Page 9 of The Kill Clause
On the way back to the house, I keep my eyes on the rearview mirror. I loop the block, checking for unfamiliar cars, lingering strangers. When I’m satisfied, I pull into the driveway. Mrs. Goodman is in her yard, inspecting her inflatable Santa, who seems a little droopy. She waves, and I wave back. I open the garage, pull inside, and shut the door behind me. The ultimate neighbor fuck-you. Sorry, Mrs. Goodman. Today, I can’t pretend to be an IT consultant and ponder why your grandson never answers your emails.
On my phone there’s a voicemail from my shrink.
“Denise.” Not my name. “It’s Dr. Black. I’m concerned. This is the second appointment you’ve missed without notice. I’ll have to charge you. Call if you want to continue talking. I sense that you’re not being totally honest with me—or yourself. Take all the time you need to decide if you’re committed to therapy.”
Our relationship is deeply flawed. Dr. Black also thinks I’m a freelance IT consultant, that my name is Denise King, that I don’t have insurance and prefer to pay cash. She knows about my childhood abuse (sort of), my job stress (in a sense), my failed marriage, my affair with a too-young colleague I’m supposed to be mentoring. But it’s a fiction I’ve created, a construct within which I might have someone to talk to aboutmy feelings, such as they are. It’s idiotic. I’m sure Nora would see this as another failure in judgment.
Inside, the house is meticulously clean, orderly. That’s all Drake. Since he’s moved in, he’s taken over all the homemaking duties, organized every drawer and closet, even done some decorating. Like me, he’s never had a real home. We both take pleasure in creating something that approximates that. He attacks dirt and disorder with an almost religious zeal. Though I also appreciate cleanliness, I might leave my socks on the floor. He cleans up after me with zero complaint. We cook for each other, do each other’s laundry. We sit most evenings and read or talk about the day, the job. Sometimes he looks at me the way I know I look at Nora. Gratitude, underpinned by wondering how she really feels about me.
You’ve always been like a daughter to me.I keep turning the phrase around in my head, analyzing it like a teen parsing the meaning of her boyfriend’s cryptic text.
Drake’s not home. His motorcycle, a Ducati, sleek and black, is gone from the garage. We don’t answer to each other, track each other. One or the other of us might be gone for days, and neither of us asks any questions. Sometimes, more rarely now, we work together. He’s a good partner. He is methodical, follows all the rules, does all his research. He lacks imagination and flourish, doesn’t get creative, just like in the kitchen. He follows the recipe. Does what he’s told, never wonders if there’s another, better way.
For some reason, I find myself in his bedroom. We sleep apart most nights. His bed is carefully made, his desk bare. Wherever he’s gone, he’s taken his laptop and phone. A Nora rule. Never leave them behind unless they’re hidden and locked away. Company property.
We’re company property,Julian told me.Never forget that. She’ll shred you like a classified document.
I find myself opening drawers. Drake’s clothes neatly folded and organized—T-shirts, underwear, jeans. In the closet hang seven perfectly pressed black button-down shirts. Drake’s torso is covered with scars. His father burned him with a cigar once, leaving a big circular mark, angry and red as a sun, on the tender flesh between his ribs and hip bone. I hold him sometimes when he has nightmares. Sometimes he cries like a child. Comforting him, I soothe myself in those ugly premorning hours when all your childhood fears—and the adult ones, too—come back to haunt you.
As in Nora’s office, there are no pictures. Not a single personal item in any drawer. There’s nothing under the bed, under the mattress. It’s like none of us even existed before we came to work for the Company. I brought nothing with me to the Farm. I wore what she provided.
I have things now. Not much. A crystal paperweight from Paris. The knife Julian gave me. I keep my wedding ring in a box in a drawer by my bed. But Drake has nothing. Not even a scrap of paper with his handwriting on it. He could be packed and gone in fifteen minutes, and it would be like he was never here.
“We’re ghosts. We don’t exist,” Julian said that night in Vegas. “Just the way she wants us.”
In Vegas the next day it was all over the news that Nick and Roxanne had been found by the cleaning crew, dead of an apparent drug overdose. They were known partiers; accidental fentanyl ingestion is a common cause of death among those who do copious recreational drugs. There was no mention of the couple they took back to their room. There was no grainy CCTV footage of us on the news as I imagined there might be.
And a big merger Nick was involved in fell through.
“The business community has lost a titan,” said one newscaster heavily. Julian flipped off the television.
“Never think about them again,” he said. “Just pretend it was a dream. Or something you saw on television. Forget it; let the details drift away.”
I could still feel Roxanne’s soft lips on mine. “Is it that easy?”
“Train yourself, and it becomes that easy.” I didn’t believe him, but he was right in a way. You can stop thinking about it. It surfaces in your dreams, though, like the memory of my mother or the first doe I killed on the Farm.
By the time I was on my way back to Nora, it was already fading, a dream. Of everything that transpired in Vegas, only one picture, snapped with my own phone by another bride waiting her turn for Elvis to pronounce her and her fall-down-drunk fiancé husband and wife, remains.
Now, I check my phone. Just that final weird text. The Santa. The knife.
My finger hovers. I almost bite with a single question mark. Then I don’t.
Instead, I head down to the basement to prepare myself for tonight. I can’t fuck this up, no matter what. The look in Nora’s gray eyes was unequivocal. There’s no more wiggle room.
My phone pings.
Hey,my target texts as if reading my mind.Apple is with her mom tonight. Come by? If you’re nice, I promise to be naughty.
He offers me a smiling purple devil and the Santa emoji. Popular this time of year, I guess.
I search for some kind of Christmas quip, but my heart’s not in it. I can’t stop thinking about Apple and what Santa will be taking from her this Christmas. It was the holiday season when my mother was murdered. Dr. Black would probably say we had some work to do on that.
I feel sick inside. Iamsick.
I’ll be there—with jingle bells on,I finally manage.
I fucking hate Christmas.
