The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives

Two Days Missing

The weather was fine the day you took me.

The sun—high and marbled in the sky—streamed in through the windows and fell in warm pools on the floor.

I could tell there was someone close by, my animal senses alert to an intruder, and the breath caught in my throat as I waited.

Time seemed to stretch out slowly then as I turned, held still, a fly trapped in amber.

I could not speak, could not breathe, first struck not by the fact that you were there but by how the light cast your face in the cold, hard contours of a statue.

I had mere seconds to consider whether I had time to run, and then it hit.

There was only sensation. Something blunt.

A searing pain. My mind flooded with black.