Perfect, my ass …
He wanted Delaney all to himself. That way he could have his whole, perfect family and erase me from existence completely. If he found out about this, about all of it … well, he’d probably try to get full custody for sure. Not probably – he would.
I know he would.
And the scary part: I don’t even know if Delaney would mind.
Sure, we had our good days. But what about all the bad ones? Over the last two weeks, she’d spent more time with her other family than with me …
I imagined the cops cuffing me and carting me off to jail, Delaney sneering from the driveway, Michael smiling victoriously. And Wife #2 beside him, with her plaster-perfect smile, waving me off as they took me away …
I scurried around the room, diverting my eyes from the dead man, searching for his clothes or wallet. Something to help identify him.
I may not remember what happened, but I know I must have met him online.
A pair of dark brown chinos and a flimsy old flannel lay messily on the floor beside my dresser. No underwear. No shoes …?
That doesn’t make sense.
I dug through the pockets of his chinos—no keys either. And no wallet.
This is insane! Did I pick up a homeless man off the street, or what?
But then I remembered the navy-blue Camaro sitting outside my house. It had to belong to him. There was no one else around it could belong to.
Rubbing my cheeks, panic surged through my veins as I tried to trace my way back in my mind …
Did he drug me? Is that why I don’t remember?
My head did feel groggy and strange, although that could be from a hangover … And if a stranger had showed up and tried to rape me, I would have tried to defend myself. I didn’t have any wounds on my hands, or the rest of my body.
And if it had been consensual sex …
I know how my body feels after sex and this isn’t it.
I wasn’t sore or achy. I didn’t feel violated or injured in anyway. In fact, I didn’t feel like I’d had sex at all. And the old gown I’d had on when I woke up … it was the least sexy thing I owned. I couldn’t see myself putting that ratty old thing on for anyone, much less a man I’d invited over for the first time and planned to sleep with …
I carried the man’s clothes over to the pile of bedding and, shakily, dropped them to the floor. I scooped up a pair of my own jeans and a t-shirt which I’d been wearing yesterday, I remembered. The last thing I remember was fighting with Delaney.
But what happened after we fought?
She slammed her bedroom door the way she usually does, I recalled.
Then I folded laundry and made dinner. I yelled for her to come out of her room. And by the time she did, the chicken was cold. We barely ate or talked. Another silent war between us, which was all too typical for us these days – a constant battle, and one I lost more days than most.
She’d been texting furiously while she sat at the table and when I asked her who she was chatting with, she’d said, “My father”, with such viciousness it had made my blood run cold.
And after dinner she’d gone back to her room and I’d gone back to mine, I remembered. On school nights, we usually went to be early, around ten or eleven or so.
But I didn’t go straight to bed last night, I remembered.
I’d got online. Checked my dating profile for new messages. It was a great way to escape, and for the first time in years, I’d started feeling attractive – wanted – again.
I do remember getting on the site last night. But what happened after …?
I spotted a pair of purple panties—my panties—on the floor by my side of the bed. I hated to get close to the dead guy again, but I went over to retrieve them anyway.
I gripped the underwear in a ball in my hand and forced myself to get down on my knees on the floor.
I have to check under the bed. But what if there’s a knife under there? What if it’s covered in blood …?
There’s no such thing as monsters under the bed. I could remember saying that to Delaney countless times when she was little.
When she still needed her mother. When she still looked up to me and thought my word was gold.
Trembling, I crouched on the floor beside the bed and pressed my face to the matted carpet.
Monsters under the bed … why does that age-old fear never fully disappear with time?
I squinted into the dark, narrow gap between my bed and the floor.
I gasped and stumbled back as I came face to face with, not the murder weapon, but … another corpse.
Only this one wasn’t a stranger.
Chapter 3
BEFORE
How did it begin?
I guess it started the way most bad things do: with secrets.
And then, of course, there were also the lies.
Lies that tasted like malt vinegar, but flowed like syrup from our tongues … and what was the truth anymore? I don’t think we’d recognize it if it were staring us straight in the face …
“Laney, are you ready?” I dropped my purse with a smack on the entryway floor, just like I did every day after work. I was exhausted. Most days I’d take a shower and throw together something for dinner then fall asleep watching TV.
But then I remembered: Samantha was coming.
I scooped my purse off the floor and carried the bulgy black bag to my bedroom.
Our house wasn’t exactly a penthouse – paint peeling, the original lime green from the 60s playing peek-a-boo through the cracks. But it was clean (mostly) and roomy for just the two of us. Two bedrooms, two baths. Our furniture wasn’t fancy, but it was comfortable. I liked to think of our small bungalow as “homey”; it was also small enough to keep us together and large enough to keep us from killing each other …
I kept the house tidy; well, I thought I did … but now that I knew Samantha was coming – or Sam as Delaney liked to call her – the house was bathed in a whole new light.
I swept the living room curtains back, a cloud of dust tickling my nose and the back of my throat. The windows were grimy, a thin layer of dust coating the sills and every baseboard in sight.
And the air in our house … today, it felt stale and muggy.
A pile of unpaid bills lay cluttered on the arm of the sofa from where I’d forgotten to finish sorting through them last night.
The kitchen was worse. Breakfast dishes and coffee mugs were stacked on the counter, and the drain in the sink was giving off that putrid egg smell again …
Most days, I left for work by seven, with Delaney not far behind. There was rarely time to tidy up in the mornings, which was why I often saved all that for after work.
Leaving the dishes, I drifted back to the living room, my chest tightening with dread. In addition to the dust and messy mail pile, there were empty bottles of tea and Vitamin Water crowding the coffee table. Delaney had been watching Teen Mom 2 last night when I’d taken myself to bed.
When did she stop using the garbage can? I thought, angrily.
It’s like you spend their early years teaching them every day common tasks and social skills, and just when you think they’ve mastered them, you have to re-instruct them as teens.
I stuffed the bunch of mail between two couch cushions and scooped up Delaney’s mess in my arms. When I went to throw it away, I realized the garbage was full. Not only that, it smelled like last night’s fettucine.