After Allison’s memorial, Ben came over. He didn’t tell me he was going to; I didn’t ask. But when I heard a knock on my door that night, late, I knew I would find him standing on the other side it. I never questioned how he knew my address, and honestly, I didn’t care. I just opened the door and took a step back, letting him in like I had let him into my life so many times before. Without question.
I remember he was still wearing his suit—the suit he had put on that morning, the suit he had worn as he buried his wife—and within minutes, it was being peeled off by me. His jacket slumped to the ground, left in a heap next to the shoes I had walked three miles home in, their heels worn down to stubs andmyheels bloody and raw. There was a clumsy kind of urgency to it, my fingers fumbling their way down his buttons, like tripping off the edge of a cliff. Like if we didn’t just leap into it at that very moment—minds blank, bodies on autopilot—we would come to our senses and back away slowly. We would stop, think about what we were doing, and realize how horribly wrong it all was.
But we didn’t. We didn’t stop.
Afterward, we lay together in silence, fingers intertwined, in bed.I still slept on the same sad little mattress from my childhood bedroom, Margaret’s smell seeped somewhere deep into the threads like a stain. Lying there with Ben made me feel too juvenile, too young, remembering the way my sister and I would pull the covers over our heads and tell each other stories with flashlights, trying to drown out the whispered arguments or full-blown screams coming from somewhere down the hall.
“You know we can’t tell anybody about this,” Ben said after a couple minutes of quiet, his hands in my hair. I was trying to ignore the wedding band I could still feel on his finger. The cool pinch of it on my skin. “Not yet.”
I looked at him, my eyes tracing his profile in the dark.
“With work,” he clarified. “I could lose my job. You could, too.”
“Oh, right. Of course.”
“We’ll find a way,” he said, kissing my forehead before rolling over and standing up with a groan. “With time.”
I remember watching him pull on his boxers and walk into the bathroom, my eyes drinking him in as if I were preparing for another drought without him. I didn’t know how to feel in that moment. There had been a question lingering in the back of my mind all day, this unspoken seed of doubt that planted itself the moment Ben had pulled me to him on the side of that house, its spindly roots snaking their way through my brain, digging in deep and growing wild. Ever since his fingers wove themselves into my hair and his lips attached to mine, I couldn’t help but wonder: If Allisonhadn’tdied, would this have ever happened?
If she hadn’t died, would Ben have ever chosen me?
Maybe this was just his grief talking. Maybe he couldn’t bear the thought of being alone, going home to an empty house—the same house where he had found her, sprawled across the tile, a hollow bottle of pills in her palm and the crusts of dried spit caked to her lip. I imagined him standing in my doorway, those dark puddles beneath his eyes like dirty rainwater collecting in the street. Maybe tomorrowmorning he’d wake up, clear his throat, and glue those same eyes to the floor, pronouncing this a mistake: something, like that first night together, that we should never speak of again.
After all, Ben had been faced with making the choice between Allison and me before, and every single time, he chose her. He chose her that night at the oyster roast when he walked away from me and never came back. He chose her during all our secret evenings together, nursing his beer, his fingers peeling at the damp label before standing up, nodding his head, and leaving me alone with nothing but a pile of scraps on the bar top. When Allison was alive, he chose her instead of me over and over and over again, that much had been painfully clear. So in a way, as I lay there in the dark—imagining Allison being lowered into the dirt, her tan skin now pale and lifeless; those lips that had once breathed a secret into my ear pursed and still—a part of me was glad. Because I knew that Ben wouldn’t have to choose anymore. The choice had been made for him.
Really, he never even had a choice at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I told Waylon I had a stomach bug. That was my excuse for missing lunch—and my excuse for locking myself in my bedroom all day, pretending to sleep it off.
I want to talk to him, I do. I need to hear his lie about visiting Dozier at the police station, try to work out what it is that he’s doing here. What he wants. But I need to figure out my strategy first. I need to figure out how I’m going to respond; if I’m going to confront him, demand answers, or simply play dumb, keep up the charade, and see where it takes me.
I grabbed my laptop as soon as I got home, slipping quietly into my room and crawling into bed, biding my time. Listening to the sound of him tiptoeing around the house on his own: the flush of the toilet, a cleared throat. I could sense him outside my bedroom door on occasion, hovering; I pictured his hand floating above my doorknob, considering whether or not he should knock before deciding, finally, to pull it back and walk away. I can’t help but wonder what he’s been doing with free rein of my home: sifting through my mail, maybe, or poking around in the trash. Trying to steal an intimate look into my life by analyzingwhich brand of condiments I buy or what appointments I have scrawled in my calendar.
People tend to stash their dirtiest secrets in the most common of places.
All the while, I’ve been watching more recordings from Mason’s baby monitor, methodically working my way through each day. I’ve seen myself a few more times, moseying into his nursery in the middle of the night: stopping, staring. But that’s it. I don’t move any closer than mid-room; I don’t do anything other than just stand there, swaying a little, until at some point, I turn around and walk back out.
It’s around two in the morning in the video I’m watching now, and there I am again: standing in a pair of waffle-knit pajamas, arms rigid at my sides, long hair flowing over my shoulders like snarled seaweed. It’s unsettling, seeing me there. My sleepwalking caught on camera. But so far, I haven’t done anything alarming. Every time I see myself walk inside, I feel my stomach clench; but then, every time I turn around and walk back out, it relaxes again, like a muscle being pricked with a needle.
Eventually, I start to wonder if maybe they’re right. All of them. Detective Dozier accusing me of inventing clues where they don’t exist; Dr. Harris saying it’s normal.I’mnormal.
I start to wonder if maybe this is perfectly harmless. Maybe I have nothing to worry about after all.
I hear a sound from the living room and hitPause, my body on screen frozen in time. It’s the creak of the couch as Waylon stands up, turns off the TV, and tosses the remote onto the cushions. It’s late now, well after midnight, and I hear him walk down the hall, past my bedroom and into the guest room, shutting the door behind him.
I hold my breath, listening. Hearing the shuffle of his feet next door, the flick of the light switch. The squeak of the springs as he climbs into bed. I imagine him pulling the covers over his chest, his body growing heavy, relaxing into the mattress.
And then I wait.
After twenty minutes, I slide out of bed and pad across the room toward the door. Roscoe perks up, and I hold out my hand, silencing him before he can make a noise. Then I push my ear to the wood, listening some more. I hear no signs of life; no noises coming from his room.
Only then do I decide that it’s safe.
I open my door and creep into the hallway, the house completely dark. Roscoe jumps from the bed and we walk into the kitchen together. Everything looks normal—there’s a single bowl hanging upside down in the drying rack, traces of Waylon’s solitary dinner; the vague scent of citrus from my dish soap lingering in the air—until I glance into the dining room, my eyes landing on the table. Waylon’s laptop and recording equipment are set up the way they were before; just beneath it, his briefcase leans up against the wooden table leg.
My eyes dart over to my closed guest room door, then back to the table.