Here’s to surviving high-maintenance wives.
The room tilted around him.
He dropped the phone and staggered backward.
“No,” he said. “No, no, no.”
He dialed 911 with fingers that could barely press the buttons.
When the dispatcher answered, Ryan’s voice came out shattered.
“My wife,” he said. “My wife and baby are gone. There’s blood everywhere. I—I just got home. I don’t know what happened.”
The dispatcher asked for his address.
Ryan gave it.
She asked when he had last seen us.
His mouth opened.
No words came.
Because the truth sounded monstrous before anyone else even heard it.
Three days earlier.
The last time he had seen his wife, she had been bleeding on the nursery floor three days earlier.
And then he had left.
By the time police arrived, Ryan was sitting in the hallway outside the nursery, his hands clasped behind his neck, rocking slightly.
Two officers entered first.
Then paramedics.
Then detectives.
Their expressions changed when they saw the blood.
One officer told Ryan to stand up.
Another asked where he had been.
Ryan answered like a machine.
Aspen.
Birthday trip.
Friends.
Resort.
Got back twenty minutes ago.
His words landed in the room and died there.
Detective Laura Bennett entered last.
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