The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford Read Free Book Online

’Cause I don’t— The jam?” She watches Peter’s hand shake as he reaches for a jar of preserves; his face is pink beneath his perfect hair. “I don’t actually remember her being here when you were home.”
    â€œStrawberry or . . . ?”
    â€œYeah,” she says. “Strawberry’s fine. So when were you and Celia both here again?”
    â€œI didn’t— Jesus, Dana, what is this anyway? I didn’t actually write it down. ‘Met Celia at six o’clock this evening. Our kitchen. Dana hosting.’” He laughs a tight little pretend laugh.
    â€œDid you kill her?” Dana’s heart is racing. She wipes her sweaty palms across the thighs of her pajamas as Peter chokes on his coffee. She watches him cough until tears run down his cheeks, and she wants him to say yes, prays he’ll say yes—that she’ll see a killer, a demon there inside her husband, peeking out his squinty hazel eyes. Crazily, she wills him to nod, to shrug, to raise his hands in a gesture of surrender, because if Peter killed their neighbor, then she’ll know that she did not. They’ll get him off, she thinks of telling him. They’ll hire the best attorney in the state.
    â€œWhat the fuck is wrong with you?” Peter asks when he can speak. He sounds like a frog.“Take it easy,” she says, but her heart slams against her ribs. “You are so not a morning person.”
    â€œWhy would you say something like that?”
    Dana shrugs. “I was kidding.”
    â€œPeople don’t kid like that,” Peter points out. “Not normal people.”
    He’s so different now from who he was when they first met, when Dana was twenty-two, working at a Manhattan law firm, reinventing herself—when Peter was naïve and eager, trying unsuccessfully to fit in with the senior attorneys. Or so she’d thought. Nowshe thinks he was neither innocent nor particularly eager. He was only new and insecure.
    â€œWe’re out of sugar.” He scrapes a spoon across the bottom of a large glass canister, where a damp clump of granules remains.
    She nods. She thinks about grabbing his cell phone out of his back pocket—she can see the small, thin bulge of it when he leans over the counter—and scrolling to Celia’s number in his contacts list. She thinks about pressing down her thumb, connecting with the message, with the “You know what to do” on Celia’s recording.
    She takes another bite of toast, feeling it stick to the roof of her mouth, dry as dust, and she stares past Peter’s shoulder out the window. From behind the oak tree at the back of the yard, a form steps onto the lawn—a hooded form in black. The hood is overlarge and moving slightly in the breeze, obscuring whatever face is there. Only the dark form is visible, stooped over in the shadows of the trees.
    Dana jumps up, knocking over a glass. “There’s someone out there,” she says. “Look!”
    Peter sighs. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even turn around.
    â€œLook! Just— For God’s sake—”
    He turns around finally, slowly, running his hands through his hair, but the creature in the hoodie is no longer visible; it’s lost in the oaks that edge into a patch of county land, a tiny wooded plot at the far end of their yard.
    â€œYou have to get some help,” Peter tells her. “You’re sliding toward the— No. You’re careening toward the edge.”
    Dana nods.
    â€œReally,” he says. “Soon. Before it’s too late,” and Dana nods again. She knows he’s right. No matter how she feels about him, no matter what a philanderer he is, about this at least he’s right, and she wonders how much time she has before the doors start closing, before her sharp assessments turn to disconnected scraps ofsight and sound, before she is mad as a hatter. She hopes there’s