“I had a habit of staring at her when she didn’t know I was watching,” he confesses. “It’s because of how beautiful she was. It was easy to do. Morgan,” he tells me, smiling nostalgically at the memory of his wife, “was easy on the eyes. Everyone thought so,” and I remember what Officer Berg said about the men in town having eyes for her. About Will having eyes for her.
“Yes,” I reply. “She was lovely,” changing the way I think of him because I can see in his eyes just how much he loved Morgan.
That day Jeffrey says that he watched as she bent at the waist, as she stretched a hand into the box to retrieve the mail, as she made the long walk back up the driveway, thumbing through the mail as she went.
Halfway up the drive, Morgan came to a standstill. Her hand went to her mouth. By the time she made it inside, she was as white as a ghost. She brushed past Jeffrey in the doorway, shaking as she did so. He asked what was wrong, what she found in the mail that made her so upset. Morgan said only bills—that the insurance company hadn’t covered a recent doctor appointment. The balance left for them to pay was highway robbery.
It should have been covered,she snapped, marching up the stairs with the mail in her hand.
Where are you going?he called up the stairs after her.
To call the insurance company,she said, but she went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Everything about Morgan changed that day. The changes were subtle. Another person might not have noticed. There was a sudden propensity toward closing the curtains as soon as the sky turned dark. A restlessness about his wife that hadn’t been there before.
The notes that the police found were all different, slipped in between the box spring and the mattress that Jeffrey and Morgan slept on. She’d intentionally hidden them from him.
I ask what they said, and he tells me.
You know nothing.
Tell anyone and die.
I’m watching you.
A chill runs up my spine. My eyes go to the windows of homes on the street.
Is someone watching us?
“Did Morgan and your ex-wife get along?” I ask, though even I can see these threats make no sense coming from an aggrieved ex-wife. These threats have nothing to do with a woman trying to reclaim the rights to her child. These threats have nothing to do with a husband hoping for a life insurance payout in the wake of his wife’s death.
These threats are something else.
All this time, I’ve been wrong.
“I’m telling you,” Jeffrey says, becoming agitated now. Gone is the man who stood smiling at his wife’s memorial service. He’s come undone. Jeffrey is unwavering now as he states emphatically, “Courtney had nothing to do with this. Someone else was threatening my wife. Someone else wanted her dead.”
I see this now.
SADIE
“I used the last of the milk on the mac and cheese,” Will tells me when he gets home, stepping into the house only minutes after me. Tate is with him. He skips merrily through the front door, tells Will to count to twenty and then come find him. He dashes off to hide as Will unpacks a handful of items from a grocery sack on the counter.
Will winks at me, admits, “I told him we’d play hide-and-seek if he went with me without a fuss.” Will can turn any errand into an adventure.
In the Crock-Pot cooks Will’s famous macaroni and cheese. The table is set for five, as if Will bullishly believes Imogen will be home. He carries the gallon of milk he’s just brought home to the table, and fills the empty glasses in turn.
“Where’s Otto?” I ask, and Will tells me, “Upstairs.”
“He didn’t go with you and Tate?”
Will shakes his head no. “It was only a quick trip for milk,” he says.
Will turns to me, seeing me perhaps only then for the first time since he’s arrived home.
“What’s the matter, Sadie?” he asks, setting the milk on the edge of the table and coming to me. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”
He wraps his arms around me and I want to tell him about the discoveries of the day. I want to get it all off my chest, but for whatever reason, instead I say, “It’s nothing,” blaming low blood sugar for the reason I shake. I’ll tell him later, when Tate isn’t just in the next room waiting for Will to find him. “I didn’t have time for lunch.”
