questions. “What kind of questions?” I ask.
“Can you tell me, Dr. Foust, where you were last night around
eleven o’clock?” the officer asks. In other words, do I have an
alibi for the time the homicide occurred?
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42
MARY KUBICA
Last night Will and I watched TV together, after we’d put
Tate to bed. We’d lain on different sides of the room, him spread
out on the sofa, me curled up on the love seat as we do. Our al-
located seats. Shortly after we’d gotten situated and turned on
the TV, Will brought me a glass of cabernet from the bottle I’d
opened the night before.
I watched him for awhile from my own seat, remembering
that it wasn’t so long ago that I would have found it impossi-
ble to sit this far away from Will, on separate sofas. I thought
fondly of the days that he would have handed me the wine with
a lengthy kiss to the lips, another hand feeling me up as he did
so, and I would have found myself easily wiled by the persua-
sive kiss and the persuasive hands and those eyes. Those eyes!
And then, one thing would have led to the next and, soon after,
we would have giggled like teenagers as we tried to hastily and
noiselessly make love on the sofa, ears tuned in to the creaks of
the floorboards above us, the rasp of box springs, footsteps on
the stairs, to be sure the boys still slept. There was a magnanim-
ity about Will’s touch, something that once made me feel giddy
and light-headed, drunk without a drop to drink. I couldn’t get
enough of him. He was intoxicating.
But then I found the cigarette, a Marlboro Silver with lip-
stick the color of strawberries along its filter. I found that first, followed shortly after by charges for hotel rooms on our credit
card statement, a pair of panties in our bedroom that I knew
weren’t mine. I realized at once that Will was magnanimous
and intoxicating to someone other than me.
I didn’t smoke. I didn’t wear lipstick. And I was far too sen-
sible to leave my underwear lying around someone else’s home.
Will just looked at me when I shoved the credit card state-
ment under his nose, when I asked him outright about the hotel
charges on our bill. He appeared so taken aback that he’d been
caught that he didn’t have the wherewithal to manufacture a lie.
Last night, after I’d finished that first glass of wine, Will of-
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THE OTHER MRS.
43
fered to top me off and I said yes, liking the way the wine made
me feel weightless and calm. The next thing I remember was
the siren rousing me from sleep.
I must have fallen asleep on the love seat. Will must have
helped me to bed.
“Dr. Foust?” the officer asks.
“Will and I were here,” I tell him. “Watching TV. The eve-
ning news and then The Late Show. The one with Stephen Col-
bert,” I say as Officer Berg transcribes my words onto a tablet
with his stylus. “Isn’t that right, Will?” I ask and Will nods his
head and confirms that I am right. It was The Late Show. The one with Stephen Colbert.
“And after The Late Show?” the officer asks, and I say only that after The Late Show we went to bed.
“Is that right, sir?” Officer Berg asks.
“That’s right,” Will says. “It was late,” he tells the officer. “After The Late Show, Sadie and I went to bed. She had to work in the morning and I, well,” he says, “I was tired. It was late,” he says
again, and if he notices the redundancy, he doesn’t show it.
“What time was that?” Officer Berg asks.
“Must’ve been around twelve thirty,” I say because even
though I don’t know for sure, I can do the math. He makes
note of this, moving on, asking, “Have you seen anything out
of the ordinary over the last few days?”
“Such as?” I inquire, and he shrugs, suggesting, “Anything
unusual. Anything at all. Strangers lurking about. Cars you don’t
recognize, cruising by, surveilling the neighborhood.”
But I shake my head and say, “We’re new here, Officer. We
don’t know many people.”
But then I remember that Will knows people. That when I’m
“There was one thing,” Will says, speaking up all of a sud-
den. The officer and I turn to him at the same time.
“What’s that?” asks Officer Berg.
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44
MARY KUBICA
But just as soon as he’s said it, Will tries to renege. He shakes
his head. “Never mind,” he says. “I shouldn’t have brought it
up. I’m sure it means nothing, just an accident on my part.”
“Why don’t you let me decide,” Officer Berg says.
Will explains, “There was a day not so long ago, a couple of
weeks maybe. I’d taken Tate to school and headed out on a few
errands. I wasn’t gone long, a couple of hours tops. But when I
came home, something was off.”
“How so?”
“Well, the garage door was up for one. I would’ve bet my
life I put it down. And then, when I came inside, I was nearly
knocked over by the smell of gas. It was so potent. Thank God
the dogs were okay. Lord only knows how long they’d been
breathing it in. It didn’t take long to find the source. It was
coming from the stove.”
“The stove?” I ask. I tell Will, “You didn’t tell me this.” My
voice is flat, composed, but inside I feel anything but.
Will’s voice is conciliatory. “I didn’t want you to worry for
nothing. I opened the doors and windows; I aired the house out.”
He shrugs and says, “It probably wasn’t even worth mentioning,
Sadie. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It had been a busy morn-
ing. I was making French toast; Tate and I were running late.
I must have left the burner on in a mad scramble to get out the
door on time. The pilot light must have blown out.”
Officer Berg dismisses this as an accident. He turns to me
now. “But not you, Doctor?” he asks. “You haven’t noticed any-
thing out of the ordinary?” I tell him no.
“How did Mrs. Baines seem the last time you spoke to her,
Doctor?” Officer Berg asks me now. “Was she…” he begins,
but I stop him there and explain that I don’t know Morgan Ba-
ines. That we’ve never met.
“I’ve been busy since we arrived,” I say, apologizing though
there’s really no need to. “I just never found the time to stop
by and introduce myself,” I tell him, thinking—though I don’t
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THE OTHER MRS.
45
dare say it; that would be insensitive—that Morgan Baines also
never found the time to stop by and introduce herself to me.
“Sadie’s schedule is fast and furious,” Will interjects, so that the officer doesn
’t judge me for not making friends with the neighbors. I’m grateful for this. “She works long shifts, nearly every day of the week it seems. My own schedule is the opposite. I teach
only three courses, which overlap with Tate’s school schedule. It’s intentional. When he’s here, I’m here. Sadie’s the breadwinner,”
Will admits with no indignity, no shame. “I’m the stay-at-home
dad. We never wanted our children to be raised by a nanny,” he
says, which was something we came up with long ago, before
Otto was born. It was a personal choice. From a financial stand-
point, it made sense that Will would be the one to stay home.
I made more money than him, though we never talked about
things like that. Will did his part; I did mine.
“I spoke to Morgan just a couple of days ago,” he says, answer-
ing the officer’s question for me. “She seemed fine, well enough
at least. Their hot water heater was on the fritz. She was waiting
on a repairman to see if it could be fixed. I tried to fix it myself.
I’m handy enough,” he says, “just not that handy.
“Do you have any leads?” Will asks, changing topics. “Any
signs of forced entry, any suspects?”
Officer Berg flips through his tablet and tells Will that he
can’t reveal too much just yet. “But,” he tells Will, “what I can
say is Mrs. Baines was killed between the hours of ten and two
last night,” and there, on the arm of the sofa, I sit up straighter, staring out the window. Though the Baines’s home is just out
of view from where I sit, I can’t help but think about how last
night as we were here, drinking wine and watching TV, she was
there—just beyond my viewpoint—being murdered.
But that’s not all.
Because every night at eight thirty in the evening, the last
ferry leaves. Which means that the killer spent the night among
us, here on the island.
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46
MARY KUBICA
Officer Berg stands up quickly, startling me. I gasp, my hand
going to my heart.
“Everything alright, Doctor?” he asks, gazing down at me,
trembling.
“Fine,” I tell him. “Just fine.”
He runs his hands down the thighs of his pants, straighten-
ing them. “I suppose we’re all a bit jumpy today,” he tells me,
and I nod my head and agree.
“Anything Sadie and I can do,” Will tells Officer Berg as
he walks him to the front door. I rise from my seat and follow
along. “Anything at all, please let us know. We’re here to help.”
Berg tips his hat at Will, a sign of gratitude. “I appreciate that.
As you can imagine, the entirety of the island is on edge, people
fearful for their lives. This kind of thing doesn’t bode well for
tourism either. No one wants to visit when there’s a murderer
on the loose. We’d like to get this wrapped up as quickly as we
can. Anything you hear, anything you see…” he says, voice
drifting, and Will says, “I understand.”
The murder of Morgan Baines is bad for business.
Officer Berg says his goodbyes. He hands Will a business card.
He’s about to leave, but before he does he has one last inquiry.
“How’s the house treating you?” he asks off topic, and Will
replies that it’s been alright.
“It’s dated and, as dated things go, has issues. Drafty windows,
a faulty furnace that we’ll need to replace.”
The officer grimaces. “A furnace isn’t cheap. That’ll run you
a few grand.”
Will tells him he knows.
“Shame about Alice,” Officer Berg says then, meeting Will’s
eye. Will echoes his sentiment.
It isn’t often that I broach the subject of Alice with Will. But
there are things I find myself wanting to know, like what Alice
was like, and if she and I would have gotten along if we’d ever
had the chance to meet. I imagine that she was antisocial—
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THE OTHER MRS.
47
though I’d never say that to Will. But I think that the pain of
fibromyalgia would have kept her at home, away from any sort
of social life.
“I never would have pegged her for the suicide type,” Offi-
cer Berg says then and, as he does, I get the sense that my in-
stinct was wrong.
“What does that mean?” Will asks, a hint of defensiveness
in his voice.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Officer Berg says, though clearly he does
because he goes on to tell us how Alice, a regular at Friday night
bingo, was affable and jolly when he saw her. How she had a
smile that could light up a room. “I guess I just never under-
stood how a person like that winds up taking their own life.”
The space between us fills with silence, tension. I don’t think
he meant anything by it; the man is a bit socially awkward. Still,
Will looks hurt. He says nothing. I’m the one to speak. “She
suffered from fibromyalgia,” I say, realizing Officer Berg must
not know this, or maybe he’s one of those people who thinks
it’s more of a mental disorder than a medical one. Fibromyal-
gia is highly misunderstood. People believe it’s made up, that
it isn’t real. There is no cure, and, on the surface, a person ap-
pears to be fine; there’s no test that can be used to diagnose fi-
bromyalgia. Because of this, the diagnosis is based on symptoms
alone—in other words, widespread pain that can’t otherwise be
explained. For this reason, a large portion of physicians them-
selves question the credibility of the condition, often suggesting
patients see a psychiatrist for treatment instead. It makes me sad
to think about, Alice in so much pain and no one believing it.
“Yes, of course,” Officer Berg says. “It’s such a terrible thing.
She must have really been hurting to do what she did,” he says,
and again, my eyes go to Will. I know that Officer Berg doesn’t
mean to be rude; in his own, awkward way, he’s offering his
sympathy.
“I liked Alice a lot,” he says. “She was a lovely lady.”
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48
MARY KUBICA
“Indeed she was,” Will says, and again Officer Berg mum-
bles, “Such a shame,” before he says a final goodbye and goes.
Once he’s gone, Will heads quietly to the kitchen to start din-
ner. I let him go, watching out the narrow pane of glass along-
side the door as Officer Berg pulls his Crown Vic from our
drive. He heads uphill, about to join his cohort at the Baines’s
home, or so I think.
But then he doesn’t go to the Baines’s home. Instead he pulls
his car to the end of the drive across the street from theirs, at
the home of the Nilssons. Officer Berg steps out. He leaves the
car running, red taillights bright against the darkness of night. I watch as Berg places something inside a mailbox and closes the
door. He returns to his car, disappearing over the
crest of the hill.
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Camille
I disappeared that night after Will and Sadie met. I was full of
anger, of self-loathing.
But I couldn’t stay away from Will forever. I thought about
him all the time. He was there every time I so much as blinked.
Eventually, I sought him out. A little internet surfing told me
where he lived, where he worked. I looked for him. I found what
I was looking for. Though by then he was older, grayer, with kids,
while in all those years, I hadn’t changed much. My gene pool
was apparently a good one. Age couldn’t touch me. My hair was
still was the color of rust, my eyes an electric blue. My skin had
yet to betray me.
I put on a dress, a black off-the-shoulder dress. I put on
makeup, perfume. I put on jewelry. I did my hair.
I followed him for days, showed up where he least expected
to see me.
Remember me? I asked, cornering him in a deli. I stood too close. I grasped him by the elbow. I called him by name. Because there’s nothing that excites us more than the sound of
our own name. It’s the sweetest sound in the world to us.
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MARY KUBICA
Corner of Madison and Wabash. Fifteen years ago. You saved my
life, Will.
It didn’t take but a moment for him to remember. His face
lit up.
Time had taken its toll on him. The strain of marriage, of
parenting, of a job, a mortgage. This Will was a burned-out
version of the Will I met.
It was nothing I couldn’t fix.
He just needed to forget for awhile that he had a wife and kids.
I could help him with that.
I gave him a wide smile. I took him by the hand.
If it wasn’t for you, I said, leaning in to whisper the words in his ear, I’d be dead.
There was a spark in his eyes. His cheeks flushed. His eyes
swept me up and down, landing near my lips.
He smiled, said, How could I ever forget?
He lightened up, he laughed. What are you doing here?
I tossed my hair over a shoulder, said, I was outside, just passing by. I thought I saw you through the window.
He touched the ends of my hair, said it looked nice.
And that dress, he said, followed it up with a long, low whistle.
He wasn’t looking at my lips anymore. Now he was looking