In time he says, expression thoughtful, arms folded across his chest, “You don’t like Imogen, Sadie. She scares you, you said. You didn’t want to come here to Maine and now you want to leave. I think you’re looking for a reason—” he begins, tiptoeing around the truth. His truth. That I’m manufacturing a reason to leave.
I hold up a hand and stop him there. I don’t need to hear the rest of it.
Only one thing matters. He doesn’t believe me.
I turn on my heels and leave.
SADIE
I spend another fitful night tossing and turning in bed. I give up the fight near five a.m., slipping quietly from bed. The dogs follow, eager for an early breakfast. On the way out the bedroom door, I reach for the basket of laundry I left for myself to clean, hoisting it onto my hip. I walk out into the hall and down the stairs.
I’m approaching the landing when my bare foot lands on something sharp. It pokes me in the arch of the foot. I sink to the steps to see what it is, resting the laundry basket on my lap. In the darkness, I feel blindly for the offending item, taking it into the light of the kitchen to see.
It’s a small silver pendant on a rope chain, now coiled into a mound on my palm. It’s broken, snipped in two, not at the clasp but in the center of the chain so that it can’t go back together again. Such a shame, I think.
I clasp the pendant between my fingers, seeing the one side is blank.
I turn it over. There on the other side is anM. Someone’s initial. But whose?
Hers isn’t the first name that comes to me. I think of Michelle and Mandy and Maggie first. But then the thought arrives, crashing into me, knocking the wind from my lungs.
Mfor Morgan.
In the kitchen, I suck in a sudden breath. Did this necklace belong to Morgan?
I can’t say with certainty. But my gut thinks so.
What is this necklace doing in our home? There isn’t one good reason why it would be here. Only reasons I’m too scared to consider.
I leave it on the countertop as I turn and make my way to the laundry room. My hands are shaking now, though I tell myself it’s theoretical only. The necklace could just as well belong to a Michelle as it could to Morgan Baines. Perhaps Otto has a crush on some girl and planned to give this to her. A girl named Michelle.
I upend the basket and laundry comes tumbling out, onto the floor. I sort the laundry, separating the whites and colors into piles. I grab armfuls of it and begin thrusting it into the washing machine, too much for one load. But I want to get it done. I’m not thinking about any one thing in particular, but many things, though the thing that trumps all is how I can get my marriage, my family back on track. Because there was once a time when we were happy.
Maine was meant to be a new beginning, a fresh start. Instead it’s had a detrimental effect on everything, Will’s and my marriage, our family, our lives. It’s time that we leave, go somewhere else. Not back to Chicago, but somewhere new. We’ll sell the house, take Imogen with us. I think of the places we could go. So many possibilities. If only I could convince Will to leave.
My mind is elsewhere. Not on the laundry. I’m hardly paying attention to the laundry at all, other than this quick, forceful way I jam things into the machine, slamming the door. I reach for the detergent on a nearby shelf. Only then do I catch sight of a few items that sneaked out, escapees from the washing machine lying limp on the laundry room floor.
I bend at the waist to retrieve them, ready to open the door and toss them back in. It’s as I stand, hunched over, scooping the items into my hand, that I see it. At first I blame the poor lighting in the laundry room for what it is I see. Blood, on a washcloth. A great deal of it, though I try to convince myself that it’s not blood.
The stain is not as red as it is brown because of the way blood changes color as it dries. But still, it’s blood. Undeniably blood.
It would be so easy to say that Will had cut himself shaving, or that Tate had a scraped knee or—worst-case scenario—Otto or Imogen had picked up a habit of cutting, save for the amount of blood on the washcloth. Not merely a dab or a trace, but the washcloth has been wet through with it and allowed to dry.
I turn it over in my hand. The blood has seeped to both sides.
I let the washcloth fall from my hand.
My heart is in my throat. I feel like I can’t breathe. I’ve had the wind knocked out of me.
As I rise quickly to stand upright, gravity forces all the blood in me down to my trunk. There it pools, unable to make its way back up to my brain. I become dizzy. Everything before me begins to blur. Black specks dance before my eyes. I set my hand on the wall to balance myself before lowering slowly to the ground. There I sit beside the bloodstained washcloth, seeing only it, not touching it now because of all the DNA evidence that must be on that rag.
Morgan’s blood, her murderer’s fingerprints. And now mine.
I don’t know how this bloody washcloth came to be inside our home. But someone put it here. The options are few.
I lose track of time. I sit on the laundry room floor long enough that I hear the sound of footsteps galloping around the house. Light, quick footsteps that belong to Tate, followed by heavier ones: Will.
I should be in the shower by now. I should be getting ready for work. Will calls out quietly for me, having noticed that I wasn’t in bed. “Sadie?”
