“Look at it as bringing an end to her suffering.”
“I don’t understand,” Forrest said. Or maybe he did, but he wished he didn’t.
Now Brenda sounded excited. For once she had come up with an idea she hadn’t heard someone express on a show she was watching. “Suppose she showed up dead one day. Considering her past history, nobody would bat an eye.”
She was on a roll now. She was talking faster. I couldn’t see her face, but I could imagine it. That pale skin, with the foundation that ended at her jawline.
“Suppose Regina just turned up dead?” Brenda said. “There’d be this note next to her body where she explained she’d had enough. She hated ruining everybody else’s life, but she just wanted it to be over. The pain of being alive. She’d say how sorry she was to let everyone down, but she knew she was just a drag on them, and they’d be better off without her.”
“That would never happen,” Forrest said. “My wife would never write a note like that.”
“You’re missing the point.” Brenda looked annoyed. I caught a glimpse of what this woman would be like if someone crossed her in a serious way—or simply didn’t give her what she wanted. Now here she was having to explain everything to him.
“What if someone else wrote this note for her? Only this person made it sound like Regina wrote it, because they knew that was the sort of thing she might do anyway; she just hadn’t gotten around to it.”
Forrest took a few moments to respond. When he did, he seemed to choose his words with more care than usual. On his face, a look of pure shock. Call it horror.
“You’re kidding, right?” he said. “I could never ...”
“Just think how it could be,” she told him. She ran her hands over his chest. Then lower down on his body.
“It’s not Regina’s fault that she’s depressed,” Forrest told her.
“But what about us?” Brenda said. “What am I supposed to do?” He had put his pants on at this point, but her hands had made their way inside them.
“Oh, baby,” he moaned. “I can’t.”
“Think about it,” she told him. All of a sudden there was a hardness to her voice. I’d seen that part of Brenda all along. I might be young, but I understood her way better than Forrest did.
“I love my wife,” he said. It made me sad to hear how weak he seemed now. He sounded like a puppy. Being trained. She’d have him peeing where he was supposed to soon. And not where he shouldn’t.
“You know that’s one of the things I love about you,” Brenda told him. “Your loyalty. But we both know she’s a sick woman, and it’s only going to get worse.
“Just think,” she went on. “You could have me all to yourself every day for the rest of your life.”
57
Clueless
After they took off in the Chris-Craft, I stayed put on the island a while longer to be sure they wouldn’t see me when I launched the canoe. On the way back to the house, I considered what I’d tell Regina about the event I’d witnessed that afternoon. It was more confusing than I’d thought.
On the one hand, I had irrefutable evidence that Forrest and Brenda were having sex. Not just notes of conversations. I had pictures now.
Then came the shocking part: Brenda’s suggestion to Forrest that the two of them cook up a plot that would make it appear that Regina had committed suicide. She hadn’t used the wordkill, but there was only one way to interpret her words. As awful as it had seemed to me before that Forrest was cheating on Regina this way, Brenda’s plan to make it appear that Regina had killed herself took the situation to a whole other level, from infidelity to murder.
Forrest hadn’t said much when Brenda laid out her idea, but I had seen his face as he took in her words. He would never go along with a plan like the one she suggested.
You could look at this as a good news/bad news situation. Good news: Despite his unfaithfulness, Regina’s husband still cared about her.In the middle of a tryst with his lover, Forrest still hurried home to bring his wife to her doctor’s appointment.
Still, there was no getting past the bad news, which was the sex part. The betrayal had taken place—as Regina had guessed it might—on the very same patch of moss where she herself had once made love with her husband.
And as stunned as Forrest had appeared when Brenda laid out her idea of killing Regina, he had not come right out and told her he wouldn’t do it. He was probably going to do what people always did, in my experience, when something truly uncomfortable came up: pretend it never happened. Maybe this would even work, unless she brought it up again.
But if I was right about Brenda, she would.
Because the wind was up and I was paddling against it, the trip back to the house from the island took almost twice as long as it had taken getting there. It was late afternoon when I walked back into the house. My arms and shoulders hurt, but more so, my head.
The children were watching a show. Prudence was at the stove, making dinner. Just as he’d told Brenda, after dropping her off at the rental house she shared with her husband, he’d swung by the house to pick up Regina and bring her to her doctor’s appointment. Now he was over at the club—having a drink with his golfing buddies maybe, or maybe he’d just wanted to take a shower. He’d need to get Brenda’s smell off his skin.
