Chapter 8

Alan was arriving at Manchester Airport at five, which meant that he'd be home not much later than six thirty. Martha texted to let him know that she'd be making dinner that night.

She was roasting a chicken, hoping that a familiar task would stop her mind from spinning. And it was one of their favorite meals, Martha loving the way it made the house smell. In the past she had found it a calming smell, a reminder that for the time being she was home safe and there was food in the oven and the world outside could wait. But now, with the oven timer ticking down, the house beginning to darken while clouds gathered outside, Martha felt a deep sense of fear, manifesting itself as a hard knot at the center of her chest. It was one thing to believe that your husband was some kind of monster who preyed on women, but she had spoken it out loud, told Lily about him, set the wheels in motion. And now all she could think was that when he came through the front door he'd take one look at her face and know exactly what had happened.

But when he finally did come through the door, wet with rain, he left his bag in the foyer, quickly crossed the living room to the open kitchen, kissed Martha, and asked if he had time for a hot shower.

"Of course," she said, waiting for him to really look at her and know what had happened. Waiting for him to see that pulsing knot at the center of her chest or her trembling hands.

But all he said was, "It smells amazing in here. I'll be right back."

While he showered, Martha drank a third glass of wine. It didn't relax her, but it made the room shimmer with unnatural light, so she made herself eat two pieces of the soft baguette she'd bought, spreading camembert on top. She wasn't hungry, but the act of chewing and swallowing did calm her a little bit. She took the chicken out of the oven, checked the small red potatoes—they still needed time—and added the sheet of asparagus where the chicken had been. Her glasses were steamed up and she took them off for a moment. Alan didn't know what she had done that morning. Even if he was a monster, he wasn't someone who could peer inside of people to read their innermost thoughts. Just as she couldn't read his thoughts. She took a sip of her wine and then went to their stereo system, flipping it on, pairing it with her phone, then picking a mix called "Dinnertime Jazz."

"Ooh, romantic," Alan said, sneaking up behind her in the kitchen. She jumped, making one of the strange sounds that came out of her when she was frightened. Alan laughed, one of his loud cocktail-party laughs, then apologized.

"Sorry, I'm jittery, for some reason," she said. "Maybe it's the weather."

"Flying in, we could see lightning out along the coast. The woman next to me was praying, I think."

"How was the conference?"

"I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. But it was fine. Can I help with dinner?"

Martha pulled the potatoes and asparagus out of the oven while Alan carved the chicken. Then they brought everything to the table and started to eat.

When he finished the food on his plate, Alan leaned back and said, "Have you thought some more about a trip to England this summer?"

"I have," Martha said. "It sounds perfect." An image went through Martha's mind: Alan and her at a country pub, the moors in the distance. She suddenly longed to be there, not because it would be a nice trip, but because if they were there together it would mean that her husband was innocent, that the nightmare she was in would have come to some kind of benign end.

"You okay?" Alan said.

"Oh, sorry. Daydreaming already about our trip. I think it would be great. You said you'd thought of a possible week already?"

"Sometime in August. Let's talk about it tomorrow. All I have energy for is maybe some television and then straight to bed."

A small ripple of relief went through her that he didn't want to have sex. He often did when he was back from one of his trips, but he usually let her know he was in the mood first. Sometimes he did it jokingly, saying something like, "Shall we make it an early night?" while raising and lowering his eyebrows, but sometimes he was a little more direct, pushing up against her while she was doing the dishes, sliding a hand down between her legs. And, just as he always let her know ahead of time if he wanted sex, he usually let her know if he didn't, saying something like what he had just said about being so tired, or that he could sleep for a week if given a chance.

After the dishes were done and they were watching The Great British Baking Show together, she began to wonder if there was some correlation between what had happened on a trip and whether he wanted sex or not when he came back. Maybe his exhaustion meant that he'd found and killed a woman down in Chapel Hill. The taste of roasted garlic hovered at the back of Martha's throat and for a moment she thought she might be sick. She took a deep and quiet breath. Maybe it was just the opposite. Maybe when her husband came home, his hands all over her, dying to get her into the bedroom and strip her clothing off, it was because he'd killed a woman just hours before. Maybe it was a celebration.

"You okay over there?" Alan said.

"Oh, fine," Martha said, wondering what had made him ask. "A little acid reflux, if I'm honest."

"Take something."

"Okay, I will." But she stayed seated while Paul Hollywood analyzed some under-baked biscuits. She wondered how she was going to get through the rest of the night, let alone the next week.

When the episode ended, Alan said he was heading up to bed, and Martha said that she might stay up and watch a little more television. Right before he left the room he turned and asked, "You sure you're okay? You seem a little tense tonight."

"Just my period, I think," she said, even though she'd had it less than two weeks ago.

"Lady troubles," Alan said, almost to himself, before leaving the TV room.

An hour later Martha stepped into their bedroom to hear Alan snoring into his pillow. She shut the bedroom door and went back downstairs into the dark living room, opening up her laptop, telling herself that she'd just do a quick check of North Carolina news to find out if anything had happened over the weekend. Perched on the edge of her office chair, she typed in "Chapel Hill," which brought her to the local paper, the News Observer. She scanned the news section, relieved that the lead story seemed to be that a team of firefighters had rescued a kitten from the roof of an apartment building. As far as she could tell, there were no recent murders, or violent crimes. Still, she did a search using the words "Chapel Hill" and "unsolved." There were multiple hits, but nothing recent. She erased her browsing history, closed the laptop, and took the first deep breath she'd taken that night.

Martha worked the next day at the library, the hours passing in an almost dreamlike way, as though everything moved a little slower. She was working every day that week, and Alan was home on one of his staycations. He didn't have a conference over the next weekend, and they'd talked about going somewhere, maybe down to an inn they liked in Gloucester, on Cape Ann.

"You doing okay, hon?" Mary said to her as she was walking past the reference desk. Martha must have been staring into space.

"If one more person asks me that," she said, then saw the look of shame on Mary's face and immediately apologized. "Oh, sorry, Mary. I'm fine, honestly."

"I was just hoping you don't have that flu that's going around. Margie had it and said her throat felt like she'd swallowed thumbtacks."

"No, I'm fine. It's probably nothing."

But that night she told Alan that she thought she might be coming down with something, that she felt flushed and her throat hurt.

"And you're getting your period," he said, and it took her a moment to remember that she'd lied about that to him the day before.

"When it rains..." she said.

She set herself up in the guest room, reading her book and having saltine crackers and ginger ale for her dinner, deciding that even though she wasn't sick she could probably happily eat that particular meal on any given day. At ten o'clock Alan popped into the room to say good night, standing in the doorframe. "Hey, can I ask you something out of left field?" he said.

"Okay," she said, alarmed by the serious tone in his voice.

"Don't freak out on me for asking this, but are you having an affair?"

She looked at him for five seconds trying to process the words and saw that his face was bloodless, his jaw rigid with anxiety. "What?" she said. "No, of course not. Why are you asking?"

"It's just... a feeling, I guess. You've been a little distant lately, and I go away for long periods of time. And there's another thing, but I don't know if I want to say it. It'll make me sound crazy."

"What is it? Now you are freaking me out a little."

"So, you seemed so distant yesterday, and you were kind of vague about what you'd done over the weekend, so while you were in the shower... I went and checked your odometer. In your car."

"I'm sorry. You did what?"

"I checked your odometer. And I saw that you added about two hundred miles to it since the last time I looked."

"Since the last time you looked? Please explain that to me."

"I don't understand your question."

"Why do you know what my odometer is at?"

"I always know that, just like I know exactly how much money we have in our checking accounts, and how long it's been since we changed the water filter in the fridge, and the exact sales figures on all my merchandise. It's just how I think. Where did you go, Martha?"

His little speech had been long enough for Martha to decide what to say. "I had lunch with a friend in Worcester. Her name's Lily Kintner and she lives in Connecticut, so we met halfway there."

"You've never mentioned her before."

"Honestly, we're not that close. We went to grad school together, then lost touch, but she reached out to me and we talked on the phone and decided last-minute to meet up. We went to this awful Irish pub that you wouldn't believe—"

"I don't understand why you didn't tell me about it." He tugged at an earlobe.

"I would've, I guess. I mean, I didn't make a decision to not tell you. The thing is, we both drove all this way to get together, then we basically ran out of things to talk about halfway through our first drink. It was depressing. You know how I've talked to you before about not having any real close friends and about how that makes me feel bad?"

Alan nodded.

"Well, I suppose part of me hoped that maybe Lily and I would rekindle our friendship, but it just didn't happen. And it made me feel like it was me, that I was the one who's incapable of being close to someone. I think that's why I didn't bring it up."

Martha wiped at her eyes, surprised to find real tears there. She was lying, but she wasn't lying about how she felt about herself with regards to friends. Alan came across and sat on the edge of the bed, put a hand on her leg.

"I am not cheating on you, Alan, I promise. I would never do that in a million years." The tears kept coming.

"I know," he said. "I know that." The words sounded comforting, but his jaw was still rigid, and the earlobe that he'd been pulling on a moment ago was bright red.

"What about you?" Martha said. "You're always traveling. Are you ever tempted?"

"Tempted to what? To cheat on you?"

"Yeah. I mean, I don't think you do. I'm not accusing you, but..."

Alan's eyes were resting on the bare wall behind the bed. He finally said, "What possible reason would I have for cheating?"