The Housewife Assassin's Relationship Survival Guide (17 page)

When I take a step in his direction, he slings the bag at me, then doubles over and retches onto the wooden floor.

The blue and white onesie lands at my feet.

When finally he can breathe again, he forces his mouth into a smile. “Hey, how much do you want to bet that the kid wasn’t mine? I mean, Jack’s the one who has a thing for her. He’s the one who loved her. Hell, I just used her.”

I could kill him, right now.

But no, she’s already done it. He’s just a walking corpse. He won’t admit it, but we both know it.

Good for her.

Without a backward glance, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, he strolls out of the house.

I call Jack and ask that he meet me here.

 “So, Valentina was pregnant.” Jack states this simply as a fact.

“Yes,” I answer.

I’ve got to hand it to him. Unlike Carl, his reaction to the bloody corpse of the woman he once loved and married was composed.

Only one fallen tear gave him away.

I got an hour’s head start before he called the Acme clean-up crew.

When he came home, we pretended life in the Stone household was business as usual. We orbited the children, asking them questions about their day, their homework, and their friends. Did they notice Jack’s frosty politeness to me, or that I seemed a bit distracted? 

Now that they are in their beds and we are alone together in ours, I expect him to insist I feel his pain.

He doesn’t disappoint. “You knew of her pregnancy, and you went ahead and killed her, didn’t you?” There is no doubt in his voice, only repugnance.

I can’t believe my ears. “You think I could have done that…to her, while she was in that condition?”

“You hated her, so yes. Tell me the truth, was it because you thought it was my child?” The ice in his stare causes me to flinch. It hurts more than any slap or punch.

“How dare you! I’ve already told you! It wasn’t me, it was Carl!”

He doesn’t say a word. He won’t even look at me. 

I can’t believe he thinks I’m lying to him.

Saddened, I shake my head. “Carl was right.”

He turns to me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He knew she was your weak spot, and that’s why, once again, he was able to pull the wool over your eyes.”

Jack’s laugh is brittle. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You may not want to hear this, but I’m telling you anyway, Jack Craig.” I move to his side, but Valentina’s ghost still stands between us. 

What can she say to him now? Nothing. It’s time he listened to me. “Carl won because he knew how badly you wanted to believe she cared for you. He won because you cared more about protecting her than about finding him.” 

The thought that Jack would think I’m lying to him makes me angry enough to say something I’m sure I’ll regret, but I can’t help myself. “Was he right? Was the baby yours?”

In a flash Jack’s fist heads my way, stopping just an inch short of my nose. Like everything else that hangs between us, our mutual pain stops momentum in any direction.

Carl knew he lost me to Jack.

But when Jack lost Valentina, I lost Jack.

So I guess I lost to Carl, too.

I head toward the door. Jack doesn’t stop me.

Once again, we’ll sleep in separate rooms.

In the middle of the night, as Jack snores away gently in the guest room, I take his cell phone from the bureau. 

Then I go down to the kitchen, where Arnie munches away on cold fried chicken.

I don’t have to drug him. Instead I beg him for one more favor: to scan Jack’s phone for any received texts containing a tracker that would have given Carl his location at any time.

In less an hour, Arnie finds what I suspect. It is embedded in a text message that reads, simply:

Thank you for caring, always, –V

I will take no joy in showing it to him. 

It may prove I’m right, but then so is Valentina. He will forgive her because he respected her instincts for survival. 

It is a mother’s instinct. We may sacrifice ourselves for the greater good, but when it comes to our children, we will protect them at any cost.

Even if the cost is the lives of others.

Chapter 14

How to Read His Moods

The worst thing that can happen in your brand new relationship is that you misinterpret his moods. Here are four examples you should take to heart:

1: He is sullen. This indicates that he needs some “alone time,” so forego any urge to (a) be next to him every minute of every day; or (b) follow him into the bathroom; or (c) shadow his every step, hiding behind corners whenever he turns around.

2: He doesn’t acknowledge you when you talk to him. Again, he needs some alone time. Do him a favor and talk to your friends instead. Or a close family member. Or your shrink, especially if you’re having visions of beating him black and blue, just to hear him say “Stop! Please!”

3: He doesn’t answer your calls to his cell phone. This is yet another indication that he needs some alone time. 

That said, do not (a) presume his phone is broken, and buy him the latest iPhone; or (b) trade in his brand new iPhone for an Android-equipped Smart Phone; or (c) lock him in your spare bedroom, so that you don’t need to call him in the first place.

4: He takes off, without giving a forwarding address. I’ll bet you can guess the cause of this action. Yep, he needs alone time. 

Sadly, granting it will leave you in a quandary. How can you live without him? More to the point, how dare he try to live without you?

The solution: plant a GPS chip in his arm and voila! You’ll finally know where he is at all times!

On Saturday mornings, the husbands of Hilldale do their yard work. 

I’ve come to the realization that I can gauge the status of my neighbors’ sex lives by how early their lawns are sheared and their hedges are trimmed. Those men whose sleepy wives fend them off by claiming to be too tired for sex find the morning frost easier to face than a frigid dismissal of their amorous advances. On every block in our town, the buzz of at least one rider mower can be heard as early as seven o’clock. 

This morning, Jack was out of the house, and on our mower by six.

We aren’t exactly sleeping well these days, let alone sleeping together.

I take out my frustration on my bedroom windows. But no amount of Windex with Ammonia D and elbow grease will take away the pain of his distrust. 

Yes, had Valentina hurt him or my children, I would have been the first one to cut her throat. But I didn’t do the hit. Jack should know I could never kill a pregnant woman. 

Even one whom I suspect is Jack’s true love.

I’m on the fifth pane of the second window when I see a man approaching our house. He has a grizzled beard that reaches almost to the waist of his flowing black cassock. At his neck is the white collar of a priest. I recognize his hat as a skufia, like those worn by Eastern Orthodox clergy.

At first he hesitates when he sees Jack coming toward him on the rider mower. But then he straightens up and marches forward, a man on a mission. My killer instincts steel me for the worst. Should I run to my vanity table, where a gun is hidden in the false bottom of a drawer? And if so, can I make it back to the window in time to protect Jack?

As it turns out, Jack also sees the man. He too is wary of him. He stops the mower, but doesn’t turn it off. The sound will muffle a gunshot, should one go off. Whereas his left hand stays on the steering wheel, his right arm goes limp at his side. If necessary, it will reach down by his ankle to grab the gun strapped under his track pants. 

They talk for a moment. I can’t hear what is being said over the hum of the mower, but the power of the man’s words can be seen on Jack’s face. I can’t even imagine what he might say that could sharpen Jack’s studied passivity into wariness, then cleave it with despair. 

Finally, the priest hands Jack an envelope and walks away.

Each second seems an eternity when the man you love is in pain. It takes him a moment to rip open the envelope, and just two minutes to read its one-page contents. The mower is turned off as he contemplates its message. For the next six minutes, while he sits there staring straight ahead, the chirping of birds is all that can be heard.

No sound is more deafening than grief.

At long last, Jack leaves the mower and makes his way into the house. When he sees me at the top of the stairway, he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. I read the anguish in his eyes.

When I get downstairs, I find him in the kitchen. He takes my hand and pulls me into the living room with him, but waits until we’re both sitting side-by-side on the couch to hand me the envelope. 

When I open it, a key falls out into my palm. 

My hands shake as I take the letter and read it:

My dearest Jack,

If you are reading this, it is because I no longer walk the earth. Maybe that is for the best, since, if I am to be honest with myself, I quit existing long ago.

Even before I left you for Carl.

In truth, I was dead to this world before we met.

You did your best to keep me from being a living ghost. I betrayed you, and yet you still believed in me. 

But my dear sweet Jack, I had made a pact with the devil. He owned my soul.

What you did not want to believe was that, eventually, he would come to collect it, no matter your attempts to redeem me.

If you are now reading this, know that Carl succeeded in doing so.

With my help, he found the Quorum through you.

God knows I didn’t want to do it, but I felt it was necessary, for me and my child. Please find it in your heart to forgive me.

Carl is devious enough to do his best to make any evidence of my death point to either you, or to Donna. Just as, should either of you had fallen prior to my own death, he would have done his best to make me out to be the perpetrator. 

I gladly played the pawn in his attempts to fester the doubts that plague you both. I reveled in the knowledge that you might still love me, despite my deceptions. Only from beyond the grave can I summon the courage to tell you the truth: