Chapter 9 Katie Morrow
Katie Morrow
“Well now, they’ve been married two years, because our son had just been born when Katie moved in.
I remember when I first saw the moving truck, I thought that maybe Mark was finally leaving, which made sense given that’s an awfully big house for one person.
But then tiny little Katie hopped out, with a rock on her finger I could see from my house.
And later that day she came over and introduced herself and brought me a beautiful purple orchid plant. She’s a sweet girl. Naive, but sweet.”
Once the police left, Katie hid the mystery woman’s thong and then completed her morning routine. She hesitated, glancing at the date on her phone, then grabbed a pregnancy test from the bottom drawer.
Crouching over the toilet, she counted out loud as she peed on the small white stick.
Her urine stream was strong, a result of three empty glass bottles that were now on the drying rack in the kitchen.
Hopefully, the sample wouldn’t be diluted.
In high school, she and her friends had chugged water for two hours before a drug test, frantic to hide the presence of marijuana in their results.
It had worked then, so what if the similar process hid the hCG hormone that indicated a little baby, one with Mark’s cute nose and her blue eyes?
The doctor had assured her it wouldn’t, but she still worried over the pale-yellow color of the toilet water.
Placing the stick on top of the toilet stand, she pulled up her underwear and the romper, putting it back into place.
After entering the bathroom, she washed her hands with the black currant hand soap Mark loved, then set the timer on her phone for two and a half minutes.
She decided, as she opened the middle drawer beside her sink and withdrew the boar-bristle brush, that no matter what the test said, she wouldn’t tell Mark.
There was too much uncertainty prior to three months.
That was what the ob-gyn had said last time, and look—he had been right.
No point in letting Mark down, not before knowing for sure.
She bent over and ran the brush through her hair, from back to front, her movements brisk.
After a dozen strokes, she straightened, flipping her head over and giving the strands a quick pat down.
The hairdresser had outdone herself with this last session.
Katie’s hair was the perfect shade between blond and white, with enough seemingly natural variation to add depth.
She turned her head to the left and the right, critically examining her makeup.
Glancing down at the timer—fifty-seven seconds left—she opened the second drawer, revealing the neat rows of powders, glosses, and brushes.
She removed a powder and brush and spent the final minute doing a quick touch-up.
She was applying a fresh coat of clear gloss on her lips when the timer went off.
It took two tries to get the applicator back in the tube. Damn her shaking hands.
Turning off the timer, she methodically returned everything to its place.
It didn’t really matter if the pregnancy test was negative; there would be another month, then another.
All they had was time. After all, Katie was only twenty-six.
It wasn’t like Willow. Willow had been thirty-one and uninterested in kids.
Mark liked to joke that it would have taken him ten more years to talk her into kids, and she would have yielded only when it would have been conveniently too late.
Underneath the sink was the cleaning spray, and she gave the white marble a few quick squirts and wiped down the area. Glancing over the long expanse, she decided to clean it all the way down to Mark’s sink. It wasn’t until that task was finished that she returned to the water closet.
Her mother had found the concept of a tiny closet for a toilet to be ridiculous, but that was what life was like in this tax bracket. Excess upon excess. This bathroom had two—one for Mark and one for Katie. How else would an architect fill up six thousand square feet with only four bedrooms?
She picked up the test quickly, before she found another reason not to do it. Taking a deep breath, she looked at the small display screen.