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he’d be and when. She put herself there, made him think it was
kismet that made them keep running into each other instead of
what it really was. A trap.
I’m not insecure. I don’t have an inferiority complex. She
was no prettier than me, no better. This was plain and simple
jealousy.
Everyone gets jealous. Babies get jealous, dogs do too. Dogs
are territorial, the way they stand guard on their toys, their beds, their owners. They don’t let anyone touch what’s theirs. They get
angry and aggressive when you do. They snarl, they bite. They
maul people in their sleep. Anything to protect their belongings.
I didn’t have a choice about what happened next. I had to
protect what was mine.
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Sadie
Later that night, I awaken from a dream. I come slowly to, and
find Will sitting in the slipcovered chair in the corner of the
room, hiding among the shadows. I just barely make out the
outline of him, the blackened curve of his silhouette and the
faint glow off the whites of his eyes as he sits there, watching
me. I lie in bed awhile, too drowsy and disoriented to ask him
what he’s doing, to suggest that he come back to bed with me.
I stretch in bed. I roll over, onto my other side, dragging the
blanket with me, turning my back toward Will in the chair.
He’ll come to bed when he’s ready.
I fold myself into the fetal position. I pull my knees into me,
press them into my abdomen. I brush against something in the
bed. Will’s dense memory foam pillow, I assume, but soon feel
the swell of a vertebrae, the convexity of a shoulder blade in-
stead. Beside me, Will is shirtless, his skin clammy and warm
to the touch. His hair falls sideways, down his neck, pooling
on the mattress.
Will is in bed with me. Will is not in the chair in the cor-
ner of the room.
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Someone else is here.
Someone else is watching us sleep.
I bolt upright in bed. My eyes fight to adjust to the black-
ness of the room. My heart is in my throat. I can hardly speak.
“Who’s there?” I ask, but there’s a bulge in my throat and all
that comes out is a gasp.
I reach a hand to the bedside table, make an effort to turn
the knob on the lamp. But before I can, her voice comes to me,
quietly and measured, the words chosen carefully.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”
Imogen rises from the chair. She comes to me, sets herself
gingerly on the edge of my bed.
“What are you doing here? Do you need something?” I ask,
trying not to let on to my own state of alarm. But it can’t so
easily be disguised. My panic is transparent. There should be
relief in seeing that it’s Imogen—not an intruder, but one of our
own—but there’s no relief in it. Imogen doesn’t belong in my
bedroom this late at night, lingering in the darkness.
I search Imogen with my eyes, looking for a reason as to why
she’s here. Looking for a weapon, though the thought alone
makes me sick, the idea of Imogen sneaking into our room with
the intent of hurting us.
“Is something wrong?” I ask. “Something you want to talk
about?”
Always a heavy sleeper, Will doesn’t budge.
“You had no right,” she scolds, quietly seething, “to come
into my room.”
There’s a sudden tightness in my chest.
My gut instinct is to lie.
“I wasn’t in your room, Imogen,” I whisper back, and it’s in
my best interest now to keep quiet because I don’t want Will to
know that I was there. That instead of bathing, I went through
the drawers in Imogen’s bedroom, the pockets of her clothing.
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MARY KUBICA
An invasion of privacy, Will would say, not taking kindly to my
searching through her things.
“You’re a liar,” Imogen speaks through her teeth now, as I
swear, “I’m not. Honestly Imogen. I wasn’t in your room.”
Her next words come as a punch to the gut. “Then what was
your wine doing there?” she asks. My face flames and I know
that I’ve been caught. I picture it, clear as day, setting the glass of cabernet on the desktop as I canvassed her room.
And then later, fleeing in a hurry, leaving the wine behind.
How could I have been so stupid?
“Oh,” I say, straining for a lie. But a lie doesn’t come. Not
a credible enough one to share anyway and so I don’t try. I’ve
never been a very good liar.
“If you ever,” she begins. But it’s also where she ends, words
cutting off abruptly, leaving it for me to figure out what comes
next.
Imogen rises from the edge of the bed. Her sudden height
gives her an advantage. She towers over me, stealing the breath
from my lungs. Imogen isn’t a big girl. She’s thin, but she has
great height which must have come from her father’s side since
Alice was petite. She’s taller than I ever realized now that she’s
standing so closely beside me. She leans down and breaths into
my ear, “Stay the fuck out of my room,” giving me a slight
shove for good measure.
And then she goes. She steals away from the bedroom, her
feet noiseless on the wooden floors as they must have been when
she let herself into our room.
I lie in bed, sleepless and alert, listening vigilantly for her to
return.
How long it goes on this way, I don’t know, until eventually
I give into my drowsiness and slip back to my dream.
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Sadie
I go during my lunch break. I try to be subtle about it, slipping
out the door when I think no one is watching. But Joyce spots
me anyway and asks, “Taking off on us again?” with an edge
to her voice that suggests she doesn’t approve of me leaving.
“I’m just grabbing a quick lunch,” I tell her, though I’m not
sure why I lie when the truth might have been better.
Joyce asks, “When can we expect you back?” and I tell her,
“In an hour.”
She grunts at that and says, “I’ll see it when I believe it,” which is by no means a fair assessment of me—that I let my lunch breaks
drag on longer than the allotted hour. But there’s no point in ar-
guing. I go anyway, still anxious about finding Imogen in our
bedroom last night. She must have known as soon as she found
my wineglass that I’d been in her room. She could have come
right then and told me. But she didn’t. Instead she waited hours,
until I was dead asleep, to tell me. She wanted to scare me. That
was her intent.
Imogen isn’t some ingenious child. She’s quite cunning.
I find my car in the parking lot and drive. I tried to talk my-
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MARY KUBICA
self out of going to the memorial service. At first I thought that
there was really no reason to go, other than my desire to see
Jeffrey Baines. We’ve lived in our home for a little while now,
and in that time, I’ve never gotten a good look at the man. But
I can’t shake the idea that he killed his wife. For my safety and
the safety of my family, I need to know who he is. I need to
know who my neighbors are. I need to know if we’re safe with
this man living just across the street from us.
The Methodist church is white with a tall steeple, a sharply
honed spire. Four modest stained glass windows line each side
of the building. The church is small, your archetypical, provin-
cial church. Matching evergreen wreaths hang from nails on the
double doors, adorned with red bows. The scene is charming.
The small lot is jammed with cars. I park on the street, follow
others inside the building.
The memorial service is being held in the fellowship hall.
Ten or fifteen round tables fill the space, covered in white lin-
ens. There’s a banquet table at the front of the room and, on it,
trays of cookies.
I walk with purpose; I have as much right to be here as any-
one else, no matter what Will said. A woman I’ve never seen
before reaches out to shake my hand as I step into the room. She
thanks me for coming. There’s a handkerchief crumpled in her
hand. She’s been crying. She tells me she is Morgan’s mother.
She asks who I am. “Sadie,” I say, “a neighbor,” followed with
deference by, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
The woman is older than me by twenty or thirty years. Her
hair is gray, her skin a roadmap of wrinkles. She’s trim, dressed
in a black dress that goes just past her knees. Her hand is cold
and, as she shakes mine, I feel the handkerchief press between
our hands. “It was sweet of you,” she says, “to come. It makes
me happy, knowing my Morgan had friends.”
I blanch at that because of course we weren’t friends. But that’s
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something her grieving mother needn’t know. “She was a lovely
woman,” I say for lack of anything better to say.
Jeffrey stands five feet back, speaking with an older couple.
Truth be told, he looks bored. He displays none of the same grief
that Morgan’s mother openly displays. He doesn’t cry. It’s a mas-
culine thing, not crying. That I understand. And grief can mani-
fest itself in many ways, aside from crying. Anger, disbelief. But
I see none of this in Jeffrey as he pats the old man on the back,
unleashes a laugh.
I’ve never been this close to him before. I’ve never gotten a
good look at him until now. Jeffrey is a polished man, tall and
refined, with a suave thatch of dark hair that combs up and back-
wards. His features are dark, his eyes hidden behind a pair of
bold, thick-rimmed glasses. His suit is black. It’s been tailored
for him. He’s quite handsome.
The older couple moves on. I tell Morgan’s mother once more
how sorry I am and step past her. I move to Jeffrey. He takes
my hand into his. His handshake is firm, his hand tepid. “Jef-
frey Baines,” he says, holding my stare, and I tell him who I
am, how my husband and I live with our family just across the
street from him.
“Of course,” Jeffrey says, though I doubt he’s ever paid atten-
tion to the goings-on across the street. He strikes me as one of
those savvy businessmen who knows how to work a room, adept
at the fine art of schmoozing. On the surface, he’s charming.
But under, there’s more that I can’t see.
He tells me, “Morgan was thrilled to have new blood on the
street. She would have appreciated your being here, Sandy,” he
says and I correct him and say, “Sadie.”
“Yes, that’s right. Sadie,” he says, trying it on for size. He’s
self-deprecating as a means of apology. “I was never any good
with names,” he says as he lets go of my hand and I draw it back,
folding my hands together before me.
“Most people aren’t,” I tell him. “This must be a very hard
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time for you,” I say, rather than the standard I’m so sorry for your loss. That feels commonplace, a sentiment that’s being echoed over and over again around the room. “Your daughter. She
must be devastated,” I say, my body language trying its best to
be sympathetic. I drop my head, furrow my eyebrows. “I can’t
imagine what she must be going through.”
But Jeffrey’s response is unexpected. “I’m afraid she and Mor-
gan were never close,” is what he says. “The upshot of divorce, I
suppose,” he tells me, making light of it, deemphasizing the fact
that his daughter and wife didn’t get along. “No woman would
ever outshine her mother,” he says, and I reply, “Oh,” because
I can think of nothing else to say.
If Will and I were ever to divorce and he to remarry, I’d hope
the boys would love me more than their stepmother. And yet,
nonchalance surprises me. “Is she here?” I ask. “Your daughter.”
He tells me no. His daughter is in school. It’s odd, the fact that
she’s at school while her stepmother is being mourned.
My surprise is visible.
He explains, “She was sick earlier this year. Pneumonia that
landed her in the hospital on IV antibiotics. Her mother and I
would hate for her to miss any more school.”
I’m not sure his explanation makes it better.
“It’s so hard to get caught up,” is all I can come up with in
a pinch.
Jeffrey thanks me for coming. He says, “Help yourself to
cookies,” before looking past me to the next in line.
I go to the cookie table. I help myself to one and find a table
to sit. It’s awkward sitting alone in a room where nearly no one
is alone. Everyone has come with someone else. Everyone but
me. I wish that Will were here. He should have come. Many of
the people in the room cry, quiet, suppressed cries. Only Mor-
gan’s mother is unreserved about her grief.
Two women brush up behind me just then. They ask if the va-
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cant seats at the table are being saved. “No,” I tell them. “Please, help yourself,” and they do.
One of the women asks, “Were you a friend of Morgan?” She
has to lean in toward me because it’s loud in the room.
A wave of relief washes over me. I’m no longer alone.
I say, “Neighbors. And you?” as I scoot
my folding chair
closer. They’ve left empty seats between themselves and me,
which is socially appropriate. And yet it makes it hard to hear.
One of the women tells me that they’re old friends of Pat-
ty’s, Morgan’s mother. They tell me their names—Karen and
Susan—and I tell them mine.
“Poor Patty is just a wreck,” Karen says, “as you can imagine.”
I tell her how unfathomable this all is. We sigh and discuss
how children are supposed to lose their parents first and not the
other way around. The way it’s happened with Morgan goes
against the natural order of things. I think of Otto and Tate,
if anything bad were to ever happen to either of them. I can’t
imagine a world in which Will and I don’t die first. I don’t
want to imagine a world like that, where they’re gone and I’m
left behind.
“And not just once, but twice,” Susan says. The other nods
grimly. I bob my head along with them, but I don’t know what
they mean by this. I’m only half listening. My attention is fo-
cused on Jeffrey Baines and the way he greets mourners as they
come by. There’s a smile on his face as he receives people, reach-
ing that warm hand out to shake theirs. The smile is unbecoming
for the occasion. His wife was just murdered. He shouldn’t be
smiling. If nothing else, he should make an effort to appear sad.
I start to wonder if Jeffrey and Morgan argued, or if it was
indifference that did them in. Indifference, a sentiment even
worse than hate. I wonder if she did something to upset him,
or if he simply wanted her dead, the dissolution of their mar-
riage without a nasty battle. Or maybe it was about money. A
life insurance policy to be paid out.
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“Patty was never the same after that,” Susan is saying.
My eyes go to her as Karen replies, “I don’t know what she’ll
do now, how she’ll get through. Losing one child is bad enough,
but losing two?”
“It’s unthinkable,” Susan says. She reaches into her handbag
for a tissue. She’s begun to cry. She reminisces on how distraught
Patty was the first time this happened, how weeks went by that
she couldn’t get out of bed. How she lost weight because of it,
far too much for a woman who doesn’t have any extra weight
to spare. I look at the woman, Patty, standing at the head of the