The smell of smoke still lingers in the air. It’s the first thing Marcy notices when she steps into the kitchen the next morning. The scent brings it all rushing back. As if it hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind since the moment it happened.
Marcy goes about her morning rituals, putting the coffee on and emptying the dishwasher as it brewed. Only this morning, each time she passes the window over the sink, her eyes are drawn to the charred bones of the neighbor’s jungle gym. It crouches in the back corner of the yard, like a twisted T. Rex skeleton waiting for night to fall so it can come to life and gobble up innocent children.
Her lips curve into a self-deprecating smile. She only startles a little when she hears John’s sleepy voice.
“What’s funny?”
Marcy turns her head enough that he can hit her mouth with his morning kiss. “Not funny really, just some nutty thought that went through my head.”
“Do tell,” he says, giving her backside a swat before sauntering off toward the coffee pot to pour two mugs.
“I was looking out at the swing set. It reminds me of a T. Rex carcass for some reason. Then I thought it might be waiting until dark so it could come to life and eat small children.”
John has paused with his cup hovering a couple of inches from his lips. “I don’t know if that’s brilliantly creative or vaguely demented.”
Marcy shrugs. “Why can’t it be both?”
“Sometimes you scare me, woman.”
“Keep that in mind any time you find your eye wandering.”
John gives her a gentle smile and wraps his free arm around her waist. “You’re the only one for me and you know it.”
“Damn straight,” she mutters as he nuzzles her nose with his. “So, be honest, do you think Mark was inside finishing up a booty call with the nanny when the fire broke out?”
John walks to the back door and looks out as he sips his coffee. “Hard to say.” He tosses a grin over his shoulder. “See what I did there?”
Marcy rolls her eyes and dries the last of the plates from the dishwasher before putting them away. Her mind is still spinning with theories. “Let’s say Mark did this before. Maybe more than once, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on just one. So say he gets a mistress, promises her the moon, then chickens out and dumps her. Would that be enough to make someone go to these lengths for revenge?”
“You know what they say, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’.”
“True, but surely a mistress would have to accept, at least to some degree, that the other woman might win out. I mean, he loved Jill enough to marry her in the first place. Surely another woman would realize that’s some serious competition.”
“Depends on how well he plays that game, I guess. Some men can be very effective bargainers.”
Marcy stops and looks back at her husband. “Do you think you could convince another woman that she means more to you than the woman you married? Than the mother of your child?”
John seesaws his head. “Probably. It would depend a lot on the woman, too.”
“So the more gullible, the more effective?”
“Yeah. I think that goes without saying.”
Marcy turns back to the sink, absently drying her hands on the towel. Her eyes stare unseeingly out the window, toward the burnt frame in the neighbor’s yard.
“In that case, we should assume she’s young. Young and naïve. Right?”
“Likely.”
“But then would someone that age be capable of this? I mean, to stalk someone and do these sorts of things takes a lot of planning and a very level head. I would think maturity, too. The letters, no, and the mailbox, no, but burning down a swing set without being seen or getting caught? That’s quite a feat. Don’t you think?”
“It is. She may have put something in place earlier and then somehow set it to go off last night.”
“The arson investigator would find that, though, right?”
“I would think.”
“But even if they figure out the mechanism, even if they figure out how it was done, if she isn’t a suspect and they can’t trace it to her, she’d still get away with it.”
“Right. And if this happened in another state, where they lived before moving here, it would make her an even less likely suspect.”
“You really think this could be a jilted lover?”
“I didn’t say that. I said it’s possible. All of it’s possible. But part of me still believes that the offense would have to be much worse to warrant this kind of behavior.”
“Explain yourself, Dr. Phil.”
John tosses Marcy a withering look over the Dr. Phil comment, but doesn’t address it. “Just a young woman who got dumped, to me, isn’t as plausible. But what if she got pregnant? Or what if they’d already taken several steps toward a future? What if they’d bought a house together or she was wealthy and he took money from her? In reality, I think it would have to be something more to set a woman on a revenge path this elaborate. And even then, I’m not sure she would go to these lengths. In my mind, it would have to be bad. Like, really bad.”
“Bad, like...” Marcy’s eyes round. “What if he raped her? Or what if he abused her somehow? That would make more sense, wouldn’t it?”
John’s expression turns to one of unease—his brows drawing together, low over his eyes, and his lips thinning into a straight line. “That kind of hatred... It can cause people to do crazy things. Irrational things. Dangerous things.”
“Oh, God,” Marcy whispers, a sick feeling washing through her gut. “People…they’re monsters.”
“I think we’re all capable of the worst kinds of crimes if the stimulus is bad enough.”
Marcy meets John’s eyes and they stare at one another for a few seconds in silence, digesting the meaning of it all.
The slam of a door, loud enough to be heard inside, brings their attention to the Halperns’ side door. It’s closed and no one can be seen through the open curtains that cover the glass half of the panel.
“You know, I didn’t get the mail yesterday. I was too distracted with our plan and with preparations. Why don’t you run out and grab it?”
John nods in agreement, winking at his wife in appreciation of her quick mind. “I’ll do that right now.”
Marcy follows her husband to the front door, watches him open it. Waits as he walks to the box. She can see his head turn periodically to the right, casually glancing at the house beside theirs. A screech of tires causes Marcy to jump. She opens the storm door and leans out just as Mark Halpern’s silver car finishes its turnaround in the driveway and races toward the top.
She sees John wave, and Mark pauses long enough to roll down his window and speak to John. Marcy strains to hear what’s being said, but she can’t make it out. She doesn’t want to be too obvious by going outside; clearly Mark is in a hurry. So she waits, not very patiently, for Mark to speed off and John to make it back down to the house.
She’s holding the door open for him when he steps onto the front porch. “What was that all about?”
John steps inside and closes the wooden door, snapping the lock shut. “Mark is on his way to the hospital. Jill was in a car accident.”
Marcy’s hands fly to her mouth on a gasp. “Good God, is she okay?”
“He thinks so. I asked him if there was anything we could do. He said he’d call if there was.”
“What happened? Did he say?”
John’s expression sends a shiver of apprehension jittering through Marcy. “Her brakes went out.”
Marcy’s skeptical. “Hmmm. Just like that?”
John nods. “Just like that.”
“That’s…that’s quite the coincidence.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
Marcy pauses, searching her husband’s eyes before she asks tentatively, “You think the lines were cut?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out, that’s for sure.”
Marcy exhales, shaking her head. “What the hell have they gotten themselves into?”