“Your mother murdered a woman once,” Matt said one night over dinner. It was a Saturday night and they’d had a good day together, lingering over breakfast and reading the paper over their coffee, but then this. A surprise waiting for her like a trap hidden in tall grass. “Then she shot a man. Framed him for murder.”
He was sitting at the head of the table, she was at the foot. The girls, both home from college for a long weekend, sitting between them, looking back and forth between their parents as if they were watching a tennis match.
“Yes, it’s quite a story,” she said, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a napkin and standing. “But what’s more interesting is when I caught your father in bed with another woman. Matt, I’m sure the girls are dying to hear that one.”
He shot her a sour look. More than twenty years of this, baiting each other, and it was only the girls who kept them from actually killing each other. Matt was a terrible husband but a good father, and as long as the girls were around they’d managed to keep civil. But soon enough they’d be both be back at college, and then what? It wouldn’t be an empty nest—the nest would explode into flames. Fire in the hole.
Marie went to the kitchen then and came back with chocolate pudding dotted with candied violets. She went around the table and set down the bowls, ending at Matt.
“I made this one special for you,” she whispered to him. “Added in a little extra something. Do you remember how much the cat enjoyed it?”
Matt’s face had gone pale, and he hadn’t taken a single bite. Later, Marie had laughed and eaten every bite of it in front of him.