my phone and buried my face in my pillow. It was damp and cold where my still-wet hair had soaked through it when I’d climbed into bed after a long, hot shower, less than four hours ago.
My muscles were stiff, reluctant to wake as I dragged on a pair of sweats and twisted my loose hair into a bun before shuffling downstairs to the kitchen. The dishwasher hummed quietly in the background. The stack of bills from the front stoop had been brought inside, sorted into leaning piles, and organized on a folding table in the empty dining room.
Delia blinked up at me from her chair, her spoon poised over her cereal bowl. A dribble of milk trailed down her chin as she chewed. I blinked back, only partly certain the girl staring back at me was my daughter. Her hair had been shorn close to the scalp, cleaned of the sticky adhesive. The scratch where she’d sliced herself with the scissors was just visible between the errant gelled spikes that remained. A pair of reflective Aviator sunglasses rode on her nose, dwarfing her freshly scrubbed face. And her clothes—a pair of artfully shredded jeans and a torn hot pink T-shirt layered over gray long-john sleeves—had been sprinkled with bleach to complete the ensemble.
I raised an eyebrow. She raised one back as she stuffed another dripping spoonful of cereal into her mouth. Her tiny hands were wrapped in a pair of striped fingerless gloves that had definitely had fingers when I’d bought them last week, and had been far less fashionable yesterday.
Vero’s sunglasses slipped down the bridge of Delia’s nose as she chewed. “It’s a mood,” she said with a careless shrug, as if answering the question on my face. “That’s what Aunt Vero says.”
I clamped my lips against the retort building behind them.
The vacuum cleaner stopped. Vero came into the kitchen wearing one of my sleep shirts and a pair of my yoga pants. I didn’t want to think about what she was—or wasn’t—wearing underneath them, and I sorely hoped my underwear was cataloged under the sixty percent of personal belongings I would never have to share with her. Her long hair swayed from her loose ponytail as she set my cell phone down on the counter. Her hands were clean, the nails scrubbed, trimmed, and filed short, sporting a layer of fresh pink polish that matched the color peeking through Delia’s gloves.
“Aunt Vero, huh?”
Vero smirked. “If Theresa can have an Aunt Amy, you can have an Aunt Vero.”
Zach laughed in his high chair, his own hair gelled into matching spikes long enough to curl over themselves. My poultry shears were nowhere to be seen, and no one was bleeding or throwing a tantrum. Too tired to argue, I lumbered sleepily to the table.
“Go get dressed,” she said, setting a cup of coffee in front of me and giving me a cursory once-over. I took a greedy sip. “And do something with your hair. You’re meeting Mrs. M at Panera in an hour. Try to look the part.”
I choked, spitting coffee down the front of my shirt. “What did you do?” It sloshed over the sides of the mug as I rushed to pick up my phone. I scrolled, my face falling, numb as I read the two-word message from Vero to Mrs. Mickler.
It’s done.
Mrs. Mickler had replied almost immediately. Panera 11:00.
“Jesus, Vero,” I whisper-hissed, hoping the children wouldn’t notice. When I glanced over, they were engrossed in whatever cartoon Vero had playing on the TV in the next room. “No, I am not meeting with her!”
She planted her hands on the table in front of me. “You are meeting with her. How else are we going to get paid? I did not get these calluses for nothing.”
I grabbed Vero by the sleeve and dragged her into the dining room, pitching my voice low. “I am not taking that woman’s money. If I do, that makes us guilty of murder for hire.”
“As opposed to what?” she hissed back. “Just murder? The only difference between them is fifty thousand dollars. Fifty. Thousand. And I vote we take the money.”