Someone Else’s Husband

Prologue

Getting away with it.

That’s what people call it. Because when you do something terrible, it follows you. Forever. Even when no one ever catches you, blames you, finds out—there really is no escaping the truth.

Maybe that’s because you never imagined that you’d be capable of such a thing. That kind of violence. Look, even now, how mealy-mouthed you are about it. That kind of violence. So polite.

But you murdered someone in cold blood. There’s no getting around that fact.

Premeditated? No. That’s part of the story, too. But when you let yourself remember that night, you feel the rage coursing through your body, so hot it could have melted your skin. It was an act born from pure fury. So, no malice aforethought. But hardly an accident, either.

Justified? You’re not even sure what that word means anymore.

You are far from the only person to blame, though. There were other people involved, the bloodshed an inevitable result of too many strong feelings at cross-purposes. Of love—in the wrong forms at forbidden moments. A collision course of fates.

And so you can distance yourself from each step that led up to the exact moment of violence, but not the moment itself. Not your part in getting there, either. Certainly, you had a role.

It could have ended so differently, too. But you were reckless. You all were, and now you’ve paid the price.

It’s easy to forget that we are all just animals in the end, grunting and huffing and struggling to survive. It’s our base instincts that get us in trouble. Lust, rage, love, jealousy—not reason. Not rational thought.

So much blood, though, my God. You never once thought about what it would be like to kill someone, except abstractly.

The way everyone does. Could I do something like that if I had to?

To save my own life? To protect someone I loved?

To guard what was mine? But who really considers the details?

How hot the blood will be on your hands, how strange it feels when it sprays your face.

That it will spray in the first place. How it will look on the white bathroom tile after you’ve smeared it with a rag, because right after it happens, before the horror has fully sunk in, you will be thinking you can clean up the mess.

You will be thinking you can make the whole thing go away.

When you find you cannot, you run. From it, from yourself. Maybe you land somewhere on the far end of the world. Sparkling canals on one side, a colorful city on the other. A safe haven, a hiding place. Freedom.

But then you realize: You may have gotten away, but you’re still with it.

Or, rather, it’s still with you. Wherever you go, it’ll be there, living inside of you.

Forever. Even now, sitting here in the warm spring sun, your eyes fixed on so much beauty, the horror of that night still sits in your chest. Some nights, as you lie alone in the dark, you can almost feel it beating like a second heart, nestled right up next to your own.