Блейк Пирс - The Perfect Wife

She grabbed her keys, locked up, and walked over with Kimberly. When they arrived, four heads turned in their direction. None of the faces looked familiar. Kimberly introduced everyone and led Jessie over to the coffee station.

“They don’t expect you to remember their names,” she whispered as she poured them cups. “So don’t feel any pressure. They’ve all been where you are now.”

“That’s a load off,” Jessie confessed. “I have so much bouncing around in my head these days, I can barely remember my own name.”

“Totally understandable,” Kimberly said. “But I should warn you, I mentioned the whole FBI profiler thing so you may get a few questions about it.”

“Oh, I don’t work for the FBI. I haven’t even gotten my degree yet.”

“Trust me—that doesn’t matter. They all think you’re a real-life Clarice Starling. My over/under on serial killer references is three.”

Kimberly had underestimated.

“Do you sit in the same room as these guys?” asked a woman named Caroline with hair so long that some strands reached her backside.

“It depends on the rules of the facility,” Jessie answered. “But I’ve never interviewed one without an experienced profiler or investigator with me, taking lead.”

“Are serial killers all as smart as they seem in the movies?” a mousy woman named Josette asked hesitantly.

“I haven’t interviewed enough to say definitively,” Jessie told her. “But based on the literature, as well as my personal experience, I’d say no. Most of these men—and they are almost always men—are no smarter than you or me. Some get away with it for a long time because of sloppy investigating. Some manage to evade capture because they choose victims no one cares about—prostitutes, the homeless. It takes a while for people to notice those folks are missing. And sometimes they’re just lucky. Once I graduate, my job will be to change their luck.”

The women politely pummeled her with questions, seemingly uninterested in the fact that she had not even graduated, much less formally taken on a profiling case.

“So you’ve never actually solved a case?” asked one particularly inquisitive woman named Joanne.

“Not yet. Technically, I’m just a student. The pros handle the live cases. Speaking of professionals, what do you do?” she asked in the hopes of redirecting her.

“I used to be in marketing,” Joanne said. “But that was before Troy was born. He keeps me pretty busy these days. It’s a full-time job all on its own.”

“I’ll bet. Is he somewhere napping now?” Jessie asked, looking around.

“Probably,” Joanne said, glancing at her watch. “But he’ll be up soon for snack. He’s at daycare.”

“Oh,” Jessie said, before broaching her next question as delicately as possible. “I thought most kids in daycare had working moms.”

“Yes,” Joanne said, apparently not offended. “But they’re so good over there that I couldn’t not enroll him. He doesn’t go every day. But Wednesdays are a challenge, so I usually take him then. Hump days are hard, right?”

Before Jessie could respond, the door from the garage opened and a burly thirty-something guy with a shock of unruly red hair burst into the room.

“Morgan!” Kimberly exclaimed happily. “What are you doing home?”

“I left my report in the study,” he replied. “My presentation is in twenty minutes so I have to get back fast.”

Morgan, apparently Kimberly’s husband, didn’t look at all surprised to see half a dozen women in his living room. He barreled through them, offering general greetings to the group. Joanne leaned over to Jessie.

“He’s some kind of engineer,” she said quietly, as if it was some kind of secret.

“For whom? One of the defense contractors?” Jessie asked.

“No, for some real estate outfit.”

Jessie didn’t understand why that merited such discretion but decided not to pursue it. Moments later, Morgan blasted back into the living room with a thick ream of paper in his hand.

“Nice to see you, ladies,” he said. “Sorry I can’t stick around. Kim, remember I’ve got that thing at the club tonight so I’ll be back late.”

“Okay, sweetie,” his wife said, chasing after him to secure a kiss before he rushed out the door.

When he was gone, she returned to the living room, still flushed from the unexpected visit.

“I swear he moves with such purpose, you’d think he was a criminal profiler or something.”

The comment sent the group into a wave of giggles. Jessie smiled, not sure exactly what was so funny.

An hour later, she was back in her own sitting room, trying to find the energy to open the box in front of her. As she carefully sliced through the tape, she went over the coffee outing. There was something odd about it. But she couldn’t quite place what.

Kimberly was a sweetheart. Jessie genuinely liked her and especially appreciated the effort she was making to help the new girl. And the other women were all nice and personable, if a little bland. But there was something…mysterious about their interactions, as if they were all in on some shared secret that Jessie wasn’t privy to.

Part of her thought she was paranoid to suspect such a thing. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d incorrectly jumped to faulty conclusions. Then again, all of her instructors in the Forensic Psych program at USC had praised her for her intuitive sense. They didn’t seem to think she was paranoid so much as “suspiciously inquisitive,” as one professor had called her. It had sounded like a compliment at the time.

She opened the box and pulled out the first item, a framed photo from her wedding. She stared at it for a moment, looking at the happy expressions on her and Kyle’s faces. On either side of them were family members, all beaming as well.

As her eyes drifted over the group, she suddenly felt the melancholy from earlier rise up again inside her. An anxious tightness gripped her chest. She reminded herself to take deep breaths but no amount of inhaling or exhaling calmed her down.

She wasn’t sure exactly what had brought this on—the memories, the new environment, the fight with Kyle, a combination of all of it? Whatever it was, she recognized one fundamental truth. She was unable to control this on her own anymore. She needed to talk to someone. And despite the feeling of acute failure that began to overwhelm her as she reached for the phone, she dialed the number she had hoped she’d never have to use again.

She made an appointment with her old therapist, Dr. Janice Lemmon, and just knowing that going would necessitate a visit back to her old stomping grounds set her at ease. The panic had subsided almost immediately after she scheduled the session.

When Kyle came home that night—early even—they ordered takeout and watched a cheesy but fun movie about alternate realities called The 13 th Floor . Neither of them formally apologized but they seemed to have rediscovered their comfort zone. After the movie, they didn’t even go upstairs to have sex. Instead, Kyle just climbed on top of her right there on the couch. It reminded Jessie of their newlywed days.

He’d even made her breakfast this morning before he headed out for work. It was awful—burnt toast, runny eggs, and undercooked turkey bacon—but Jessie appreciated the attempt. She felt a little bad about not telling him her plans for the day. But then again, he hadn’t asked so she wasn’t really lying.

It wasn’t until she was on the freeway the next day, in sight of the downtown Los Angeles skyscrapers, that Jessie truly felt the gnawing pit of nervousness in her gut subside. She had made the midday trip from Orange County in under an hour and got into the city early just so she could walk around a bit. She parked in the lot near Dr. Lemmon’s office across from the Original Pantry at the corner of Figueroa and West 9 th.