Finally, I could allow myself to be shaky and afraid.
How could I be so stupid? And what am I going to do?
Obviously, I hadn’t killed the man. I didn’t have a violent bone in my body.
But that hasn’t always been the case, has it? I scolded myself.
Is it possible? Could I have blacked out and hurt someone?
But that red-rose hole in his stomach … It looked like a knife wound, a deep one that took a lot of strength. And anger.
I shuddered.
And if he were mentally unstable, why would he choose to take his own life in a strange woman’s bed after sex, and why would he do it that way …?
And I hadn’t seen a weapon … If he’d done it to himself, there would be a weapon …
“Holy shit. What am I going to do?” I said aloud, the fear in my voice finally matching the terror inside me.
I carried the mug over to the kitchen sink and washed it, nearly dropping it a dozen times. Out the window above the sink, I could see my neighbor, Fran, in the street. She was fetching her mail, one arm in a cast. I waved but she didn’t see me.
She had stopped, mail-in-hand, and she was staring at something. I followed her line of sight … she was looking at the sporty blue car parked behind mine. She turned her head and looked straight at me, eyes narrowing.
“Shit, shit, shit …”
I waited for her to turn around with her mail and wobbled back inside her own house.
The house was eerily quiet with Delaney gone, almost like a mausoleum. I wasn’t used to being here during the day, and it felt wrong somehow, seeing the early morning shadows reflecting off the dusty bookshelves and cheap Ikea furniture.
Well, I guess it kind of is like a crypt, considering there’s a dead man locked up in my bedroom …
Every time I closed my eyes, each blink, each second, I could see his moon-white face, the rosy red stain on his abdomen … the congealed blood staining my mattress and sheets.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, startling me more than it should have. I yelped, then took it out, hands quivering as I opened a new text message.
I was expecting a reply from my boss. I’d left a hoarse, whispery message for him, thankful at the time that he hadn’t answered. But sooner or later, I’d have to talk to him …
But the message was from Delaney.
I think I’ll stay at Dad’s again tonight. Sam and I are going to finish the library mural.
Plus, this will give you and your new friend more time together!
I could imagine her glaring out the bus window, jaw flexing in anger, her phone clutched like a weapon in her hand. Was she being nice or sarcastic?
Definitely the latter, I decided.
Every single word was like a dagger … and I had no doubt that was her intention. She’d been angry with me every day for the past year, sometimes for a reason, but mostly not. Teenagers are supposed to be angry, right? I had just assumed this was normal, a part of the growing process … but I was wrong about that. Delaney was going through a lot more than the average teen.
It was a weekday – not her dad’s night to take her.
Would she explain to him why she wanted to stay with him again? What will he think about the man in my bed …?
And every time she called her stepmom Sam, I tasted bile in the back of my throat.
But none of this really matters right now, does it? Because I have a bigger crisis to tend to.
I knew Delaney was expecting a big reaction, for me to put up a fight …
Okay, honey. Have fun.
I typed back. I almost considered writing, ‘Send Sam my love’, but I knew Delaney would see right through it.
She gets her snarky humor from me, I guess.
For a split second, I could almost believe it was a normal Tuesday – dealing with Delaney’s attitude and my own bitterness over Michael – but nothing about this day was normal: a murdered man was in my room.
In my bed.
Slowly, I made my way down the short, skinny hallway, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. I stopped in front of the bathroom door. On my tiptoes, my fingers reached for the slim, gold key that I kept on the ledge of the door frame; a master key to all the rooms in the house.
I gripped the key so tight in my right palm that it burned.
Finally, I used it to unlock my bedroom door and I stepped inside.
There was a part of me, a silly, stupid part, that hoped—prayed—that the body in my bed would no longer be there.
But in the light of day, the strange man still looked dead as ever.
I locked the door behind me even though I was home alone, and, noiselessly, I crept over to the bed. The sheets were hanging halfway off from where I’d tugged on them earlier. I went ahead and pulled them completely away from the bed and laid them in a crumpled pile by the door.
Shaking, I could barely breathe as I approached the naked man.
Who are you? How did you get in my bed? And most importantly, who stabbed you?
His face was wrinkle-free and hairless.
He can’t be much older than thirty, I realized, finally getting a good look at him in the light of the day.
There was no jewelry on his body. No wedding ring on his finger. His fingernails and toenails were neatly trimmed, like someone who took care of himself. But, then again, not someone who would necessarily stand out from the crowd: his hair was sandy brown, his face plain, his body average …
This man is a complete stranger to me. I’ve never seen him before, not a day in my life … not on the dating site, nowhere …
I’d been talking regularly to a few men online, but this guy wasn’t one of them. New potential matches messaged daily, but I wouldn’t have invited him over without at least getting to know him a little bit, would I? But then I remembered the last guy I’d had over … I hadn’t known him well either.
Every man I’d talked to and dated over the last month came rushing back all at once, their faces merely profile pictures, flipping one by one in my mind …
Swipe, swipe, swipe.
And why don’t I remember what happened last night?
I forced myself to move closer, to study the features of his face …
Nearly two hours had passed since Delaney shook me awake. In that short span of time, the man’s body had turned even stiffer. His eyes were still closed but his lips were parted. For a moment, I waited, expecting those lips to move, to tell me ‘it’s all a dream, go back to bed silly’ …
But nothing happened.
I should call the cops.
Why hadn’t I called them already?
Because it almost seems too late to do that now, a voice inside me warned.
I imagined me telling the police the truth: I was scared. Freaked out. I didn’t know what to do. So, I waited until my daughter left for school before I called you.
No, officers, I have no idea who he is. No, I don’t remember how he got here. Of course I didn’t kill him! I imagined myself saying.
I couldn’t call them until I could explain how he got here … and until I could describe what transpired last night before he ended up in my bed and ended up … dead.
But that wasn’t the only reason for my hesitation. Michael. If he found out about this, if he found out the truth about me … he would try to take Delaney away from me, permanently. He’d been doing it for years now, wearing the face of a dutiful father whenever she was around, then morphing into his old self alone with me. Nothing about the man had changed, but according to his new wife, he was perfect.