The Stranger Inside. Lisa Unger

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      Greg came down the stairs, dressed in his workout clothes, holding a garment bag. He was watching her. From the lines of worry etched in his forehead, she could tell he already knew.

      “You heard about Steve Markham?” she asked.

      “Just got the news update on my phone,” he said, rubbing at the crown of his head. He put the garment bag on the couch, tried for a smile. “You and Gillian should get together and have a toast. Markham finally got what he deserved.”

      “Who do you think did it?” she asked.

      “You would know better than I do,” he said. His voice was gravelly, soft. She’d never heard him raise it, in all their years together. “The brother. The father. The guy had no shortage of enemies.”

      “Lots of people make threats,” she said. “It’s another thing altogether to take someone’s life. Even someone who deserves it.”

      She poured him a cup of coffee from the French press, handed him an apple. This was his preworkout breakfast. He’d put on weight during her pregnancy. But he’d lost it all. In fact, he was in better shape now than he had been when they were first dating, the muscles on his arms strong and defined, his body lean. She could not say the same for herself. She tried to squeeze herself into her old jeans the other day and wound up lying on the bed, crying. Had she ever fit into them? It seemed impossible.

      “What are you thinking?” he asked. He wrapped her up, kissed her on the forehead. “What’s going on in that big brain of yours?”

      “It’s just—odd,” she said. “A year later. Someone kills him.”

      He moved away, took a bite of his apple, a sip of his coffee.

      “It’s a good day when people get what they deserve. Isn’t it?” he said, moving toward the door. “One less psycho in the world.”

      Why didn’t it feel like that? She was aware of a hollow pit in her stomach.

      “I’m going to get a workout before I head in,” he said.

      Oh, how nice for you, she thought but kept it to herself.

      “Okay,” she said instead. “Do you think you’ll be back in time for me to work out tonight?”

      There was a bit of an edge to all of it. Who stayed home? Who worked? Who had time to be with friends and indulge in hobbies? They both worked at giving each other time.

      “I’ll try, honey,” he said. “But you know how it is, right? You can’t always just leave.”

      Greg was the producer for the local television news program. Local news.

      “Right,” she said. “There might be some breaking story about the sheep-shearing festival this weekend.”

      He gave her a look. “Don’t be a news snob, babe. We can’t all cover major cases for the National News Radio, can we?”

      He came back to where she stood in the kitchen, pulled her in again, this time for a kiss on the mouth.

      She felt herself smile, light up a little. That’s one of the things she first loved about him, that he didn’t have the huge, hyperinflated ego of the other men she met in news. She could tease him, and he didn’t sulk. It didn’t always work in reverse, she’d be the first to admit.

      “That was nice last night,” he said. “You look good, Rain. You feel good.”

      “So do you,” she said. His lips on her neck, his hand on her back.

      “I’ll get home,” he whispered. “I promise.”

      He downed his coffee, then moved toward the door.

      She followed him out to the car. Autumn crisp and cool on the air. A stiff wind bent the branches; she pulled her robe tight around her. Yes, she was the woman who went out into the driveway in her pajamas. So what?

      Greg put his bag in the back, walked over to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. The shine of his deep brown eyes, the small scar on his chin, the wild brown hair that he couldn’t quite tame unless he cropped it short. She saw worry in the lines on his forehead, in the wiggle of his eyebrows.

      “Don’t let this pull you under again, okay?”

      She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. The Markham case. It had shaken her, rattled them. That person she was when a story was under her skin—she wasn’t a good wife, a good friend. In fact, she wasn’t good for anything except the story she wanted to tell.

      That was then—another life, another woman. She had Lily now; she was a mother. There wasn’t room for both parts of herself. She was smart enough to know it.

      Another kiss—soft and familiar, the scent of him so comforting—then he climbed into their sensible hybrid SUV and drove off. She watched him, his words echoing in her head.

      Got what he deserved.

      Her pulse raced a little, that early-morning nausea came back. She wanted to call Gillian but knew she wouldn’t be able to talk for a while yet.

      As she stepped back into the foyer, Lily started crying. Game on.

      But while Lily ate her oatmeal, secure in her high chair, Rain retrieved her laptop. She half expected the lid to groan like the door on an abandoned house, maybe find some cobwebs covering the keyboard. It had been a long time since she thought about work.

      She opened the files she’d kept from the Markham case, and started rereading her old notes, sifting through the digital images, the saved internet links.

      She used to dream about Steve Markham, and in her dreams, he had the cold yellow eyes of a wolf. They often, in her dreams, shared a meal across a long table, lined with plates of rotting food—overripe fruit split open, red, spilling innards and seeds on the white cloth, decomposing meat buzzing with flies, wilting greens turning to slime. He’d be laughing, teeth sharp. And though she wanted to run, she’d be lashed to her seat, staring, mesmerized by his hideous grin.

      When he’d been acquitted, she fantasized about killing him herself.

      But the rage passed, left a kind of emptiness in its wake. A terrible fatigue of the mind and the spirit.

      She was remembering all of this when Lily tossed her sippy cup onto the table in front of the laptop.

      “Ma! Ma!” Lily yelled happily, looking very pleased with herself.

      Rain gazed over the computer at her daughter, apple cheeks and tangle of hair, face and bib painted with oatmeal.

      “You’re right, bunny,” she said, snapping the lid on her laptop closed and lifting the pink cup. “Let it go.”

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