Did I ever tell you that I imagined killing him? Your husband? Oh yes, so many times. When it was at its deepest and worst, the sickness of love made me want to be rid of him for all time and eternity. I planned his death, a dozen times, in various ways and done so successfully by me that even you believed that the car wreck or the mugging or hanging was a suicide or mistake or a simple twist of fate. And life goes on and I was suddenly with you always, at your side and we made a new life for ourselves in another state or country or on an island somewhere and the last that anyone ever saw of us was running, hand in hand, down the beach and off into that sunset people are always talking about. Yes. Was I wrong to think that? At the time I didn’t feel I was, it felt justified by what you said about him, about your life together. Just phrases, really, a little clue tossed off now and again over a meal at A & W, some little comment that made me believe he didn’t appreciate you, that he didn’t want children with you or to grow old with you or anything any more, that you were trapped and alone and I was your savior, me, that only I could rescue you from the coal mine of a life that your marriage had become. Some white guy from home, a good family and a bad mistake is what you called it and I took it to heart, believed that his inability to father a child was of his own making rather than biology, that he was withholding from you and cold and distant and had even laid a finger—or more than that, a hand one time—on your sweet face that I had come to adore and would protect with my life. Did you know that at the time, that I would’ve done even that, died for you? Of course you did. Sixteen-year-olds can hide nothing. I was like some puppy chasing after you, big paws and tongue and silly and sweet. But you didn’t want those things, did you? No, not all of them. Just one. One thing from me and when you had it you left so quickly, with such a fluttering of your wings that I was dazed and dazzled and I believed your whispers. I watched you drive away, even helped you pack your garage, if you can remember that, helped your husband pack up things into a U-Haul and swept it out and washed it down before you left. You paid me twenty dollars there in front of him, smiled at me like we’d never met and off I trotted, back home to wait for a call that never came and an address that was never, not ever, no, never sent.

And now you have your child, that thing you always said would make your life complete. Your husband, too, he got swept up in your miracle and never asked for a blood test that would tell him the horrid truth about you and your deeds. Your missteps. Your tiny plots. Instead you are a happy family living here, where I have found you and have now come to ask for something in return. Of course I have, don’t look so surprised, my dear, for there is always a price to pay for things like this, when you have done what you have done and now the time has come.