The Housewife Assassin's Handbook (5 page)

“What? But my kids should be able to mourn their father! I can’t keep this from them!”

“I know it’s a lot to ask, believe me. But it might help us to apprehend them.”

“How do you figure?”

“For whatever reason, if they think he got away–if they think that he’s still alive and that he may reach out to you–”

“You want to use the kids and me as decoys?” I slapped his hand off me. “Boy, Ryan, you’ve got some nerve!”

“I know how it sounds. But still–” He looked me straight in the eye. “–wouldn’t you like to see us get the guys who did this to Carl?”

“Of course I would.” If anything could bring a smile to my lips, it was that thought. “In fact, I’d kill them myself if I could.”

“Carl once told me that you handle a gun almost as good as he does. Did.” That slip of his tongue had him examining his toes in embarrassment.

“Better. But I never let Carl know that. I thought it might have crushed his ego. It was the only secret I ever kept from him. Seems that he one-upped me pretty good, doesn’t it?” I brushed away a tear.

No more tears. At least, not in public. Because Carl wasn’t dead officially. He was just … gone. “Okay, Ryan. I’ll go along with your little charade.”

“Good.” He averted his eyes as I led my meowing newborn to my breast. His news had stripped me bare of any feelings whatsoever, let alone any modesty. “For the time being, Carl will still be on Acme’s payroll. That way, if there is a mole inside Acme, it will validate the theory that he’s still alive somewhere.”

As if his paycheck, or even Carl’s full death benefits, for that matter, could compensate for the loss of the love of my life.

“And I assume you’re talking about round-the-clock surveillance on us, even when we’re out of the house?”

He nodded. “The Quorum is a top priority with us.” Then, as an afterthought, “As are you and your family, of course.”

Yeah, right, sure. He had all the conviction of a car salesman trying to unload a Hummer during an oil shortage. 

Did it really matter why Ryan Clancy and his men stuck around?

I stayed dry-eyed until he walked out the door. Then I noticed that he had taken Trisha’s little bear with him, and I couldn’t hold in my emotions in any longer. I started crying.

Howling, really. The nurses had to give me a sedative to calm me down.

Acme moved quickly to cover up Carl’s murder. They had it easy. There was no need for a cremation, since there were just a few body parts recovered.

The death certificate carried a stranger’s name.

The next morning, Ryan drove me home with baby Trisha. The urn containing Carl’s ashes was on the backseat.

So was Trisha’s bear. Apparently whatever Ryan had hoped to find wasn’t in it. Well, at least by scanning it first instead of just tearing into it, they’d had the decency to leave it intact.

Although Ryan entered the house first and pretended to look around before giving me the all-clear signal, I just assumed his operatives had already searched our house, too, although I really couldn’t tell. Almost everything was as I’d remembered it when we left for the hospital–

Except for the box that held our framed photos and our wedding and family albums. Someone had torn that open and rummaged through it, ripping away any image of Carl, and taking his photos from their frames.

“Damn it Ryan, how could you?” I cried.

“I swear we didn’t touch a thing. It was Carl. Donna, your husband was a genius.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple: whenever Carl went undercover, he was meticulous about altering his features in some way. Taking the photos with him was his way of ensuring that the Quorum would never be able to ID him when—well, when he resurfaced later.” 

And came home to us.

But now that would never happen. And with his photos gone, too, it was as if he had never existed.

At least I had my locket as proof that he had.

Later that night, as the children slept in their beds, I climbed into Mary’s tree house with the portable video baby monitor, threw myself into a corner, and sobbed myself to sleep. I dreamt of Carl: that he had his arms around me, but try as he might, he couldn’t keep me warm. Even though Trisha slept through the night, I woke up at sunrise, shivering under Mary’s old baby blanket.

Before going inside, I scattered his ashes on the wisteria vines that grew along our back picket fence.

I kept my word to Ryan. If anyone asked–even the kids–certainly Carl wasn’t missing, let alone dead. He just wasn’t … around.

Oh sure, it would have been easier to do as Ryan had suggested: say that Carl and I had separated, and that the divorce would be final any day now.

But I just couldn’t do it. Because the truth is Carl loved me too much to have left me, unless our lives were at risk and that was the only way he could protect us. If he hadn’t been blown away, I know in my heart that, in time, he would have reached out to me…

And no one will ever convince me otherwise.

So yes, I swore to protect him, too. Or at least his memory.

The fairytale I concocted was that he was overseas, on loan-out to his company’s most important client. “He was home last weekend but just for a day or two. What, you didn’t see him? I know he stopped by the club. The kids and I are flying over there sometime this summer. He’s shopping for apartments for us, in Paris. But I get the final say…”

Then I’d laugh and change the subject. Most of the wives in the neighborhood were pea green with envy: a husband with a very important job that involved international travel, and a second home in Paris!

In other words, a husband who paid the bills, but kept out of your hair.

Within six months, the “business trip” line had worn thin with the kids. At the ages of seven and five, they were used to his extended business trips. But in the past he was never gone more than a few weeks at a time, then home for at least three or four days before taking off again.

Because they loved him so dearly, they missed him terribly–and cried themselves to sleep more and more often. For me, that was the most difficult part of the charade. Apparently their tears were hard on Aunt Phyllis, too. One night when she babysat while I went to their elementary school’s open house, she plopped them down and told them to wipe their tears for good because their father was never coming home to them.

That he had left us. No, that he left me.

When she told me what she had done, I went ballistic. “My God, Phyllis, why would you say that?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” She had tears in her eyes, but still she held her chin up defiantly.

Well, yes, as far as she knew, it was. Unlike the kids or the neighbors, Phyllis never accepted my “extended business trip” excuses for Carl’s absence. At the same time, I had to keep my promise to Ryan, although a husband leaving his wife and family for another woman was the most logical answer.

“Donna, honey, did you know they say they’ve forgotten what he looks like? Well, I for one am glad. Hell’s bells, he doesn’t deserve to be remembered, after what he’s done to you!”

She was only saying it because she loves me. Still, it hurt like hell.

More so because I knew how much he’d loved me, too.

From then on, whenever Jeff or Mary got mad at me, they gave me a look that said, “I wish he had taken me with him, because I don’t like you, either.”

Once, when Mary said as much out loud, I resisted the urge to slap her. Instead I drove out to the beach, where I stayed for hours and cried. When I came back, Mary, filled with remorse, had already made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids’ dinner, and had bathed Trisha and put her to bed. Then she and Jeff had cleaned up the playroom as penance for breaking my heart.

Of course, they knew how much I loved and missed Carl. I proved it with my lies about his business trips and my denial to admit to anything else.

But they sorely wanted closure, even if I didn’t.

“So tell me: how are the kids?” That was always Ryan’s first question during our once-a-month lunch dates.

Carl had been dead just over a year. Although it was Acme’s policy to keep mum on its progress toward finding the Quorum, if I had learned just one thing from my mother it was that the best way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. Ryan never turned down my monthly invitation. And of course, I always insisted on picking up the tab.

Not that Ryan divulged much. In fact, he did his best to keep us focused on safe mundane topics, like Mary’s grades or Jeff’s last ball game or Trisha’s latest growth milestone, in the hope that we’d run out of time and he wouldn’t have to answer the one question that was always on my lips:

What progress was Acme making in finding the Quorum?

“The children are okay. They don’t ask about Carl as much as they did, you know, since Phyllis–”

“Look, I’m sorry she told them that way. I know how hard it’s been for you.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” I was smiling when I said it, but he knew better. He hated me calling his bluff. But guess what? That was exactly what I was doing.

“You know we’re doing everything we can. Seriously, Donna, I wish I could do more–” As he paused, his eyes shifted away. I now knew him well enough to realize that he was about to drop a bomb.

“–Particularly since I’ve been ordered to stop Carl’s paychecks after next month.” He shifted uneasily in the hard plastic chair. “You see, because of all the recent terror threats, other things have taken priority–”

That was his way of explaining why the care and feeding of an invisible spook hadn’t made the cut, and that was just too bad for the family Stone.

Wow. Just like that.

I knew he expected me to say something: perhaps to rant and rave, maybe even cry.

Instead I laughed. That was my way of letting him know that he could forgo the sob story about the Agency’s latest belt-tightening measures.

“Well, well, isn’t that the cherry on the cake of my day! So tell me, Ryan: just what am I supposed to do now? Sell the house, get some secretarial job, and put my kids in after-school daycare?”

What other option did I have, considering I had a nine-year-old who needed dental work, and a flatfooted six-year-old who needed orthotics? And whatever widow’s pension was coming my way wouldn’t be kicking in for quite some time.

I hope Ryan isn’t expecting me to pick up the check…

“Frankly, I for one think that would be an incredible waste of your natural talents.” He paused then looked me in the eye. “Why not come and work for me?”

“You’re being funny, right?” I couldn’t imagine that he found my carpool skills impressive. Maybe it was my ability to negotiate a sane bedtime with Mary.

Or maybe he figured out that hiring me was the easiest way for Acme to search my house as many times as needed, until it found whatever they thought the Quorum wanted.

Ryan didn’t know it, but I was aware that they’d broken in three times already, while Mary and Jeff were at school and I did my volunteer time at Trisha’s nursery co-op. In my home, everything has its place. Even my kids have found this out the hard way. So when something has been moved, you better believe I know it.

If he had only bothered to ask, I would have told him that I’d already searched it myself, top to bottom, without finding anything out of the ordinary. But hey, if hiring me assuaged his guilt over Acme’s break-ins–not to mention canceling Carl’s paycheck–then bring it on…