Page 51 of The Therapist
Or is Sandy dead?
TWENTY-ONE
WEDNESDAY
Mike
He wakes at 5 a.m. on Wednesday on the sofa, the house dark and cold, his mouth filled with cotton wool. He knows he’s going to have to get his shit together and stop drinking, start parenting. Sitting up on the sagging blue sofa, he drops his head into his hands, not sure how he will manage to face another day.
After a few minutes he looks up and takes in the chaos in the living room, where dirty plates are stacked on the coffee table and the kids’ things are scattered everywhere. He didn’t empty their bags last night so the lunchboxes are still in there.
‘Get off your arse, loser,’ he hears his father say and he lets a surge of anger motivate him to stand up. Grabbing as many plates as he can carry, he goes to the kitchen and stacks them in the dishwasher. It’s still dark outside.
‘Twenty minutes,’ he says aloud, deciding that he will clean and tidy for twenty minutes and then he can make himself a cup of coffee before his shower.
It doesn’t take as long as he assumed it would once he gets going and he even manages to cobble together a lunch ofcheese sandwiches for the kids along with apples to go with the processed crap he adds to their lunchboxes.
His reward is to use the last capsule for the coffee machine, something else he needs to add to the ever-growing shopping list in his head.
While he waits for the coffee to drip into the cup, he cleans a bit more, wiping down the kitchen counter and throwing out some rotting bananas from the fruit bowl.
With his coffee sitting in front of him, he is hit by a wave of exhaustion at what the rest of the day holds. He will have to get the kids to school and then drag himself into the office to answer Kellie’s questions all day long as Paul mopes around the office, occasionally touching one of the framed business awards he has hung on the wall.
And Mike knows that all day long he will be waiting for the detective to contact him or for Sandy to turn up or even for the police to come to the office to arrest him for accosting Lana yesterday. That idiotic move churned through his alcohol-fuelled dreams all night long.
It’s now nearly 6 a.m. and he knows the kids will be up soon. He should make some eggs and toast for them using the last of the eggs and the bread, but he doesn’t really have the energy to move.
Looking around the kitchen that Sandy hates, his gaze lands on a high cupboard in the corner and he gets up, opening it and reaching for the pale blue jar with the words ‘Cookie Jar’ on the front in thick black letters. Sandy brought it home from some craft fair when she was pregnant with Felix.
‘What’s that for? You don’t eat cookies and those things don’t keep them fresh anyway,’ he said.
She shrugged and smiled. ‘I know but it’s so cute – we can throw loose change in there.’
And that’s what they have used it for, for years. Few people carry cash these days but Mike still finds himself with coins on the odd occasion he does use actual money.
The jar was filled with coins the last time he looked, gold one- and two-dollar coins as well as lots of silver. He wonders how much might be in there and feels himself flush with embarrassment that he thinks the money may help, but his lost job is on his mind all the time. How long until he can’t pay the mortgage? Even fifty dollars extra would bring some comfort right now.
He reaches up with both hands because he knows the jar is heavy but when he lifts it with some force, he nearly smashes it into the top of the cupboard because it’s so light.
Confused, he brings the cookie jar, which does not rattle with coins as it has always done, back to the table and then drains his coffee.
Opening it, he sees that it’s stuffed full of pieces of paper. He reaches in and pulls out a handful.
And then he smooths the pieces of paper, some crumpled, some neatly folded, with his hands and stares down at them in horror. ‘What the hell?’ he mutters.
Each piece is an article, either from a newspaper or printed out from the internet.
Reading through the headlines, one after the other, he realises that Sandy is not suffering from some kind of mental breakdown. Sandy is planning something. And he is in trouble because he has no idea what she is going to do.
Every article is about an abused wife who kills her husband. Every single one.
And in each article, the wife has not gone to prison for her crime.
WOMAN WHO BEAT ABUSIVE HUSBAND TO DEATH CLEARED OF MURDER
WOMAN ABUSED BY HUSBAND ACQUITTED OF FATAL STABBING
BATTERED WOMAN FOUND ‘NOT GUILTY’ OF HUSBAND’S DEATH
