Mary Kubica - The Other Mrs

“Where is the little girl now?” I ask, and he tells me that she’s with family while they try to connect with Jeffrey, traveling for business in Tokyo. The fact that he was out of the country doesn’t make Jeffrey Baines any less culpable in my mind. He could have hired someone to carry out the task.

“The poor thing,” I say, imagining years’ worth of therapy in the child’s future.

“What can we do to help?” I ask Officer Berg, and he tells me he’s been speaking to residents along the street, asking them 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?

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 allocated 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 a while from my own seat, remembering that it wasn’t so long ago that I would have found it impossible 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 persuasive 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 magnanimity 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 lipstick 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 sensible to leave my underwear lying around someone else’s home.

Will just looked at me when I shoved the credit card statement 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 offered 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 evening news and then The Late Show. The one with Stephen Colbert,” 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 at work all day, Will has been making friends.

“There was one thing,” Will says, speaking up all of a sudden. The officer and I turn to him at the same time.

“What’s that?” asks Officer Berg.

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 morning. 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 anything 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 Baines. 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 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 standpoint, 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, answering 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.