The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [144]
How well do you know the person you have married? You exchange vows, gold rings, build a home, raise a family. You sleep side by side every night, gazing upon your spouse’s naked body so often it becomes as mundane as your own. Maybe you have sex. Maybe you have felt your husband’s fingers digging into your ass, urging you closer, guiding you faster, asking you in a low guttural tone, “How do you like that? Is it good for you?” Yet this is the same man who will slip out of bed six hours from now and prepare waffles with your daughter’s favorite ruffled apron tied around his waist and perhaps even a butterfly barrette, graciously supplied by the four-year-old, clipped into his hair.
If you can marvel at his sweetness, your husband’s ability to be both your carnal lover and your daughter’s indulgent father, is it not so much of a stretch then to wonder what other roles he could play? What other parts of his personality are just waiting to be dialed into place?
All through dinner, Ree giggled and Jason smiled and I sipped champagne. I thought of my husband and his lack of family and friends. And I sipped more champagne. I remembered how easily he’d convinced me to adopt a new name when we’d moved to Boston—all to help protect me from my father, he’d claimed at the time. And I sipped more champagne. I recalled his late nights hunched over the computer. The websites he frequented that he had gone to great lengths to hide. And I thought of that photo. I finally, six months later, fixated on that lone black-and-white photo of a terrified young boy, the hairy black spider clearly visible as it crawled across the boy’s naked chest.
And I sipped more champagne.
My husband was going to kill me.
It was so clear to me now. I didn’t know why I hadn’t realized it sooner. Jason was a monster. Maybe not a pedophile, maybe something worse. A predator of such miswired proportions that he remained indifferent to his beautiful young wife, while lasciviously cultivating terrible images of frightened young children.
I should’ve listened to Wayne. I should’ve told him where we were going, except I had never thought to ask. No, I trusted my husband, let him lead me straight to slaughter without pressing for a single detail. Me, the very person who spent her entire childhood learning you can’t trust anyone.
I sipped more champagne, moved the seared scallops around on my plate. I wondered what he would tell Ree when it was all over. There had been an accident, Mommy won’t be coming home anymore. So sorry, baby, so sorry.
I poured Jason a second glass of champagne. He wasn’t a big drinker. Maybe if I could get him drunk enough, he’d miss me and fall into the harbor himself. Wouldn’t that be fitting justice?
Jason finished eating. Ree, too. The black-vested waiter appeared, ready to whisk our plates away. He gazed down at me with great consternation.
“Was it not to your satisfaction? May I present you with another choice?”
I waved him off with vague excuses of having eaten a big lunch. Jason was watching me, but he didn’t comment on the lie. His dark hair had fallen across his forehead. He looked rakish, the open collar of his dress shirt, the rumpled waves of his thick hair, the deep impenetrable pools of his eyes. Other women were probably admiring him when they thought I wasn’t looking. Perhaps everyone was admiring us. Look at that beautiful family with that gorgeous little girl who is so well behaved.
Didn’t we make a pretty picture? A perfect little family, if only we survived the night.
Ree wanted ice cream for dessert. The waiter took her to the gelato case to pick out a flavor. I topped off Jason’s glass with the last of the champagne. He had barely touched his second glass. I thought that was grossly unfair of him.
“I propose a toast,” I declared, definitely tipsy now and feeling reckless.
He nodded, picked up his glass.
“To us,” I said. “For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.”
I tossed