But I’ve come this far. I can’t go back. I have to know.
I turn the knob, press the door open and step onto the first
floor.
I’m terrified. I don’t know who’s here, if anyone is here. I
can’t call out for fear that someone might hear me. But as I creep
around the first floor of the home, the reality is hard to ignore.
I see no one, but there are signs of life everywhere. It’s dark
outside and in; I have to use the flashlight on my phone to see.
I discover an indention in the plastic that covers a living room
chair, as if someone sat down there. A piano seat is pulled out,
sheet music on the rack. There are crumbs on the coffee table.
The cottage is a single story home. I make my way down the
dark, narrow hall, tiptoeing so I don’t make a sound. I hold my
breath as I go, taking short, shallow breaths only when I have
to, only when the burn of carbon dioxide in my lungs is more
than I can bear.
I come to the first room and look inside, shining my flash-
light along the four walls. The room is small, a bedroom that
has been converted into a sewing room. A seamstress lives here.
The next room is a small bedroom crammed with ornate
antique furniture that’s buried beneath plastic. The carpeting
is thick, plush. My feet sink into it, and I feel guilty for wear-
ing my shoes inside, as if that’s the worst of my infractions. But
there’s also breaking and entering.
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I leave that room and step into the largest bedroom of the
three, the master bedroom. The room is spacious in compari-
son. But that’s not the reason my eyes do a double take when
I step inside.
The sun has set outside. Only a faint hint of blue creeps in
through the windows. The blue hour, it’s called, when the re-
sidual sunlight takes on a blue tone and turns the world to blue.
I shine my flashlight into the room. I see the ceiling fan, the
blades of which are formed into the shape of palm leaves. The
ceiling is a trey ceiling. And I’ve seen it before.
I’ve dreamed of this room. I dreamed of myself lying in this
bed, or a bed similar to this, hot and sweating beneath that fan,
in the crevasse that is still in the center of the bed. I stared at the fan, willed it to move, to push a gust of cold air onto my hot
body. But it didn’t because the next thing I knew I was stand-
ing beside the bed watching myself sleep.
This bed, unlike the other furniture in the house, isn’t cov-
ered with plastic. The plastic that should be on the bed lies in a
heap on the floor, on the other side of the bed.
Someone has been sleeping in this bed.
Someone was here.
I don’t bother with the basement window well this time. I
head straight out the front door. I close it behind myself, the
light in the living room flicking on as I leave.
As I run back home, I convince myself that the ceiling, the
bed, the fan weren’t the very same as they were in my dream.
They were similar, yes, but not the same. Dreams have a way
of fading fast, and so the true details of it were likely gone be-
fore I ever opened my eyes.
And besides, it was dark in that cottage. I didn’t get a good
look at the ceiling or the fan.
But without a shred of doubt, the plastic was pulled from that
bed. The homeowner covered the bed just like all the other fur-
niture in the home. But then someone else removed it.
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MARY KUBICA
Once in my own yard, I look at my cell phone. It’s dying.
The battery percentage hovers at around two percent. I put in
a call to Officer Berg. He’ll be able to search for fingerprints
and figure out who’s been there. God willing, he’ll find Mor-
gan’s murderer.
I have a minute or two at best before the phone dies. My call
goes to voice mail. I leave a quick message. I ask him to call me.
I don’t tell him why.
I drop the dead phone into my coat pocket. I step across the
driveway, moving toward the porch. The house, from the out-
side, is dark. Will has forgotten to leave the porch light on for
me. There are lights on inside, but I can’t see the boys from here.
There’s a warmness about the house. Heat spews from the
vents, gray against the near blackness of night. Outside, it’s
windy and cold. The snow that’s fallen over the last few days
blows about, creating snow drifts on the driveways and streets.
The sky is clear. There’s no threat of snow tonight but forecast-
ers are going hog-wild about a storm that’s to arrive late tomor-
row. The first substantial storm of the season.
A noise from behind startles me. It’s a grinding noise, some-
thing discordant. I’m not ten feet from the porch when I hear
it. I spin and at first I don’t see him because his body is blocked by a formidable tree. But then he steps forward, away from the
tree, and I see him moving slowly, deliberately, a snow shovel
dragging behind him and through the street.
The snow shovel is the sound that I hear. Metal on concrete.
He holds onto the shaft of the shovel with a gloved hand, scrap-
ing the blade across the street. Jeffrey Baines.
Will is in the house making dinner. The kitchen is in the rear
out the house. He wouldn’t hear me if I screamed.
At the end of our drive, Jeffrey turns and makes his way to-
ward me. There’s something bedraggled about him. His hair
stands on end. His dark eyes are rheumy and red-rimmed. His
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glasses are missing. He looks nothing like the suave, affable man
I met at the memorial service the other day. Rather, he looks
like something the cat dragged in.
My eyes go to the shovel. It’s the kind of thing that’s versatile.
It has dual purposes because not only could he hit me over the
head and kill me with it, but he could use it to bury my body.
Does he know I watched him and Courtney at the memorial
service? That I was in her home?
I’m stricken with a sudden terror: what if there are secu-
rity cameras inside her home? One of those fancy new door-
bells with the camera to let you know who’s at your door when
you’re not there?
“Jeffrey,” I say, inching backwards. I try not to let my imagi-
nation get the best of me. There could be so many reasons why
he’s here. So many other reasons than the one I imagine.
“You’re home,” I say because I’ve only just realized that his
home is no longer a crime scene.
Jeffrey senses my fear. He hears it in my voice, he sees it in
my body language. My feet retreat, though it’s inappreciable the
way that they do. But still, his eyes drop to them. He see
s the
movement. Like a dog, he can smell my fear.
“I was shoveling my drive. I saw you pull up,” he says, and I
reply, “Oh,” realizing that if he did—if he saw my car pull into
the drive fifteen or twenty minutes ago—he may have seen me
force my way into the home next door. He may have heard the
voice mail I left for Officer Berg.
“Where’s your daughter?” I ask.
He says, “She’s busy with her toys.” As I look across the street,
I see a light on in a second-floor window. The shades are open,
the bedroom bright. I see the little girl’s silhouette as she bounds around the room with a teddy bear on her shoulders, as if giving him a piggyback ride. The little girl is laughing to herself,
to her bear. It only adds to my unease. I think of what Jeffrey
confessed, about how she and Morgan weren’t close.
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MARY KUBICA
Is she glad her stepmother is dead? Is she glad to have her fa-
ther back all to herself?
“I told her I’d be just a minute. Am I keeping you from some-
thing?” Jeffrey asks, running a gloved hand through his hair.
He wears gloves, but no hat. I wonder why, if he’s bundled up
to shovel snow, he wears no hat. Do the gloves serve another
purpose than keeping his hands warm?
“Will,” I tell him, inching backwards, “is inside. The boys. I
haven’t been home all day,” is what I say, though it’s a pathetic
excuse, and I know as I say it that I should have said something
more tangible than that, more concrete, more decisive. Dinner
is ready.
But my reply is wishy-washy at best, and it’s Jeffrey instead
who is decisive as he says, “Your husband isn’t home.”
“Of course he’s home,” I say, but as I turn back to the house,
I take in the darkness of our home, the lack of movement, the
sudden realization that Will’s car isn’t in the drive. How did I not realize when I pulled in and parked that Will’s car wasn’t here?
I wasn’t paying attention when I got home. I was too caught up
in other things to notice.
I sink my hands into my pocket. I’ll call Will, find out where
he is. I’ll beg him to come home.
But the nonresponsive black screen reminds me: My cell
phone is dead.
My face must whiten. Jeffrey asks, “Is everything alright,
Sadie?” and as tears of panic prick my eyes, I force them back.
I swallow against a lump in my throat and say, “Yes, yes, of
course. Everything is fine.”
I lie and tell him then, “It’s been a busy day. It slipped my
mind. Will had to pick our son up from a friend’s house. He
lives just around the block,” I say, pointing arbitrarily behind
me, hoping Jeffrey might assume it will be a quick trip for Will.
There and back in a matter of minutes. He’ll be home soon.
I tell Jeffrey, “I better get inside. Get dinner started. It was
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nice seeing you,” though I’m terrified to turn my back to him.
But there’s no other way. I have to get inside, close the door
and lock the dead bolt behind myself. I hear the dogs bark. I see
their faces pressed to the windows that flank the front door. But
where they are, trapped inside, they can’t help me.
I hold my breath as I turn. I grind my teeth, steel myself for
the agonizing pain of the square blade against the back of my
head.
I’ve barely moved when a heavy, gloved hand falls to my
shoulder.
“There was something I wanted to ask before you go.”
The tone of his voice is oppressive as he says it. It’s chilling.
Between my legs, my pelvic floor weakens. Urine seeps into
my underpants. I turn reluctantly back to see the shovel rooted
to the ground now. Jeffrey leans on it, uses it for support, tugs
on the cuff of his gloves to be sure they’re on tight.
“Yes?” I ask, voice quivering.
Headlights veer this way and that through the trees. But
they’re in the distance, moving away instead of drawing near.
Where is Will?
Jeffrey tells me that he’s come to talk to me about his dead
wife.
“What about her?” I ask, feeling the way my vocal cords vi-
brate inside of me.
But as he starts to speak of Morgan, a change becomes him.
His stance shifts. He gets choked up speaking about Morgan. It’s
subtle, a film that covers his eyes, rather than tears that run from his nose and across his cheeks. His eyes glisten in the moonlight,
in the glow off the snow.
“There was something wrong with Morgan,” he tells me.
“Something had her upset. Scared even. She wouldn’t say what.
Did she tell you?”
It seems so obvious, so transparent. I shouldn’t have to be the
one to put the idea in his head. But maybe the idea is already
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MARY KUBICA
there, and he’s only being cunning. Sly as a fox. I think he or his ex-wife had something to do with it. The proof is in her house,
in her own confession. But how can I admit to eavesdropping
on their conversation in the church sanctuary, of breaking into
the other woman’s house and going through her things?
I shake my head. “Morgan told me nothing.”
I don’t tell him that I didn’t know Morgan well enough for
her to tell me why she was upset. I don’t tell him that I didn’t
know Morgan at all. It’s easy to see that communication wasn’t
Jeffrey and Morgan’s strong suit because if it was, one would
think he’d already know that Morgan and I weren’t friends.
I ask, “What makes you think she was scared?”
“My company has gone global recently. I’ve spent a great deal
of time overseas. It’s been difficult, to say the least. The time
away from home, yes, but more so the difficulties of learning
a new language, culture, of trying to integrate into a foreign
country, succeed at my job. I’d been under a lot of pressure. I
don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he says, apologetically
almost. There’s a hint of vulnerability there.
I don’t know what to say to him and so I say nothing.
I don’t know why he’s telling me this either.
Jeffrey goes on. “I guess I’m just trying to say that I was over-
worked, burned out. Completely overwhelmed with work. I
haven’t been home much lately. Any time spent at home was
often beset with jet lag. But something had Morgan upset. I asked
what it was. But she was selfless to a fault. She wouldn’t tell me.
She said it was nothing. She wouldn’t burden me with whatever
it was. I asked,” he admits, saddened. “But I didn’t ask enough.”
It strikes me that this isn’t the face of a madman I see.
This is the face of a grieving widower.
“I heard on the news that there were threatening notes,” I say.
“There
were,” he says. “Yes. The police found notes in our
home.”
“Forgive me for saying this. It’s not my business. But your
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ex-wife. Is it possible she had hard feelings about a new woman
in your life?”
“You think Courtney did this? Sent the threats, murdered
Morgan.” He shakes his head, says decisively, “No. No way.
Courtney is the type to fly off the handle, yes. She’s rash, she
has a temper, she does stupid things.”
And then he goes on to tell me about some night Courtney
came to the island with the sole intent of stealing her own child.
She almost got away with it, because she had keys to the home
Jeffrey and Morgan shared since it was once her own home. After
everyone was asleep, she let herself in, went to their daughter’s
bedroom, roused the little girl from sleep. It was Morgan who
caught them as they were making their way back outside. Court-
ney had plane tickets in her possession; she’d somehow already
gotten a passport for their girl. She planned to leave the country
with their daughter. “Morgan wanted to fight for full custody.
She didn’t think Courtney was fit to parent.”
The day at the memorial service comes back to me.
My temper got the best of me.
I was angry.
You can’t blame me for trying to take back what’s mine.
I’m not sorry she’s dead.
Were these words double-edged? Maybe not a confession to
murder, but rather a reference to the night she tried to steal her
own child.
“Taking a child away from her mother,” I say, letting my voice
trail off. What that is—taking a child from her mother—is mo-
tive to kill. Except I don’t say it like that. Instead I say, “If anyone ever got between me and my children, I’d be beside myself.”
Jeffrey is resolute. “Courtney isn’t a murderer,” he says. “And
the threats Morgan received were…” but he stops there, unable
to put into words what exactly the threats were.
“What did the notes say?” I ask hesitantly. I’m not sure I want
to know.
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MARY KUBICA
There were three notes, Jeffrey tells me. He doesn’t know for
certain when they arrived, but he has his assumptions on one.
He had watched Morgan make her way to the mailbox one af-