Chapter 2 - THE FOLDED PAGE
Christopher kissed my forehead before he left for work.
That was the part I remembered most.
Not the gray suit.
Not the expensive pastries sitting untouched on the counter.
Not even the smell of disinfectant still clinging faintly to his hands.
The kiss.
Fourteen years of marriage had trained my body to accept that small gesture without thought. I stood perfectly still while the man who had entered our bedroom hours earlier carrying a syringe pressed his lips against my skin.
“Try to get some rest today,” he said.
“I will.”
“You look pale.”
“Bad night.”
His eyes remained on me half a second too long.
Then he smiled.
“Call me if you need anything.”
I watched his car disappear beyond the iron gate before I locked every door.
Toby arrived forty minutes later.
My son was seventeen, tall enough now that I sometimes caught pieces of his father in the way he stood. That morning, though, he looked twelve again.
He came through the mudroom wearing yesterday’s sweatshirt, his backpack hanging from one shoulder.
The second he saw me, he dropped it.
“You’re okay.”
I crossed the kitchen and wrapped my arms around him.
He held on hard.
For several seconds neither of us spoke.
Then Toby whispered, “I thought I was too late.”
I pulled back.
“Tell me everything.”
We sat at the kitchen table where Christopher and I had celebrated anniversaries, birthdays, good report cards, my father’s last Thanksgiving.
Now Toby opened his laptop there.
“The family browser account,” he said. “Dad set it up years ago so all the devices could share passwords and bookmarks.”
“I remember.”
“I was at Ben’s house studying. Around one-thirty, I opened my laptop. Tabs started syncing from Dad’s computer.”
The searches I had already seen appeared again.
Accidental death.
Medication overdose.
Depression symptoms.
Insurance.
Toby swallowed.
“I thought maybe there was some explanation. Then I saw the policy folder.”
He turned the screen toward me.
Three policies.
The dates were spread across eleven months.
Eight million.
Seven million.
Nine million.
Twenty-four million dollars.
My name appeared on all three.
Christopher was listed as beneficiary.
“I’m sorry,” Toby said.
I looked at him.
“For what?”
“I almost didn’t call you.”
That frightened me more than anything else he had said.
“Why?”
“Because Dad has been telling me you’re not okay.”
I stared at him.
Toby’s hands curled into fists on the table.
“For months. Little things. He’d say you weren’t sleeping. That Grandpa dying changed you. That sometimes grief comes back years later.”
My father had died five years earlier.
I still missed him.
But I was not unstable.
Christopher knew that.
“He asked if you ever said you didn’t want to be here anymore,” Toby continued.
My stomach turned.
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. No.”
Toby looked ashamed anyway.
“He told me if anything strange ever happened, I should remember you’d been having a hard time.”
There it was.
Not one lie.
A foundation made of tiny ones.
I stood so quickly my chair scraped the floor.
I needed air.
Instead, I went upstairs.
The bedroom looked normal in daylight.
Almost offensively normal.
The comforter.
Christopher’s book on the nightstand.
My robe hanging behind the bathroom door.
I crouched beside the bed where I had watched him from behind the armoire.
Something white showed beneath the edge of the frame.
A corner of paper.
Christopher must have dropped it.
I pulled it out.
It was the folded sheet I had seen in his hand.
Not an insurance policy.
Not a letter.
A medication record.
My medication record.
Except I had never seen it before.
The page listed dates, supposed sleepless nights, supposed missed meals and supposed incidents where I had taken prescription sleep medication.
Beside several entries were initials designed to resemble mine.
I knew my handwriting.
Christopher knew it too.
He had practiced carefully.
One entry stopped me cold.
March 18.
“Confused after midnight. Took additional medication despite warning.”
March 18.
I had spent that entire night in Pittsburgh with my sister Helen.
We had attended our aunt’s seventy-fifth birthday.
There were photographs.
Restaurant receipts.
Forty people who had seen me.
Christopher had created a history that never happened.
Toby read the page over my shoulder.
“He’s building a story.”
“Yes.”
“So if something happened—”
“People would believe I did it to myself.”
He turned away.
I touched his shoulder.
“Toby.”
“I should’ve noticed.”
“No.”
“I live here.”
“So do I.”
That silenced both of us.
We went into Christopher’s home office.
I had avoided searching it before because some irrational part of me still felt like a wife invading her husband’s privacy.
That woman no longer existed.
Most drawers contained nothing remarkable.
Bills.
Pens.
Business cards.
A hotel loyalty card.
Then Toby pulled open the lower cabinet.
“Mom.”
Inside was a large brown envelope.
Three photographs slid onto the rug.
The first showed me leaving our neighborhood pharmacy.
The second showed our side gate.
The third showed Toby walking away from school.
None were family photographs.
They had been taken from a distance.
Dates and times were written across the backs.
Mine had been taken eleven days earlier.
The gate photograph was from the previous Tuesday.
Toby’s had been taken Monday at 4:17 p.m.
He stared at it.
“I didn’t know anybody was there.”
I took the picture from him.
My son was carrying his backpack and looking down at his phone.
Ordinary.
Unaware.
Safe, he had believed.
Then I turned the photograph over.
Four words had been written in Christopher’s handwriting.
FRIDAY — 4:30 — NO WITNESS.
Toby stopped breathing for a moment.
“Tomorrow is Friday.”
I looked at the clock.
10:26 Thursday morning.
“What happens at four-thirty tomorrow?”
“Debate practice ends.”
“And then?”
“I usually walk home.”
“Who knows that?”
Toby’s face changed.
“Dad.”
I placed the photograph on the desk.
The fear inside me changed shape.
Until that moment, I had believed Christopher’s plan ended with me.
Now I understood something far worse.
Whatever he had planned for Friday involved our son.
May you like
And tomorrow afternoon, Christopher expected Toby to be alone.
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