September 3, 1995
Madison, Wisconsin
Her life would be so much easier if she’d never gotten married.
It was a terrible thing to think, but the truth is never nice. That’s something her mother always said, that there are pretty lies and ugly truths. And the truth is that her life would be easier without Matt. Oh, she loved him, she couldn’t deny that. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Love’s got teeth, it’s got claws, and once it hitches you to a person it’s so tough to rip yourself free. Marriage, she thought, might just be a crock of shit.
And while she might complain about her husband, and sometimes she actively hated him, he was still better than every other man she’d ever dated. And maybe that was love. The body’s chemical reaction to finding a person who irritates you less than everyone else.
Janice thought all these things even though it had only been a year since she walked down the long linoleum-floored hallway of the Windsor Creek Community Rec Center, clutching a thin handful of wilted roses as she entered the small, windowless activity room they’d rented for two hours. Janice’s mother was the only one who took pictures of the wedding, even though she’d had her reservations about the whole thing, said she didn’t trust Matt, he didn’t seem like a good guy, but she’d still snapped pics on one of those disposable cameras you could buy at the drugstore and drop off to be developed once they’re all used up. Only one picture came out good enough to frame. In it, Matt and Janice are standing together, holding hands, and there are a few signs taped up on the wall behind them—notices about kids at the pool needing to be accompanied by an adult and wiping down the exercise equipment after use—and a cheap office clock, the hands stuck at 12:05 for the rest of eternity. Janice is looking at Matt in the photo, her veil puffing out around her shoulders like a cloud, and she’s smiling. Happy. Matt’s smiling, too, but he’s not looking at his bride. His face is turned away from her, his eyes are almost closed, as if she isn’t there at all.
A handful of people had attended the ceremony, and it didn’t last long since the pastor had a funeral booked right after and had to leave, and when Janice had heard that she’d almost canceled the whole thing. She thought it was a bad omen to have the pastor marry them and then rush off to bury someone else, but they’d already put a nonrefundable deposit down on the room and had paid for the sheet cake from Aldi, and she couldn’t walk away from that kind of money. And a year after her wedding, when her mouth is full of blood and her eyes are burning from the gasoline fumes and she can’t stop shaking from the pain, Janice will remember the old saying—money makes the world go round—and she’ll think that if she’d only been able to wash her hands of that lousy two hundred dollars her whole life would’ve been so much different.
You see, just about one year into her marriage to Matthew Evans and less than twelve hours from this moment, Janice will be dead.