Chapter 71
When David Batcher’s absence was finally noticed, the news swept over Crestmore like a fever.
It was all everyone talked about, the speculations as varied as the emotions around it.
Some were giddy at the idea, some cynical, some sad.
Sara Batcher, who Willow watched as closely as possible, was blank.
She walked into events with a mask on, her features quiet, her voice scratchy, her head still high, despite what everyone was saying about her.
There was a prevalent opinion that she and her yoga instructor had conspired to kill the man.
Willow had fed the rumor mill, telling Chelsea Kuntic that she had seen Sara and the man having drinks at a small martini bar in Marin County and that they’d been all over each other.
There were a few threads of conversation about a possible gambling addiction, and one that he’d run off to the Caymans with enough cash to set up a new life.
A month after David died, Mark wanted to mess around.
He pushed her buttons in every way he could, but she didn’t take the bait.
He begged her to tie him down, to punish him for his part, to do something—but she couldn’t.
Whenever she felt the faintest surge of pleasure, her body shut down at the realization.
She became colder and colder, and he grew needier and needier.
She moved into the guest room, and Mark started to sleep on the couch.
The more she withdrew, the more he clung to her.
She started to run each night on the course, pushing her body harder and harder in an attempt to make herself miserable. With each run, she stopped at the lake on the sixth hole and stared out at the smooth water, at the ripples exposed by the moonlight, certain that David would bob to the surface.
She did a juice fast for eleven days. Started to meditate. Stopped showering and let her armpit hair grow out. Her husband started to work from home and was checking on her constantly. He was a weighted blanket of suffocation, and the crueler she got, the more he wanted.
She met with a divorce attorney and had him structure a simple settlement, one that gave her enough funds to live comfortably while letting Mark retain the house and the bulk of their assets.
She presented it to him after dinner, on a night when he was in an especially amiable mood.
That night, he took enough pills to kill himself.
He clung to her as he vomited and dry heaved onto the granite kitchen floors.
Her psychiatrist told her that it was a call for attention and that as long as she was present, he would act out until she reacted.
The next night, on her run, she considered continuing on.
Pulling a Forrest Gump and running until the road gave out.
She could find a bus station. Convince someone to buy her a ticket.
Make it all the way to the East Coast, somewhere Mark would never find her. Key West—she’d heard that it was nice.
Her watch pinged and she looked down at it to see a text from him.
Coming Back Soon?
The following week, she had the attorney revise the divorce settlement into a one-page agreement that didn’t require any follow-up transactions or transfers.
It had him retaining all their assets and giving the attorney power-of-attorney to transfer any of her ownership to Mark.
It divested her of the marriage and their communal property and waived any right to spousal support.
She purchased a car with cash from their safe and parked it in the neighborhood’s visitor lot.
She signed the settlement in front of a notary and, that night, slipped three lorazepams into Mark’s drink.
Once he passed out, she packed two bags, emptied the rest of the cash out of their safe, and left the paperwork and her cell phone on the dining room table with a note telling him that she was done and for him to sign the papers and return them to her attorney’s office.
She walked to the visitors’ parking lot and left.
She drove all night and stopped the following day in Oklahoma, where she pawned her four-carat wedding ring, one of her watches, and a pair of diamond earrings.
And just like that, Willow Morrow was gone.