Page 84 of Dear Wife

I shake my head. There is literally nothing you can say to make me lower this gun.

“Come on, babe. We still have good times. I can still make you laugh, and remember all those days last summer on the river? You, drinking wine and sitting between my legs while I rowed? Let’s go home and do that again. Let’s pack a picnic and take out the boat.”

Your words are as manipulative as your apologies, the fake tears and grand romantic gestures that always come after a beating. A year ago, I might have said okay. I might have said you are not well, you have a problem—I won’t let you work through it alone. But I’m not the same person I was ten months ago, when I started planning this. Not the person I was ten days ago, either, when I told Sabine goodbye.

I’m Beth Murphy now, and Beth Murphy knows what you’re about to do.

I know it from the way your weight shifts and your eyes get squinty at the corners. The way your hands tense into tight, white fists, how your muscles vibrate but your knees get loose and liquid. You are a predator, ready to pounce.

At the first sign of a lunge, I tilt the barrel a half inch to the right and squeeze the trigger. Even though I was prepared for it, thepopreverberates up my arm and through my bones, a shock to my system.

But it’s nothing like the shock on your face. The bullet whizzes past your ear, and I bet it makes a whistling sound, doesn’t it? I bet it feels like fire where it nicks your skin—only a millimeter or two but hot enough to send you staggering. One foot lurches back, but there’s nowhere for it to go. Your other boot connects with the rooftop’s rim, and your weight tumbles backward. Your ass hangs over the highway.

You teeter on the edge for what feels like forever. Long enough for you to lift a hand to your ear and come away with blood. Long enough for me to lower the weapon and step back. Long enough for you to open your goddamn mouth and tell me you’re sorry.

And then, just like that, you’re gone.

BETH

Four months later

I arrive twenty-seven minutes into the Sunday service, halfway through a hymn that sounds more like a rock ballad. A good forty singers are lined up across the back of the stage in bright purple robes, their expressions glorious on the twin LED screens above their heads. The Reverend sings along at the far end, tapping a tambourine in time on his knee. Their faces, their entire bodily beings radiate joy, as do those of the people around me, a full house of people swaying to the music. What did Martina call it?Happy-clappy, though now that I’ve seen it for myself, I’d sooner call iteuphoric. Enough that nobody notices when I slip into an upper row seat.

Not that anyone here would recognize me, now that my hair is back to its original color, the deep mahogany God originally intended. A couple more months and it’ll touch my shoulders. Then again, maybe I’ll leave it like this, in a bob just long enough I can tuck a curl behind my ears. Now that I’ve gotten used to it being short, I rather like the freedom of fresh air on my neck. Sure beats the weight of hair, or the feel of Marcus’s hand on it. And a woman at the airport yesterday said the haircut suited me, that it was sassy. I don’t feel sassy quite yet, but I’m getting there.

Is it weird that I still hear his voice? It’s annoying, certainly, and maybe a little crazy, but sometimes I’ll be going about my day, heating up a can of soup for lunch or brushing my teeth before bed, and he’ll bitch about how I’m doing it all wrong. “Put the cap on the tube. You’re making a mess. And lay off the ice cream. You’re looking a little hippy.”

You you you. Bad bad bad.

But I’m not the same Emma he pushed around for all those years. Now I do what I couldn’t when he was still here: I ignore him. I let him go on and on and I act like I don’t hear a thing. I read a book, take a long bubble bath, bake brownies and eat half the pan. This will not be his lasting legacy, this ability to take up space rent-free in my head, making me feel shitty about myself. If Marcus talks and I pretend not to hear, is he really there?

The music fades, and the congregation sinks into their seats.

The Reverend steps to the podium, and I wish I could say his sermon was about something relevant. Forgiveness or new beginnings, maybe, or the many reasons why good people do bad things and still get to go to Heaven. But I suppose that would be too convenient, much too serendipitous, and real life doesn’t come tied up with a pretty bow. He preaches about the greatness of God, and I listen for a while before my mind starts to wander.

It’s been four months since Marcus tumbled off that rooftop, four months since the police slapped handcuffs on my wrists and carted me downtown. I told them everything, and still they threw the book at me. They charged me with falsifying my identity, with fraud, with unlawful possession of not one but two stolen weapons. They even threatened me with second-degree murder for a while, until my attorney pointed out both guns were empty. The bullet Clyde gave me was never found, but the residue was, up both of my arms, my shirt, my face and Bozo-the-Clown hair.

And then the Atlanta police received a call from Chief Eubanks. He told them that when Sabine’s body floated up from the darkness, she brought along an unequivocal clue: strapped to her wrist was a sports watch, one of those devices that monitors heart rate and tracks workouts. Running. Biking. Swimming. This model was waterproof, and once they recharged the battery, they discovered she’d turned on the GPS function, which tracked her all the way into the lake. Unsurprisingly, it matched the GPS on Marcus’s patrol car at the time of her death.

They also found a basket of papers in his trunk, printed emails and scribbled notes and lists, all of them painting the picture of a man obsessed, not with finding Sabine, but with locating me. All of a sudden, my pleas of self-defense were looking more and more credible, my reasons for possessing the fake ID and firearms perfectly reasonable. The Atlanta police let me go, but not without a hefty fine. One they offered to waive if I gave them the name of the person who supplied such a fine counterfeit Georgia driver’s license. I paid the hefty fine.

But the whole time I was sitting there, sweating buckets behind the locked metal door of an interrogation room downtown, I kept waiting for someone to charge me with theft. To bring up the money that went missing from Charlene’s desk drawer, to ask me if I took it. But no one ever did. These past four months, I’ve given a lot of thought as to why the Reverend didn’t turn me in. Maybe Martina didn’t show him the note I wrote her, or maybe he really did mean all those sermons he preached about forgiveness and helping others in need. I hope that one day I’ll work up the courage to ask.

The lady next to me nudges me with an elbow, then drops a basket on my lap, a square wicker container filled with crumpled bills and folded checks. I retrieve the envelope from my bag and drop it in. Inside is a cashier’s check for the two thousand dollars I liberated from Charlene’s drawer, plus 20 percent interest. I would have given more, but death is expensive, and I’m still waiting for Marcus’s benefits to kick in. Chief Eubanks gave me everything I’d be entitled to if Marcus had died in the line of duty—a generous gesture I probably don’t deserve. Any day now, I should be receiving a hefty lump sum, a full pension and restitution for the funeral expenses I paid from our savings.

But Chief Eubanks ended up giving me something even better. When I sat at his desk and told him the whole, sordid story, he held my hand between both of his and said the words my own husband couldn’t. He told me he was sorry, both for what Marcus did and what the department didn’t, and my heart broke right then and there. If I had gone to Chief all those months ago, maybe Marcus would still be alive. In jail, but alive. But the past seven years had taught me to trust no one, not even a cop.Especiallynot a cop. Of all the reasons I have to resent Marcus, that is the one I think of most. He robbed me of the ability to trust in others, made me forget so many of them come from a place of kindness.

I’m not really the praying kind, but this seems as good a place as any to say one. I pray for Ingrid, who can barely stop crying long enough to tell her sister’s story to anyone who will listen, including a true crime writer from Netflix for a six-figure sum. I pray for Trevor, who’s packed up and followed his family to Salt Lake City, the only way he could talk his wife into shared custody. I pray for Jeffrey, who’s trapped in a house he can’t sell, living off money he didn’t earn in a town that wants nothing to do with him. He’s a hermit, a recluse, the town pariah, a creep who slept with Mandy while his wife decomposed in a pond fifty miles away. The only time he ever goes outside is to chase vandals off his lawn.

But mostly, I pray for Sabine. That she knew she was loved, that Marcus didn’t make her suffer for long. That wherever she is, she’s found peace.

The Reverend starts to wrap up the sermon, and I scoot past my neighbors and out of the row. I’ve done what I came here to do, and now it’s time to go.

“Not every question has an answer,” he says as I’m climbing the stairs. “Not every problem has a solution. But if you’re open for it, there is grace in uncertainty.”

Grace in uncertainty.

The words stick my sneakers to the carpet, and I turn. The Reverend’s head is tipped back, his face raised to mine, and my skin prickles. I wonder if he recognizes me, if he can see my face this far away, all the way on the very top step. I study his expression in the LED screens, and I think I see recognition.

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