Her heart pounded. Laura thought her chest might burst into a thousand pieces. She couldn’t believe what a complete nightmare her life had become. Her mind couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“I haven’t hurt anyone.”
“Are you sure of that?” He was very close to her now. Close enough that he reached out and twirled a lock of her hair between his fingers. Laura’s entire body started to shake.
“Yes.” The word barely came out.
The man leaned in. As his cheap cologne wafted over her, nausea rose up Laura’s throat again. His breath warmed the outside of her ear, and Laura secretly hoped she might vomit on his shiny shoes. And then she hoped that she wouldn’t, because she was certain he might kill her just for that.
“Be careful, Laura. Stop looking in places where you don’t belong.”
He let go of her hair, and before Laura could do anything he was out the door and gone.
Laura stood in the same place for what felt like an hour but was probably only a few seconds. She reminded herself to breathe.
She pulled out her phone, not sure who she would even call.
The message that arrived earlier glowed on her screen.
It was from Addy.
Trina is dead, it said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE JOYCE
It’s strange what a person can get used to, Joyce thought as she dialed the number for their lawyer once again. Simon was at the police station, being questioned about another young person’s death, but this didn’t give Joyce much pause. Not like it did a year ago. A lot can happen in twelve months.
A lot can happen in twenty-four hours.
She’d thought about accompanying Simon to the station, but she was finding herself at her breaking point for compassion towards her husband. She had other important matters to attend to. At the rate things were going, she’d be spending all her time in hospitals, police interrogation rooms, or morgues if Simon didn’t get a handle on their life.
Joyce was glad Trina was dead, although she wasn’t glad for the extra hassle she and Simon would need to go through to prove he was innocent. God, she needed a vacation.
Another call came through on her other phone while Joyce was talking with the lawyer. Which was a joke unto itself—as if the two of them could be considered a family.
When she clicked to see who it was she read the name and sighed, because there was no way she wanted to have this conversation any time soon. The message she was waiting for hadn’t come through yet—plans had changed, been updated. She needed to know everything was in order, but she also needed to be patient. Joyce sent a text in reply to the caller.
She set the kettle to boil on the stove and listened for where Clara was inside their house. The vacuum hummed from somewhere upstairs. Joyce sat down to a little privacy in her kitchen. She retrieved another cup before she settled, anticipating Clara coming down for a chat soon.
Her secret phone pinged with a text. It was all righteous indignation, because she put the guy’s name into her other phone wrong. She called him Ralph, but his name was really Randy. Oh well, she thought. Close enough. But still, she’d have to work on his bruised ego, and that was effort and time she didn’t have.
Joyce really should be more careful, although she didn’t think Simon suspected anything. Over the years her affairs ranged from passionate indiscretions to almost bleak, frozen meetings where she came away more closed and dispassionate than when she arrived.
There was one time, where a man she’d met in the grocery store earlier that week had come to the house—it was Clara’s day off—and they’d ravaged each other like two wild animals on the floor of the formal dining room, until Joyce heard the distinct sound of Simon’s keys in the lock and she’d had to rush her gentleman caller out the back door, pull her pantyhose up, and smooth her skirt before Simon made his way further into the house. She’d worried he could smell the musky odor of sex on her, but he’d been distracted by a situation with a patient and had headed straight for the drink cart in the study once he found her to say hello and tell her he was home early.
Another time she’d met a man—a boy, really, God he must have been only nineteen or twenty—at the Motel 6 outside the edge of town and he’d been so nervous she finally had to ask him what was wrong. He confessed that he didn’t really want to sleep with her, he was just trying to make his wife jealous.
“Wife?” she said. They’d met online, a dating site for older women to find younger men. It had an awful name—Cougar Hunting or something like that—but this boy messaged her first, and so she thought it would be a good fit for a time.
“We got married after high school because she was pregnant, and then she lost the baby and we were just married.” The poor kid sobbed on the stiff polyester bed cover and Joyce tried to muster something that was kind or maternal, but she just found herself annoyed she’d wasted a perfectly good afternoon not getting laid.
That time she’d just rolled up her clothes, patted him on the shoulder, and then driven home to wait for Simon to be done with his last appointment.
Another call came in, on her normal phone this time.
She didn’t recognize the number. She picked up for the banal thrill of not knowing what would happen when she did.
“Joyce?” The voice quavered on the other line. “It’s Susan. Can we meet?”
A feeling grew in Joyce’s chest, like a stone dropping into a deep pool.
“Of course we can.” Joyce pulled the kettle off the stove as it started to whistle. “What’s wrong? You sound upset.”
“I’ll tell you when we’re together. I don’t want to mention it over the phone.”
“All right.” Joyce suggested a small café near her house, different from the one they went to yesterday. “Do you need me to pick you up?”
“No, no. I can drive. I just need to talk to someone, you know? Who isn’t a police officer.”
“You had your interview with the detectives? Is that what you’re so upset about? What did they say?”
Susan paused. Joyce heard traffic in the background. Snippets of a conversation leached down the line, something about school lunches and a PTA meeting that was abruptly canceled.
“Where are you?” Joyce asked.
“I don’t know. In a park somewhere in the center of town.”
“Does it have a little climbing wall and an orange slide?” Joyce asked.
