It's One of Us(2)

The lake is almost always calm, serene. It is used to keeping secrets. It has held his for weeks. The idea of her there, her many parts quiet now, fills him, with joy or fear or pleasure, he is not certain. He just knows he is better when he is near, and when he is apart from her, he can only remember her in pieces. Remember the moment she was his no longer.

A noon sun shines on the lake’s glossy surface, reflecting into the leaves, making their undersides gleam and shine. He’s learned the paths, the vantage points. He knows what lies beneath that murky water, imagines her decay. He walks for hours, circling her, drawing an invisible target for them to find.

Some days, he is happy. Some days, he is sad. Some days, he is afraid.

Some days, he brings his fishing gear, and casts, again and again, not sure what he is trying to catch.

When the police come, at last, searching, searching, he pants with the effort to keep himself still, to not run away screaming. He can’t risk drawing attention to himself.

Will they find her today? Will she rise at last?

Every day, every visit, always the same irrational concerns.

What if her blood is still on him? What bits of her cling to his clothes, his skin?

And what of him resides in her?

And when they find her, what then? What happens?

He walks the path around the lake like all the others to make sure he’s not noticed, and remembers.

Her screams bleed away. The scuffle has ended. Silence now. Nothing but the breeze, rustling the early fall leaves, urging them toward their own death. The creatures of the forest are still, waiting, watching, to see what he will do.

He waits with them, quiet, calming himself. Looking at her. As the initial disgust wanes, he is suffused with curiosity.

When she first sagged in his arms, head lolling back, mouth agape, hair matted with blood, he’d panicked and dropped her with a cry of revulsion.

Now she seems peaceful. Desire mounts. But no. There is no time. He must end this.

He ties rocks into her dress, wades into the water, the shale at the shoreline loose and glistening under his feet, and heaves her body as far from solid ground as he can manage. The moonlight shows her bob on the surface, feet, hands, and head rising as if to wave a last farewell. Then she slips under the cool, dark water, and is gone.

He stays until the sky begins to lighten, listens to the forest come back to life, watching, waiting, in case she breaks the surface. But she does not.

A woman is found.

At last, she is going home. Disrupting the watery life she’s been forced to create in favor of a new one nourishing the earth nearby. Her grave will be less peaceful, near a divided highway, under dirt and grass and soot from the air. A poorer resting place. She will be missed by her aquatic brood.

Her mother is relieved, in a way. To know is so much better than to imagine.

And now, we begin anew. Attention circles, first, from the one who knows the truth, and then, from the rest. The heartbroken, and the curious. The determined, and the furious. From the one who prays not to be caught.

A new obsession is born by her new, exposed, too exposed, grave.

Will they find him?

Will they find him before he does it again?



1


THE WIFE

There is blood again.

Olivia forces away the threatening tears. She will not collapse. She will not cry. She will stand up, square her shoulders and flush the toilet, whispering small words of benediction toward the life that was, that wasn’t, that could have been.

She will not linger; she will not acknowledge the sudden sense of emptiness consuming her body. She will not give this moment more than it deserves. It’s happened before, too many times now. It will happen again, her mind unhelpfully provides.

There is relief in this pain, some sort of primitive biological response to help ease her heavy heart. Olivia has never lied to herself about her feelings about having a child. She wants this, she’s sure of it. Wants the experience, wants to be able to speak the same language as her sisters in the fertility arts, her friends who’ve already birthed their own. And she loves the idea of being pregnant. Loves the feelings of that early flush of success—the soreness and tingling in her breasts, the spotty nausea, the excitement, the fatigue. Loves remembering that moment when she realized she was pregnant the first time.

She’d known even before she took the test. She could feel the life growing inside her. Feel the quickening pulse. A secret she held in her heart, managing several hours with just the two of them, alone in their nascent lives. Every room of the house looked new, fresh, dangerous. Sharp corners and glass coffee tables, no, no, those would have to be tempered, replaced. The sun glancing off the breakfast table—too bright here, the spot on the opposite side would be best for a high chair. The cat, snoozing in the window seat—how was she going to take an interloper? The plans. The plans.

After a carefully arranged lunch, fresh fruit and no soft cheeses, she’d driven to the bookstore for a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, accepted the sweet congratulations of the bookseller—think, a complete stranger knew more than her family, her husband. She tied the plastic stick with its beautiful double pink lines inside two elaborate bows—one pink, one blue—and gave it to Park after an elegant dinner.

The look on his face—pride and fear and terror and joy, all mingled with desire—when he realized what she was saying. He’d been struck dumb, could only grin ear to ear and pat her leg for the first twenty minutes.