“Now that I think about it, Bibi did walk in on me as I was in the middle of changing my tampon, which had leaked all over my white nightdress.”
Mr. McCabe gulped.
“I guess it must’ve been a shock. I tried to explain about women’s monthly burden and how I wasn’t hurt, that it was all natural. But you know it’s hard to explain to a four-year-old you can be gushing blood and it—”
“Okay! Got it. Right. Okay.” Mr. McCabe shuffled the papers together. He looked even more adorable when flustered.
“I’ll talk more to her about it.” I leaned forward. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I had no idea it’d had such an impact on her.”
I hadn’t told Fox that Bibi had seen me post-kill, covered in blood.
I couldn’t now drop that news, along with the further bombshell that it had traumatized her to such a degree she was drawing pictures about it. I knew keeping secrets from your other half was bad, but what about when it was for their own good? Fox had his own issues to deal with. I could handle this. Kids saw things they shouldn’t all the time. There were plenty of four-year-olds who might have walked in on their parents having sex. Bibi had just walked in on me covered in a dead man’s blood. It wasn’t like she saw the man. Or me killing him. In the grand scheme of parenting fails, it wasn’t that big a deal, was it?
Clark Dixon was meant to be an attempt to prove that we were getting back to normal. That even though life was getting busier, more pressured, we were still us, and we could do anything we wanted to.
But all it had done was show how far we’d fallen.
Fox was too jittery. So many worries about the abandoned warehouse Jenny had selected. Were the CCTV cameras really offline? Had we factored in the high wind speed, as that might carry noise further?
I had hoped that getting back to it would’ve triggered a primal reaction. Reminded him of what he’d once been. But there was no spark in his eye when the knife came out. No joy at the blood spurt. And when I handed over to him to finish, he couldn’t. My man froze. He couldn’t perform. I pretended that I hadn’t noticed, that he was being gracious when he said, “No, darling, you do it.” But we both knew. He’d lost his mojo, his killer instinct.
Not only was my husband not pulling his weight at home, but he wasn’t pulling it at work either. Day to day, he looked off mournfully into the distance, questioning life. How nice to have the time to be so introspective. I was taking on the brunt of night feeds, laundry, nap-time logistics, household shopping. And now I was having to do it alone out in the field too.
It was why I’d been off with my kill strike. I’d been so worried about Fox, I hadn’t aimed properly. I’d forgotten my training and I’d messed up my clothes—and also, apparently, my daughter’s head.
People don’t say it enough: marriage is hard. You sign up to it in the throes of love, full of hope and promises and doe-eyed enthusiasm. And then the years and years go by, and the spark is dulled. Throw in becoming new parents, and as beautiful and life-affirming as this cherished new life is, it makes you miss your old one. You say goodbye to passion, spontaneity, fun, and welcome in sacrifice, compromise, boredom.
Love is still there. It has to be, right? It’s just that everything else has changed. You’ve changed. For the betterandthe worse. It takes time to realize all this. You let it fester: the disappointment, the anger, the holy shit—is this it?
It can all bubble up to one monumental showdown—and then guess what? It’s the reset you needed.
That’s what worked for us. We had an all-time low before we found our way back. We no longer wanted to kill each other, our marriage was back on track, and we were daring to be happy, happier than we’d ever been. We were winning at marriage, winning at parenting.
But since The Incident in Italy a year ago, it had all gone to shit.
I still remembered the silent flight home, with us gripping each other’s hands.
In the months that followed, everything was a blur. We were busy trying to recover, trying to forget. I didn’t even notice when I missed a period. And then another.
Reginald Matty Cabot was a happy accident. A blessed mistake. By the time I took a test, I was already nine weeks pregnant.
Pregnancy coinciding with our self-imposed exile from the killing game seemed fortuitous timing—we didn’t want to risk further antagonizing whoever wanted us dead, and the whole getting out and about to end a man was definitely less appealing when heavily pregnant with a toddler in tow.
We had worked hard to set up this vigilante sideline, and as long as we stuck to the run-of-the-mill scumbags, we could carry on doing it. Even though there was an element of risk to ourbusiness model, we knew we could keep our family safe. And, in a way, if you ignored the killing bit, and focused on the “chasing your dreams” part, we were setting a good example to our children. Reach for the stars, baby! Win that gold medal! Be a top barrister! Climb that big mountain! Kill that bad man!
“Mama hurt.”
I just needed to work on that separation between work life and home life, make sure Bibi wasn’t emotionally scarred forever, help my husband be fighting fit, and get my baby to sleep through the night, and everything would be perfect.
Chapter Seven
Fox
I knew keeping secrets fromHaze was a bad idea. We had both learned from past mistakes.
I loved my wife. I wanted her to be happy more than anything.
And it was while thinking of her happiness I did something a little crazy.
