Odilie went down to the second floor, waiting for the sound of that heavy office door’s hinges being pulled open for the evening. After popping an antihistamine to take the edge off—she couldn’t risk any real sleeping pill while pregnant—she just sat in the darkness and stared, seeing things in the dimness, outlines of the furniture dancing into different shapes before her eyes. She had no diversion; everything seemed unreal. She typed in her passcode, Vera’s birthday, but even the phone didn’t distract her. It seemed, instead, like a strange appendage strapped to her hand, jarringly loud and bright.

She was so poised for the sound of the office door’s hinges, that every little scuffle downstairs was an explosion in her ears. Every creak he made around the kitchen amplified as he plated his chef-prepared meal, neatly tucked away in the fridge like a bullet in an ammo can.

And then, when the dancing fuzzy lines in the dark seemed to be coming nearer and nearer, finally, finally, she heard the door being pulled open, a tremor resonating throughout the house.

But sitting there, all that waiting, it made her impatient. She wanted to quicken the job. Even though it hadn’t been a worry previously, why risk Tom figuring out, from the yellow flames or the dizzying effect of the gas, what she was up to and wandering out of the office before the job was done?

She left her phone on the couch, went upstairs to the bedroom and pocketed the Ambien sitting on Tom’s night table. Then she went downstairs, poured a glass of Stag’s Leap pinot noir, watching it swirl into the bulbous glass Tom had insisted on buying. With the bottom of Tom’s iPhone, which he had left in the kitchen, she crushed a pill, the powder almost camouflaged by the honed granite island. The powder sank to the bottom of the wine and she stirred it deftly until all those granules were floating seamlessly, invisibly, in the red liquid.

With the wineglass in hand, she walked to the office, almost pirouetted, in fact, as much as she could with her growing belly, her body loose and languorous from the antihistamine coursing through it, her mind already relishing the dulling, foggy effects of the pill. “Brought you some wine,” she sang out as she opened the door, unaware that, behind her, the wobbly bar lock, the only thing that kept the door from locking since Tom broke the handle, had retracted into its casing as she stepped into the room.

But he was already sprawled facedown in a pile of papers, a blueprint, it looked like, for a horse enclosure. Like the one from the night they first met, those iridescent, spellbinding ponies. Unconscious already, dying, shallow breath escaping his slack, supple mouth. She smiled.

Then she heard the door click shut behind her.

EPILOGUE

I have a date tonight.