The Crash

Chapter 53

53

POLLY

Hank has barely said two words to me the entire night.

He’s upset about what’s going on. He’s upset that I threatened to kill myself if he tried to get Tegan to the hospital. He doesn’t know exactly what I’m planning, but it’s nothing he wants to be part of. Unfortunately, that’s not how marriage works.

He’s already lying in bed when I finish up in the kitchen and come to join him. I get undressed and crawl under the blankets next to him. I expect him to lean in and give me a kiss like he has every other night when we’ve gone to sleep together. But he doesn’t. He just lies there, staring at the ceiling.

“Hank?” I say.

He doesn’t answer.

“Hank,” I say again. “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t turn to look at me. “There’s a woman imprisoned in our basement. Do you think I’m okay?”

“I told you not to worry about it. We’re going to let her go eventually. This will be fine.”

“How will it be fine?” He sits up now, propping himself up on his elbow. “Explain it to me.”

“I told you, I’m helping her. She’s grateful.”

“Don’t lie to me, Polly.” His face is red now. “She stabbed you with a fork. She threw that drink—God knows what was in it—all over you. She’s not grateful.”

“Just trust me. It will be fine.”

“You keep saying that.” This time, the crease between his eyebrows goes all the way up his forehead. “But here’s the thing. I keep thinking about this over and over. And every time I think about it, I can’t think of a way for this to end without us going to jail unless…”

“Hank?”

In the moonlight, his eyes look glassy. “Unless we kill her.” His voice breaks. “And, Polly, I don’t want to kill her.”

“Hank…”

“That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it?” His voice is shaking now. “That’s what you were thinking all along. You get rid of her, and then you take the baby.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m so stupid.”

“You got it wrong, Hank.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Well…” I shift on the mattress, which creaks under my weight. “Say we did kill her…”

“Polly!”

“Just, like, hypothetically…”

“No. No .” He shakes his head firmly. “Not even hypothetically. This is not on the table, Polly. I mean it.”

“She’s all alone, Hank,” I tell him. “She told me so. She doesn’t even know who that child’s father is. She’s been drinking whiskey from a flask in her purse. Do you think she’s fit to be a mother?”

“That’s not for us to decide.”

“And nobody is even going to care that much if she disappears.” Well, maybe her brother. I’m not sure if I believed her when she said they barely had contact, considering how upset he seemed. But I’m sure he will move on eventually. “Nobody would care if she vanished off the face of the earth.”

“ I would care.”

I’m so frustrated with him, I could scream. Tegan said repeatedly that she didn’t want to be a mother, that this was all unplanned. And when she told me nobody would miss her if she was gone, it was like she was giving us permission to…well, you know. And it would be so easy to get rid of her. I bet she’ll weigh practically nothing once the baby is out of her.

I never imagined Hank would be my biggest barrier. Doesn’t he understand that this is our opportunity to get everything we ever wanted?

“You have to trust me on this,” I say. “Can you please just trust me for once?”

I look at his face in the shadows. He used to trust me. Before The Incident happened, I was at the top of my game. Hank was proud of the fact that his wife was a nurse at the hospital—he used to brag about it to anyone who would listen. And if he had so much as a paper cut, he would bring it to me. What should I do, Nurse Polly?

He doesn’t feel that way about me anymore. Ever since that day, he thinks I’m emotionally fragile. I’m not sure he’ll ever trust me again.

“If you take her away,” I say, “I’ll do it. I’ll kill myself. I swear.”

“Yes,” he says tightly. “You told me.”

We’re both quiet, lying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling.

“Polly,” he says in a low voice, “you can’t hurt that woman.”

“I won’t.”

He rolls his head to look at me. “I mean it. I don’t want you to lay a finger on her.”

The deep groove between my husband’s eyebrows has become a crater. He’s really upset, and the only way to end this discussion is to tell him what he wants to hear.

“I understand, Hank,” I say. “I won’t hurt her.”

If it helps him to sleep at night to get that reassurance, I’ll give it to him. But in the end, I’m doing this for him. For us . He knows it, and he’ll never go behind my back. I’m all Hank’s got, and he would never do that to me. Never. He’s too scared of losing me.

He knows how this will end. And when it comes down to it, I bet he’ll help me get rid of the body too.

Soon our family will be complete, just as my mother foretold.