“Tess sent these for your birthday.”
I squint. “But my birthday isn’t until January first.”
“That’s not what we told Tess,” Daphne explains.
“Why not?” I ask.
“You never said,” she answers with a shrug in her voice.
And when I glance over at her for clarification, she’s already on her phone. I didn’t see her pull it out of the bag she threw in the back seat when she got into the car. But it magically appeared in her hand in some feat of wizardry that only teenagers have access to.
I try again as I head toward the school parking lot’s exit. “Hey, Daph, did I have a tattoo? Like a really ugly tattoo that people talked about?”
Daphne shrugs. “Doesn’t sound like you.”
No, it doesn’t. Maybe Melinka was mis-remembering. That happens to people—even those who haven’t been hit by a car and thrown ten feet.
“Okay,” I say, pulling out of the school parking lot. “Homework at home or homework at the food bank?”
“Homework at the shelter,” she answers without looking up from her phone. “The food bank’s every other Wednesday.”
The shelter it is.
Unlike Galen, who probably won’t be home until right before our 8 pm dinner with Desmond Keane and his wife, I pull up to our ultramodern stone and wood mansion by 4 pm.
It wasn’t much of a day, but somehow, I’m exhausted.
And hungry. I always skip lunch since I have to leave work early to pick up Daphne from school.
I’m also not quite ready to go into our 8,000-square-foot house that my husband doesn’t want to start filling up with children just yet because he’s too scared to fuck his fragile amnesiac wife.
So, I open the tin of cookies. Seems as good a meal as any to tide me over until dinner. I’m beginning to see why Tess calls her tins “eating your feelings” gifts.
But I stop short of reaching for the cookies when I see the note taped to the lid. A birthday card with the words “BURN AFTER READING” written across it.
I frown. Is this a Tess thing? She can be super political about everything from imperialism to the pink tax. And you don’t even want to see her go off on single-use plastic.
Still, the title’s intriguing enough for me to hold off on housing her oatmeal-cranberry cookies long enough to read it.
Are you alone? Don’t read this unless you’re alone.
That’s the first line of the card, as opposed to Happy Birthday. I glance to both sides. What the…?
But hey, I am alone, so I keep on reading.
I’m sorry to alarm you, but I had to do it this way. I have reason to believe your phone and email are being monitored. And I think he might be monitoring us too.
My stomach sinks. Oh no…
Has Tess crossed that line between super passionate and fanatical conspiracy theorist? As if to answer my question, she says…
I know this sounds crazy. That’s why I took my time gathering what little information I could on the subject of your husband.
But I have reason to believe Galen Fairgood might be a former motorcycle gang president who went by the name of Hades. I don’t think he’s your real husband. And if he is, I think you might have been hiding from him.
I think that’s why you were living alone at the time of your accident. His people came to clear out your apartment after he took you home from the hospital.
But they didn’t get your shoebox of personal items. Long story about how I came to have it. But there’s a name in there. Someone I think you need to hunt down.
