THE DEEP END by Julie Mulhern Read Free Book Online Page A

night.” He dropped his gaze. “I didn’t know...”
    He didn’t know?
    Roger shuddered. “I tried to talk to the owner. A woman. She was busy.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “She said I should come back this morning and she’d talk to me.”
    My heart stuttered. Surely, he wouldn’t ask.
    “Will you go with me? Please?”
    I poured myself coffee I didn’t want or need so I could clutch the warmth of the mug. “Isn’t this a matter for the police?”
    Roger raked his hand through long strands of thinning hair that barely covered his naked scalp. His throat worked its way around another swallow. “This isn’t about her death. It’s about why she...” His head dropped to his hands.
    The poor man. He’d loved her and she’d cheated on him with my husband. At least Henry and I were well on our way to complete indifference when he first started cheating. I knew why Henry had strayed. He needed to dominate and I was unable to submit. Silly me. I wanted us to be equal in marriage. Equality goes out the window when one partner has a riding crop and cuffs and the other is on her knees.
    I tried it. Once. In hopes of saving our marriage. I donned the black silk stockings and black lace garter and the high-heeled shoes and nothing else. I even let him blindfold me. Then I held out my wrists and let him bind me. I even knelt.
    He’d turned on loud music. Blinded and half-deaf, I’d still sensed him walking circles around me and my body had tightened with anticipated dread.
    When the riding crop slapped against my skin, I didn’t feel fear or desire or pain or pleasure. Instead, I’d balled my hands together and spit out the safe word as if it was poison.
    “You said you’d try.” Henry sounded like a petulant child.
    “And you said you’d love, honor, and cherish me.”
    I struggled to get off the floor.
    “I am.”
    “By hitting me with a riding crop?”
    I stumbled to my feet and thrust my cuffed wrists out so he could unlock me. I didn’t see the connection between love and hitting me with a riding crop.
    “You said you’d obey.”
    “When?”
    “In our vows when we got married.”
    “I did not. We took that part out.” But that was back when Henry didn’t feel threatened by a wife who made more money than he did, by the thinning of his hair or the thickening of his waist.
    “Women want a man who takes charge.”
    He wasn’t a man, he was a Neanderthal. “I want a partner.”
    “I want you to do this, Ellison.” He tried to sound masterful and dominant and in-charge.
    I didn’t need to see him to know he was a man afraid of his own mortality. A man who turned to kink as a way to convince himself he was still virile. Why couldn’t he just buy a damned Porsche? I shook my head. “I can’t.”
    It meant the end. Not of our marriage. The marriage we kept going—for Grace’s sake. But it was the end of Ellison and Henry, of growing old together, of happily ever after.
    After that, Henry embraced the idea of open marriage like water embraces wetness.
    I painted more than ever. For a while, the hopeful pinks and greens and yellows on my canvases turned dark. Powers raised an eyebrow, made sympathetic noises, then sold the paintings for more money than ever.
    I knew why Henry’s and my story ended the way it did. Money. Ego. Fear. The heartbroken man at my kitchen counter had no idea why Madeline had done what she’d done.
    I could have told Roger my theory—that Madeline enjoyed being punished because she knew she’d left a trail of reprehensible acts behind her. I could have told him what I knew—that knowing why doesn’t make things better. It just makes them clearer. I kept my lips sealed and shook my head.
    “Please? I can’t go alone.”
    He shouldn’t go at all. Well actually, he should. He should go home. He should go to the office or the country club. He and his ridiculous request should go somewhere other than my kitchen.
    He wiped his eyes with hands that still shook despite