Prologue
James had slept in. He must be getting sick—he never slept late. My son lingered in front of the open refrigerator door, staring inside, which was a habit that drove Brad crazy.
“Close the door,” Brad said and ate another spoonful of cereal.
“Where’s the milk?” James surveyed the counter and opened the refrigerator door again.
“What milk?” Brad asked never looking up from his phone.
“The milk for cereal,” said James, and I looked at Brad’s bowl.
“You used all the milk?” I asked, and Brad put his phone down. He was suddenly the center of attention.
“Yeah.”
“What about the kids?”
“What about them? Make him some toast.”
I shook my head and found the bread in the drawer. “I used to make him milk from my breast. I would never finish the milk before the kids have eaten.” I tried to understand how he could have done it, and he was watching me as if I were crazy. Maybe I was crazy.
“I’m not going to argue with you over milk.” When I walked by, he grabbed my elbow. “I’ll argue with you about whatever you want, but not milk. We’re better than that.” Brad smiled and somehow swayed me. I softened at the glimpse into our old life.
“I made him milk from my breasts,” I said dramatically, trying to hold back the laughter. “What have you done?” Brad laughed, too. “No, seriously, since your initial DNA donation, what have you done for these children? And do not say, ‘I work.’”
“I picked you.” Brad kissed my cheek, and my heart stopped for a moment. They were the first words of appreciation he’d said to me since I’d quit my job. The first glimmer of acknowledgement, and although it was a half-compliment half-joke to him, it meant the world to me.
***
Liv’s legs flew well over her head as she swung in the backyard. The swings were always my favorite, too. I’d wanted to fly. Her hair flew in front of her face as her legs pumped backward and then blew behind her as she soared forward.
“I love you, Mommy,” she yelled toward the kitchen doorway I watched her from.
“Love you, too.” I took a deep breath. I could pull this off. I could raise these children to flourish, I could be with Brad, and I could have Vince. It didn’t matter where I lived, or that I only worked twenty hours a week at the police station. It would be more than enough.
“Watch me! I’m flying.”
“I see you. You are flying.”
Brad walked into the kitchen.
“You have to come see Liv. She’s swinging so high the whole swing set is rocking.”
He came and stood behind me, and we both watched our daughter as she soared through the sky. “She loves it,” he said, sounding almost sad. It caught me off guard. I thought annoyed was Brad’s only emotion.
“Hey, Brad?”
“Yes.” The annoyance returned.
“What do you love about this town?”
The silence behind me followed his breath down my back. It left me chilled with the familiar longing of isolation in its wake. Even in Brad’s presence, I felt alone. Or was it especially in Brad’s presence?
“Funny you should ask.” His tone had an edge of anger, as if he were pissed about something and waiting for the perfect time to fight about it. “I was thinking that maybe you’re right. Maybe we should move.”
I didn’t even turn around. I wasn’t going to ruin the moment of watching Liv swing with a discussion about moving. Brad loved it here. He’d made us move here years ago, and we weren’t going anywhere.
But why would he bring it up now?
Brad moved closer and swept my hair to one side. He put his hands near my collarbone and ran them down to my shoulders, massaging them with a foreign touch. The slight edge to his tone rested at the end of his fingertips as he pressed his hands into my skin.
“Would that make you happy, Meredith?” He tightened his hands on my shoulders, kneading the muscles beneath his grip.
“You’re kidding,” I said, challenging him, not wanting to pay attention to this conversation. Liv leaned way back until her head nearly touched the ground and her feet almost reached the sky. Brad’s hands moved up to my neck and tightened there.
“Just say the word.”
My breath caught. My instincts kicked in, and I exhaled slowly, not letting Brad feel the difference. His hands still rested around my neck, and everything seemed to move in slow motion except Liv yelling to the sky that she was awesome as she soared through the air.
“I’ll let you know,” I said with a controlled lightness. I tapped his hands, stifling the fear with a fake jovial movement.
Brad let go and I stayed, watching Liv, feeling safe in her presence. She would protect me from whatever he knew.
Brad went to the bathroom, and I continued to stare out the doorway as the rotting sense of death rose up inside me. I swallowed hard to try to force it back down, but it was there and wouldn’t be ignored.
I e-mailed the colonel. There was no subject and nothing in it.
Chapter 1
Chief Vincent Pratt
I usually didn’t check for an e-mail while I was on duty. She was here with me most weekday mornings, but today was Sunday. She was home with her family, and I was working. There was no nine-to-five for police officers. Not even the chief.
So I looked. I knew there wouldn’t be a new one, but when I missed her, I’d read the old e-mails, anything to feel closer to her, to have her tell me something. She wrote me every night before she fell asleep in her husband’s bed.
Her bold-faced address at the top of my inbox shot adrenalin through me like electricity through a wire until I saw there was no subject. I leaned my arms on my desk with my phone in my hands, holding my breath as I opened it.
There was no content.
The silence in the station surrounded me until the air conditioner turned on and blew cold air over me from the vent above. The rule I never thought would come up, the one that I was sure we’d never need, had been invoked. I went back to my inbox, hoping for another e-mail explaining that she had sent the first one by mistake, but Meredith Walsh never made mistakes. I was her only one.
The day she read her extensive list of rules to me, I’d thought she was paranoid, but I didn’t care. I would follow her rules if she needed me to. No calling, no texting, and no using her name. She was the most thorough person I’d ever met. I’d laughed at her as she’d listed her demands one by one so seriously but without any clothes on. I wasn’t allowed to fall in love with her, but even then, I knew I’d already broken that one. And this one: If I ever send you an e-mail with no subject line and nothing in it, you are to delete your account immediately and NOT contact me. I wanted to break now. The fact that she was married to another man was only tolerable because I could see her almost every day. This e-mail, this direction to stop contacting her, choked me with jealousy. Even though I knew it was to protect her children, not Brad Walsh, I still couldn’t stop the anger at the helplessness welling up inside of me.
There’d been a few months she hadn’t spoken to me. They’d been the worst of my life—worse than boot camp, the police academy, and Kuwait. Worse than anything, and now, it was going to begin again. I had no choice but to wait for word from her.
I scrolled down my inbox. For so long these e-mails had been the only piece of her I was allowed to have. For almost a year, I had only these words and two days a month to see her. They were our secret that taught me what it felt like to live, and now I couldn’t bear to delete them. I stared at the screen. Every e-mail in the account was from Meredith. She was the only one with the address. No one else in the world knew it existed; just like our relationship.
I searched for the ones where she’d told me she loved me. It took forever for her to believe we could love each other and that love could be a component of an affair. But I’d loved her before I’d had an affair with her. I’d loved her the first time I’d met her.
I found the one she’d sent last Thursday morning before she’d come to work. I’d read it, and instead of working, I wanted to drive her somewhere, anywhere we could be alone. But what Meredith yearned for was to not have to be alone. The subject of the e-mail was “I always dream of you.”
I had a dream last night we were out to dinner and everyone in town stopped by our table to say hi. You were wearing the Phillies T-shirt, which forced me to touch you the first time. Yes, I think it was the shirt that caused this. After dinner, we met John and Jenna for drinks.
We were real.
The frustration I’d felt when I’d first read the e-mail came flooding back. She insisted she’d never divorce her husband and that we’d never do things other couples did. It killed her that our relationship only existed in the dark, but Meredith had created the impossible situation.
I scrolled up to my reply.
We are real. We’re just different. You are a huge part of my life. Whether the rest of the town knows it or not. I love you.
I searched through the list of e-mails I couldn’t bear to lose and considered printing some out or forwarding them to my personal account, but Meredith would kill me. I found account preferences and selected Delete Account and All Data.
There was nothing left to do but wait for her. A forbidden text, a Facebook message, both of which I knew would never come. If she sent this e-mail, her husband knew something or suspected something. She wouldn’t risk a shred of evidence of our relationship being found. I’d spend every minute looking for a sign until I heard from her. I’d check the windshield of my car for a handwritten note. I’d watch the door to the police station each time it opened, hoping she’d found an excuse to come in on her day off. I knew I’d drive by her house while out on patrol today, anything to catch a glimpse of her.
I wouldn’t make it through the night without hearing from her. Not tonight. Not any night.
***
I pulled the pot off the burner and put my cup directly in the flow of coffee. I couldn’t wait for the archaic machine to finish brewing the whole pot. I hadn’t spoken with Meredith, and I hadn’t slept a minute last night. I’d driven by her house twice yesterday, but the house was empty. Even after dark, no lights were on. It was as if she’d disappeared.
She’ll be here soon.
Swim practice started early. Her son’s age group was at eight thirty. She’d be here. She was going to walk through the door, and I already had an excuse ready for why I needed to talk to her in my office with the door shut.
I replaced my mug with the coffee pot and tried to calm down. This was yet another rule we were going to break, because I wasn’t ever going through a night like last night again. Daniels came in and grabbed a cup off the counter. One of the cups Meredith had bought for us.
“Hey, Chief. Did you hear about Meredith?”
My chest tightened, trapping the air inside of me, where it surrounded my heart like a vise. “No. Hear what?”
Daniels moved around like nothing was a big deal. Like Meredith hadn’t sent a warning that her husband knew we were having an affair. “She fell at her house. I just saw Jack from the Rescue Squad at Wawa. He said they transported her yesterday. I was hoping she called out sick. That you heard something.”
“No calls.” I wasn’t sure if I was speaking aloud. “Is she okay?”
“Unresponsive.”
Without a word, I put my cup down and walked out of the station.
When I turned off Main Street, I switched on my siren and lights and sped to the hospital, breaking every rule. Not caring. It wasn’t going to matter after I killed Brad Walsh.
Chapter 2
Brad Walsh
Liv was so tired she couldn’t walk. None of us could. I told James he had to man up because I couldn’t carry them both, but he looked like a little boy. My back throbbed as I tried to fit Liv in behind the driver’s seat of my car that wasn’t meant to transport children. I should have brought Meredith’s.
Her name sent a pain from one side of my head to the other. Meredith.
How did this happen?
Sixteen hours, and she still hadn’t woken up.
What if she never wakes up?
The kids had cried nonstop the first hour until I’d convinced them she’d be fine. But when she didn’t wake up, I just wanted them to go to sleep, too. Their sad eyes churned the guilt like acid in my stomach. She had to wake up. She had to come back.
Both Liv and James were asleep before I exited the parking lot. I’d just turned off the radio and was pulling my phone from my pocket when a police car flew by with its lights on. Whoever was driving must have been going a hundred miles an hour. I watched in the rearview mirror as the car careened into the emergency entrance’s parking lot.
Maybe a cop’s been hurt.
I had my own problems to worry about. I glanced at the kids in the back seat. The nurses had been good to us. By eight last night, the kids had started complaining they were hungry, and I just wanted them to shut up. I wanted their mother to wake up and shut them up. “Look around, take note of where we are,” I’d snapped at them. I was a dick. Taking care of them was not my job. Meredith did that, but now she wouldn’t wake the fuck up. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it was just to spite me. But that was crazy. She might have hated me. Even enough to leave me one day, but she’d never hurt the kids.
One at a time, I carried my children to their rooms and placed them in their beds. I kissed their foreheads and told them I loved them. Meredith always tucked them in. But today was different. They were going to bed at eight a.m. instead of eight p.m., and I was the only one home. I needed to sleep myself. The exhaustion descended upon my body. Every step was an effort I could barely expend. The nagging feeling wouldn’t go away, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I had some answers. Some answers as to how we ended up here, with Meredith unconscious in the hospital.
I walked through the house. The front door was still unlocked from the day before. Once the paramedics had taken Meredith, the kids and I closed the door and ran to the car to follow her. I locked it. I needed to be alone with her things. Her phone lay at the bottom of the steps next to the plant she fought so hard to keep alive. I bent over, grabbed the phone, and paused at the plant’s hearty green leaves. It was finally thriving, and so was Meredith. It’d taken her years to accept her life here, and she was finally settling in.
The phone had flown past me when she’d hit her head. I’d wanted her to face me, but I’d also wanted the phone. I wanted to know what the hell was going on with my wife. Two months ago, I’d seen the strange text message to Jenna. But Jenna was her best friend, and they were always talking in some code.
Meredith: This is me. Saying the word.
Jenna: Nibac.
I told myself they were trivial.
I didn’t understand a word of it. It meant nothing. But it had eaten away at me. Something changed with Meredith. A quiet peace had descended upon my house, upon my marriage, and I wasn’t stupid enough to take credit for it.
I traced the lock pattern with my finger and opened her world captured in her phone. I started with the texts. The ones I’d seen to Jenna were missing, making me wonder for a second if I’d fabricated them. I went through every message. Practice times, playdates, birthday parties, babysitting, talent show…They were all about the kids. Jenna’s were the only entertainment, and most of her texts were comments about the pain of motherhood. Many of the names I barely recognized. Our children’s lives were Meredith’s domain.
I exited the texts and proceeded to invade every app on her phone, starting with the photos. There were tons of them. Liv and James were in almost every single one. Some I recognized she’d sent to me when I was away on business and she knew the kids would want me to see whatever they were accomplishing at that moment. The photos were useless.
I read her e-mails. Every single one of them. There had to be over a thousand—teachers, volunteers, mothers, coaches, etc. Again, all of it pertained to our children. One group was about a lunch date with her friend, Christine, but that was a year ago. I kept going back. A few e-mails from college friends. All were innocent. Not one shred of evidence there was a part of Meredith’s life I didn’t know about. I listened to her voicemails. Most were from me. I scrolled through the Instagram account she clearly never went on, and finally Facebook. I went right to the messages and found nothing. Nothing noteworthy at least. It was as if Meredith’s entire existence stemmed from Liv and James. I looked through her profile and ran my finger across the pictures she’d been tagged in from Christine’s wedding and Sarah’s Christmas party. Both events I’d sent her to alone. She hadn’t even shown me a picture when I’d returned. I wasn’t a part of them.
It was crazy. The whole fucking thing was crazy. My heartbeat pounded in my head. It blocked out my thoughts and forced me to look at the staircase. The sight of the pooled blood sent the pounding to the back of my throat. I turned away, unable to face the evidence of her injury. My wife, the mother of my children’s blood was on the stairs, and she was in the hospital. This couldn’t be my life.
I abandoned her phone on the dining room table and walked into the kitchen. The refrigerator was filled with birthday party invitations and schedules for the kids’ teams. There were pictures of Liv and James covering every other inch of the door.
I’d imagined the whole thing. I was going to go upstairs and sleep, and when I woke up, she was going to be here kissing James’s forehead or laughing with Liv.
The humid wind blew outside, and I opened the kitchen door. The heat hit my face as I watched the swing blow toward the trees. I was standing in the exact same spot we’d stood in when I’d said the words to her. The words that had been eating away at me. The words I knew meant more than I’d ever let myself believe.
“Say the word,” I said again, this time to no one.
The last time I’d said those words, her neck had been in my hands, and she’d been watching Liv swing. If I hadn’t known every inch of her body as well as my own, I might have missed the catching of her breath. I’d fought against my hands tightening around her neck, and Meredith’s breathing had returned to normal within a half second. She’d made some joke, but I wasn’t listening. I hadn’t heard a word she said. All I remember was the anger that crept up inside me. I’d had to leave the room and find some place I could process her reaction to a text I couldn’t understand. A text that no matter how many times I told myself meant nothing, taunted me until I finally said it to her.
And even though it still made no sense, I couldn’t let go of the idea that there was someone else. I grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter and rummaged through it. Frustrated with all the pockets inside, I turned it over. Band-Aids, ChapStick, the kids’ favorite gum, and a random assortment of other things spilled onto the countertop. Even her purse was depressing. There was an empty Ziploc bag, and as soon as I opened the seal, I knew the bag had held a joint at one point. Based on the rest of her life, I no longer blamed her for smoking.
Nothing.
Not one thing came out of her purse that told me anything. But I knew. I knew she wouldn’t be in the hospital if I hadn’t said those words, and those words wouldn’t have set the ugliness into motion if she weren’t hiding something or someone from me. I pulled myself up the back staircase. I would search through her nightstand and her entire closet, but even before I began, I knew I wouldn’t find anything. Meredith was smarter than I was, and she would never have an affair. She was better than that.
Better than me.
James had slept in. He must be getting sick—he never slept late. My son lingered in front of the open refrigerator door, staring inside, which was a habit that drove Brad crazy.
“Close the door,” Brad said and ate another spoonful of cereal.
“Where’s the milk?” James surveyed the counter and opened the refrigerator door again.
“What milk?” Brad asked never looking up from his phone.
“The milk for cereal,” said James, and I looked at Brad’s bowl.
“You used all the milk?” I asked, and Brad put his phone down. He was suddenly the center of attention.
“Yeah.”
“What about the kids?”
“What about them? Make him some toast.”
I shook my head and found the bread in the drawer. “I used to make him milk from my breast. I would never finish the milk before the kids have eaten.” I tried to understand how he could have done it, and he was watching me as if I were crazy. Maybe I was crazy.
“I’m not going to argue with you over milk.” When I walked by, he grabbed my elbow. “I’ll argue with you about whatever you want, but not milk. We’re better than that.” Brad smiled and somehow swayed me. I softened at the glimpse into our old life.
“I made him milk from my breasts,” I said dramatically, trying to hold back the laughter. “What have you done?” Brad laughed, too. “No, seriously, since your initial DNA donation, what have you done for these children? And do not say, ‘I work.’”
“I picked you.” Brad kissed my cheek, and my heart stopped for a moment. They were the first words of appreciation he’d said to me since I’d quit my job. The first glimmer of acknowledgement, and although it was a half-compliment half-joke to him, it meant the world to me.
***
Liv’s legs flew well over her head as she swung in the backyard. The swings were always my favorite, too. I’d wanted to fly. Her hair flew in front of her face as her legs pumped backward and then blew behind her as she soared forward.
“I love you, Mommy,” she yelled toward the kitchen doorway I watched her from.
“Love you, too.” I took a deep breath. I could pull this off. I could raise these children to flourish, I could be with Brad, and I could have Vince. It didn’t matter where I lived, or that I only worked twenty hours a week at the police station. It would be more than enough.
“Watch me! I’m flying.”
“I see you. You are flying.”
Brad walked into the kitchen.
“You have to come see Liv. She’s swinging so high the whole swing set is rocking.”
He came and stood behind me, and we both watched our daughter as she soared through the sky. “She loves it,” he said, sounding almost sad. It caught me off guard. I thought annoyed was Brad’s only emotion.
“Hey, Brad?”
“Yes.” The annoyance returned.
“What do you love about this town?”
The silence behind me followed his breath down my back. It left me chilled with the familiar longing of isolation in its wake. Even in Brad’s presence, I felt alone. Or was it especially in Brad’s presence?
“Funny you should ask.” His tone had an edge of anger, as if he were pissed about something and waiting for the perfect time to fight about it. “I was thinking that maybe you’re right. Maybe we should move.”
I didn’t even turn around. I wasn’t going to ruin the moment of watching Liv swing with a discussion about moving. Brad loved it here. He’d made us move here years ago, and we weren’t going anywhere.
But why would he bring it up now?
Brad moved closer and swept my hair to one side. He put his hands near my collarbone and ran them down to my shoulders, massaging them with a foreign touch. The slight edge to his tone rested at the end of his fingertips as he pressed his hands into my skin.
“Would that make you happy, Meredith?” He tightened his hands on my shoulders, kneading the muscles beneath his grip.
“You’re kidding,” I said, challenging him, not wanting to pay attention to this conversation. Liv leaned way back until her head nearly touched the ground and her feet almost reached the sky. Brad’s hands moved up to my neck and tightened there.
“Just say the word.”
My breath caught. My instincts kicked in, and I exhaled slowly, not letting Brad feel the difference. His hands still rested around my neck, and everything seemed to move in slow motion except Liv yelling to the sky that she was awesome as she soared through the air.
“I’ll let you know,” I said with a controlled lightness. I tapped his hands, stifling the fear with a fake jovial movement.
Brad let go and I stayed, watching Liv, feeling safe in her presence. She would protect me from whatever he knew.
Brad went to the bathroom, and I continued to stare out the doorway as the rotting sense of death rose up inside me. I swallowed hard to try to force it back down, but it was there and wouldn’t be ignored.
I e-mailed the colonel. There was no subject and nothing in it.
Chapter 1
Chief Vincent Pratt
I usually didn’t check for an e-mail while I was on duty. She was here with me most weekday mornings, but today was Sunday. She was home with her family, and I was working. There was no nine-to-five for police officers. Not even the chief.
So I looked. I knew there wouldn’t be a new one, but when I missed her, I’d read the old e-mails, anything to feel closer to her, to have her tell me something. She wrote me every night before she fell asleep in her husband’s bed.
Her bold-faced address at the top of my inbox shot adrenalin through me like electricity through a wire until I saw there was no subject. I leaned my arms on my desk with my phone in my hands, holding my breath as I opened it.
There was no content.
The silence in the station surrounded me until the air conditioner turned on and blew cold air over me from the vent above. The rule I never thought would come up, the one that I was sure we’d never need, had been invoked. I went back to my inbox, hoping for another e-mail explaining that she had sent the first one by mistake, but Meredith Walsh never made mistakes. I was her only one.
The day she read her extensive list of rules to me, I’d thought she was paranoid, but I didn’t care. I would follow her rules if she needed me to. No calling, no texting, and no using her name. She was the most thorough person I’d ever met. I’d laughed at her as she’d listed her demands one by one so seriously but without any clothes on. I wasn’t allowed to fall in love with her, but even then, I knew I’d already broken that one. And this one: If I ever send you an e-mail with no subject line and nothing in it, you are to delete your account immediately and NOT contact me. I wanted to break now. The fact that she was married to another man was only tolerable because I could see her almost every day. This e-mail, this direction to stop contacting her, choked me with jealousy. Even though I knew it was to protect her children, not Brad Walsh, I still couldn’t stop the anger at the helplessness welling up inside of me.
There’d been a few months she hadn’t spoken to me. They’d been the worst of my life—worse than boot camp, the police academy, and Kuwait. Worse than anything, and now, it was going to begin again. I had no choice but to wait for word from her.
I scrolled down my inbox. For so long these e-mails had been the only piece of her I was allowed to have. For almost a year, I had only these words and two days a month to see her. They were our secret that taught me what it felt like to live, and now I couldn’t bear to delete them. I stared at the screen. Every e-mail in the account was from Meredith. She was the only one with the address. No one else in the world knew it existed; just like our relationship.
I searched for the ones where she’d told me she loved me. It took forever for her to believe we could love each other and that love could be a component of an affair. But I’d loved her before I’d had an affair with her. I’d loved her the first time I’d met her.
I found the one she’d sent last Thursday morning before she’d come to work. I’d read it, and instead of working, I wanted to drive her somewhere, anywhere we could be alone. But what Meredith yearned for was to not have to be alone. The subject of the e-mail was “I always dream of you.”
I had a dream last night we were out to dinner and everyone in town stopped by our table to say hi. You were wearing the Phillies T-shirt, which forced me to touch you the first time. Yes, I think it was the shirt that caused this. After dinner, we met John and Jenna for drinks.
We were real.
The frustration I’d felt when I’d first read the e-mail came flooding back. She insisted she’d never divorce her husband and that we’d never do things other couples did. It killed her that our relationship only existed in the dark, but Meredith had created the impossible situation.
I scrolled up to my reply.
We are real. We’re just different. You are a huge part of my life. Whether the rest of the town knows it or not. I love you.
I searched through the list of e-mails I couldn’t bear to lose and considered printing some out or forwarding them to my personal account, but Meredith would kill me. I found account preferences and selected Delete Account and All Data.
There was nothing left to do but wait for her. A forbidden text, a Facebook message, both of which I knew would never come. If she sent this e-mail, her husband knew something or suspected something. She wouldn’t risk a shred of evidence of our relationship being found. I’d spend every minute looking for a sign until I heard from her. I’d check the windshield of my car for a handwritten note. I’d watch the door to the police station each time it opened, hoping she’d found an excuse to come in on her day off. I knew I’d drive by her house while out on patrol today, anything to catch a glimpse of her.
I wouldn’t make it through the night without hearing from her. Not tonight. Not any night.
***
I pulled the pot off the burner and put my cup directly in the flow of coffee. I couldn’t wait for the archaic machine to finish brewing the whole pot. I hadn’t spoken with Meredith, and I hadn’t slept a minute last night. I’d driven by her house twice yesterday, but the house was empty. Even after dark, no lights were on. It was as if she’d disappeared.
She’ll be here soon.
Swim practice started early. Her son’s age group was at eight thirty. She’d be here. She was going to walk through the door, and I already had an excuse ready for why I needed to talk to her in my office with the door shut.
I replaced my mug with the coffee pot and tried to calm down. This was yet another rule we were going to break, because I wasn’t ever going through a night like last night again. Daniels came in and grabbed a cup off the counter. One of the cups Meredith had bought for us.
“Hey, Chief. Did you hear about Meredith?”
My chest tightened, trapping the air inside of me, where it surrounded my heart like a vise. “No. Hear what?”
Daniels moved around like nothing was a big deal. Like Meredith hadn’t sent a warning that her husband knew we were having an affair. “She fell at her house. I just saw Jack from the Rescue Squad at Wawa. He said they transported her yesterday. I was hoping she called out sick. That you heard something.”
“No calls.” I wasn’t sure if I was speaking aloud. “Is she okay?”
“Unresponsive.”
Without a word, I put my cup down and walked out of the station.
When I turned off Main Street, I switched on my siren and lights and sped to the hospital, breaking every rule. Not caring. It wasn’t going to matter after I killed Brad Walsh.
Chapter 2
Brad Walsh
Liv was so tired she couldn’t walk. None of us could. I told James he had to man up because I couldn’t carry them both, but he looked like a little boy. My back throbbed as I tried to fit Liv in behind the driver’s seat of my car that wasn’t meant to transport children. I should have brought Meredith’s.
Her name sent a pain from one side of my head to the other. Meredith.
How did this happen?
Sixteen hours, and she still hadn’t woken up.
What if she never wakes up?
The kids had cried nonstop the first hour until I’d convinced them she’d be fine. But when she didn’t wake up, I just wanted them to go to sleep, too. Their sad eyes churned the guilt like acid in my stomach. She had to wake up. She had to come back.
Both Liv and James were asleep before I exited the parking lot. I’d just turned off the radio and was pulling my phone from my pocket when a police car flew by with its lights on. Whoever was driving must have been going a hundred miles an hour. I watched in the rearview mirror as the car careened into the emergency entrance’s parking lot.
Maybe a cop’s been hurt.
I had my own problems to worry about. I glanced at the kids in the back seat. The nurses had been good to us. By eight last night, the kids had started complaining they were hungry, and I just wanted them to shut up. I wanted their mother to wake up and shut them up. “Look around, take note of where we are,” I’d snapped at them. I was a dick. Taking care of them was not my job. Meredith did that, but now she wouldn’t wake the fuck up. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it was just to spite me. But that was crazy. She might have hated me. Even enough to leave me one day, but she’d never hurt the kids.
One at a time, I carried my children to their rooms and placed them in their beds. I kissed their foreheads and told them I loved them. Meredith always tucked them in. But today was different. They were going to bed at eight a.m. instead of eight p.m., and I was the only one home. I needed to sleep myself. The exhaustion descended upon my body. Every step was an effort I could barely expend. The nagging feeling wouldn’t go away, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I had some answers. Some answers as to how we ended up here, with Meredith unconscious in the hospital.
I walked through the house. The front door was still unlocked from the day before. Once the paramedics had taken Meredith, the kids and I closed the door and ran to the car to follow her. I locked it. I needed to be alone with her things. Her phone lay at the bottom of the steps next to the plant she fought so hard to keep alive. I bent over, grabbed the phone, and paused at the plant’s hearty green leaves. It was finally thriving, and so was Meredith. It’d taken her years to accept her life here, and she was finally settling in.
The phone had flown past me when she’d hit her head. I’d wanted her to face me, but I’d also wanted the phone. I wanted to know what the hell was going on with my wife. Two months ago, I’d seen the strange text message to Jenna. But Jenna was her best friend, and they were always talking in some code.
Meredith: This is me. Saying the word.
Jenna: Nibac.
I told myself they were trivial.
I didn’t understand a word of it. It meant nothing. But it had eaten away at me. Something changed with Meredith. A quiet peace had descended upon my house, upon my marriage, and I wasn’t stupid enough to take credit for it.
I traced the lock pattern with my finger and opened her world captured in her phone. I started with the texts. The ones I’d seen to Jenna were missing, making me wonder for a second if I’d fabricated them. I went through every message. Practice times, playdates, birthday parties, babysitting, talent show…They were all about the kids. Jenna’s were the only entertainment, and most of her texts were comments about the pain of motherhood. Many of the names I barely recognized. Our children’s lives were Meredith’s domain.
I exited the texts and proceeded to invade every app on her phone, starting with the photos. There were tons of them. Liv and James were in almost every single one. Some I recognized she’d sent to me when I was away on business and she knew the kids would want me to see whatever they were accomplishing at that moment. The photos were useless.
I read her e-mails. Every single one of them. There had to be over a thousand—teachers, volunteers, mothers, coaches, etc. Again, all of it pertained to our children. One group was about a lunch date with her friend, Christine, but that was a year ago. I kept going back. A few e-mails from college friends. All were innocent. Not one shred of evidence there was a part of Meredith’s life I didn’t know about. I listened to her voicemails. Most were from me. I scrolled through the Instagram account she clearly never went on, and finally Facebook. I went right to the messages and found nothing. Nothing noteworthy at least. It was as if Meredith’s entire existence stemmed from Liv and James. I looked through her profile and ran my finger across the pictures she’d been tagged in from Christine’s wedding and Sarah’s Christmas party. Both events I’d sent her to alone. She hadn’t even shown me a picture when I’d returned. I wasn’t a part of them.
It was crazy. The whole fucking thing was crazy. My heartbeat pounded in my head. It blocked out my thoughts and forced me to look at the staircase. The sight of the pooled blood sent the pounding to the back of my throat. I turned away, unable to face the evidence of her injury. My wife, the mother of my children’s blood was on the stairs, and she was in the hospital. This couldn’t be my life.
I abandoned her phone on the dining room table and walked into the kitchen. The refrigerator was filled with birthday party invitations and schedules for the kids’ teams. There were pictures of Liv and James covering every other inch of the door.
I’d imagined the whole thing. I was going to go upstairs and sleep, and when I woke up, she was going to be here kissing James’s forehead or laughing with Liv.
The humid wind blew outside, and I opened the kitchen door. The heat hit my face as I watched the swing blow toward the trees. I was standing in the exact same spot we’d stood in when I’d said the words to her. The words that had been eating away at me. The words I knew meant more than I’d ever let myself believe.
“Say the word,” I said again, this time to no one.
The last time I’d said those words, her neck had been in my hands, and she’d been watching Liv swing. If I hadn’t known every inch of her body as well as my own, I might have missed the catching of her breath. I’d fought against my hands tightening around her neck, and Meredith’s breathing had returned to normal within a half second. She’d made some joke, but I wasn’t listening. I hadn’t heard a word she said. All I remember was the anger that crept up inside me. I’d had to leave the room and find some place I could process her reaction to a text I couldn’t understand. A text that no matter how many times I told myself meant nothing, taunted me until I finally said it to her.
And even though it still made no sense, I couldn’t let go of the idea that there was someone else. I grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter and rummaged through it. Frustrated with all the pockets inside, I turned it over. Band-Aids, ChapStick, the kids’ favorite gum, and a random assortment of other things spilled onto the countertop. Even her purse was depressing. There was an empty Ziploc bag, and as soon as I opened the seal, I knew the bag had held a joint at one point. Based on the rest of her life, I no longer blamed her for smoking.
Nothing.
Not one thing came out of her purse that told me anything. But I knew. I knew she wouldn’t be in the hospital if I hadn’t said those words, and those words wouldn’t have set the ugliness into motion if she weren’t hiding something or someone from me. I pulled myself up the back staircase. I would search through her nightstand and her entire closet, but even before I began, I knew I wouldn’t find anything. Meredith was smarter than I was, and she would never have an affair. She was better than that.
Better than me.