Chapter 28 Katie Morrow
Katie Morrow
“I married Katie because she was easy. Easy and calm. Being married to Willow was like being in a tornado. You didn’t know when you were heading up in the air or when you were crashing to the ground.
It wasn’t all bad. To be honest, I miss the unpredictability and the stress.
Stress is a good distraction, and I need that sometimes. ”
This is not happening. Katie lay on the bigger couch in the living room and tried to breathe in through her nose and out of her mouth. The risk of a panic attack, which had been welling in her chest in the kitchen, had receded slightly but didn’t go away completely.
In the kitchen, Mark’s first wife happily shut cabinet doors, clinked glasses, and ran the sink.
This is not happening. Willow had been gone for five years.
Presumed dead—at least, that was what almost everyone thought.
Katie had laughed off the rumors, but even she had suspected that outcome.
No one just dropped off the grid overnight.
Why would you? If Willow had wanted a divorce—and according to everyone (including her divorce petition), she had—why hadn’t she gone the normal route?
Move out and stay cordial, or at least in contact, while the attorneys did their thing?
Instead, she had disappeared in the middle of the night, never to be seen again.
Hell, Mark had been investigated! He’d lost clients as a result of the rumors.
And apparently, all the while, Willow had been just fine. Traveling the country and house-sitting. Healthy as could be, not a scratch on her.
It was bullshit. Almost as much bullshit as the idea that Willow was going to stay with them. That was ludicrous. Ex-wives didn’t stay in the houses of their ex-husbands. Especially not when there was a new wife in play. It was . . . disrespectful. Very disrespectful.
And it was worse because she’d just assumed.
If she had asked, then maybe Katie would have said yes.
It would have been rude not to say yes, and then at least it would have been, sort of, Katie’s decision.
Instead, Willow had dictated that she was staying here and also which room she was staying in.
She was helping herself to their kitchen, acting like she still owned the place, and giving Katie that knowing look like she had all the answers and Katie was still catching up.
Mark was going to have some serious explaining to do. With all the speculation about Willow, not just in the neighborhood but also in Katie’s mind, he had never—never—bothered to mention that he could just call Willow up whenever he wanted to and see how she was.
Her breath hitched at the awareness that he probably had called her.
Maybe often. Maybe her husband talked to Willow every Thursday night, when Katie was with her meditation group.
Maybe Willow called him on his birthday, and he on hers, and they giggled about their day and their dreams and memories of the past.
Maybe he complained about her to Willow. Had he told her about the miscarriage? About their fight in Fiji? About how, on the night before their wedding, he had called it off, only for her to beg him into staying?
Tears pricked the edges of her eyes, and she wiped them away as she heard the clatter of ice in one of their crystal glasses.
Willow swept in the room and sank into the chair beside the fireplace.
“God, I love this room. You know, when we bought it, you couldn’t even see the course?
I had them trim down all of those bushes so you could see the green.
” She drummed her hands on the arms of the chair.
“And I like this chair . . . I would have gone with leather, though. You know Marky has an issue with any kind of animal hair. He’d break out in hives if he sat in this thing. ”
Marky. That nickname definitely didn’t fit Mark, or sit well with Katie. “He’s fine with it. Doesn’t bother him.” He wasn’t fine with it. He’d sat in it just once, and his forearms popped a red rash all over. He’d had to take Benadryl for a week and apply a steroid cream.
“Oh-kay,” Willow said in a singsong voice that indicated that it definitely wasn’t okay and that she had some sort of crystal ball that showed exactly what he’d gone through.
Maybe they’d discussed that in their phone calls, which Katie’s paranoia had now decided were monthly at best and daily at worst. The rash had probably had its own dedicated place on his work calendar, the chat scheduled by Miriam, his assistant, who had always gushed over Willow and “what a woman” she had been.
Willow this and Willow that. It had been excusable only because Katie had thought that Willow was dead, and everyone spoke kindly of the dead.
But now Willow wasn’t dead, and Miriam had probably known that this entire time.
Maybe she sent money to Willow, the same way that she paid off Katie’s credit cards each month, or paid their property taxes and wired funds for the new car Katie had bought last year.
It had always been glorious, having ready access to what seemed to be an unlimited amount of cash.
But maybe Katie hadn’t been the only one making dips into the coffers.
Maybe this bitch, who was currently snuggling into the mohair armchair like she was preparing for a nap, had been financing her new life with their future retirement funds.
The baby’s college fund. The renovation to the outdoor kitchen, which Mark had suggested they postpone till next year .
. . Katie closed her eyes and willed the nausea to subside.
Mark would be home soon, and then he could answer all these questions. She was being paranoid. Her teachers had always said she had an overactive imagination, and this was it, going crazy. That’s all this was. Maybe.
She thought of the thong, tucked in his jacket pocket, and a new, horrible thought occurred to her.
Maybe it hadn’t just been phone calls since Willow disappeared.
Maybe it had been more.