over our white linoleum. I reached for the gun inside my coat with a trembling hand. I could only pray that my wife wasn’t the source of the…
I couldn’t finish the thought. I knelt by the scarlet pool. It was dark, a spilled Merlot. I guessed by temperature that it’d been on the floor for at least an hour.
“Maria!?” I called out.
I inhaled the air in the kitchen. What had happened in the last hour?
All I could smell was my own breath—the faint trace of beer. There was nothing else to know in this kitchen.
“Maria!?” I let loose.
I stood up and ran from room to room. The den. The guest bathroom. The guest bedroom. No answer. I banged open every random door I could find. The closet. The laundry room. The hallway cupboards. I waded through piles of folded linen, books strewn, broken paintings, broken mirrors. A storm had come through this place. My gun’s muzzle led the way.
I was ready to blast anything that moved until I found Updike—my dog. He was curled up, ears flattened, tail rigid, shivering with fear.
“Here, li’l man,” I called to him. “Good? Where’s your mom?”
Whoever had come through here must’ve been a tornado of violence. Updike was now a cowering wreck. Part corgi, part Lab, part Jack Russell—rarely does this hyphenated beast back down. Yet he stayed glued to the wall, quivering, looking like he’d seen a ghost, like he was still seeing one.
“Maria Amelia Ryan!” I yelled.
I took a step back from Updike. Poor guy—he looked eternally relieved when I retreated.
I don’t know why I checked the bedroom last. I opened the door and there she was. My wife. Cut in half.
Chapter 13
There was blood across the majority of the bed. There was spattering on the walls, even on our ceiling fan.
“Baby?” I squished the nearly inaudible word from my empty lungs.
There she was.
I grabbed her outstretched hand, the last remaining body part that was clean. A sliver of moonlight found its way through our window. With my horror was a tinge of fear.
I listened for breathing. Hers. Mine. The dog’s. Was her killer here? I heard nothing, my gun aimed toward the closet. If anything burst out of those doors, I’d bury every bullet I owned in it.
But nothing would come that night.
“Baby, we have to get up,” I whispered to her rigid body.
I gathered the front half of her, staring at her face, looking for a greeting, a nod of approval—that what I was about to do needed to be done.
“Babe?”
I carried her torso down to the basement.
“This is just for now, okay?”
In the basement, we have a Kolpak 1010, one of the first walk-in freezers available for installation in a residential home. No, she didn’t get a Whole Foods employee discount. What she did get was the most consistent cooling flow professionally feasible. I opened the door without setting her body down, crouching awkwardly to get my left hand on the knob. She loved this freezer. It contained about forty pounds of top sirloin, thirty pounds of pork, thirty pounds of salmon, and now its owner.
As I left her resting, I don’t know how I was able to think with such merciless objectivity, but I knew it was imperative to avoid calling the cops.
Cops would occupy my time. Contain me. They would try to prevent me from doing what I had to do next. I went upstairs and grabbed my shotgun. I grabbed a dozen shells. I grabbed my dog and his leash. Sadness was giving way to a new feeling, a very important one. The French word is spelled very similarly to its English translation. Revenche.
Chapter 14
I drove to the one place I knew I’d find none of the answers I needed and even less of the satisfaction I craved. Shotgun in my lap, I drove to Milt’s home.
Milt would resist my inquiries, but I had nowhere else to go. My fingers were trembling on the steering wheel. I was taking deep breaths to fend off a panic attack. I screeched to a halt and stormed out of the car, pulling my dog’s leash. Shotgun in my right hand, Cerberus in the other. Revenche. Revenge.
“Milt!” I yelled toward the house as I started dashing up his steps. “Milton!”
He opened the door and I instantly bashed him in the stomach with the back of my weapon.
“Ooooph!” said his diaphragm.
He tumbled onto his back while my momentum took me right into his house. I donkey-kicked the front door shut behind