I give myself a tour of the rest of the house. He’s using the first small bedroom as a workout room. I can’t tell if it feels still and antiseptic because he never uses it or because he wipes the equipment down after each use. Mounted judo belts decorate the wall.
The brown carpet continues down a short hallway to another bedroom that appears to be half office, half storage. The last bedroom is the master. A big bed with an oak headboard dominates the floor. The only other furniture is a wide dresser with a mirror. And there’s a big flat-screen TV on the wall, of course. His brown drapes and forest-green comforter give the impression that I’m in a tree house. It’s pretty awful.
The attached bathroom is as clean as the rest of the place, but the tan tile continues the old 1980s look. Steven cares about appearances, but he definitely doesn’t have an eye for design.
There’s not much clutter in the bedroom, but I’ve lucked out. There’s baseboard heating, but there are air-conditioning vents as well, and he won’t be using those at this time of year.
I toss my satchel on the bed and unzip it to expose the equipment inside. None of it is legal in the US, not unless you’re law enforcement. I bought it all in Malaysia and shipped it to a rental box here in Minneapolis.
I unpack two digital cameras the size of nine-volt batteries. The equipment doesn’t have any storage but it transmits motion-activated audio and video to me via Wi-Fi, and I can back it all up on my laptop for leisurely viewing. The batteries hold a charge for nearly three months. I can’t imagine I’ll need to figure out how to replace them.
I’ve already synced the cameras up with my computer. The only problem will be accessing Steven’s Wi-Fi. He definitely has a passcode. He’s not the type to happily share bandwidth with his less fortunate neighbors.
I figure he has to give me access to his Wi-Fi if I spend enough time in his bedroom. It would be really rude to let a woman spend the night and not let her use the Wi-Fi, right? I pop open my laptop to check out the situation and find seven named networks. The one with the strongest signal is locked down tight and the name is just a random series of letters and numbers. The second Wi-Fi network is locked as well. But the third signal on the list has three bars of signal strength and isn’t locked. This is very good luck. I don’t need to rely on Steven’s generosity after all.
I snort at the name of the network. FeelFreeToUseMyNanasWiFi. Poor Nana.
After I log in, I open the camera app to assign the network to both cameras. An image of the bedroom blinks to life on my laptop. A second image appears next to it, nearly identical. When I lean forward, the side of my head appears in both frames. Tiny moving status bars slide across the application’s windows, letting me know I’m recording.
I’m up and running.
I turn toward the lenses and wave. “Hello, Jane.” I know I’ll laugh when I watch it later.
The multi-tool I’ve brought makes quick work of the vent screws, and I carefully tape the camera into position to peek between the slats. It’s a wide shot of the whole room, but I adjust it a few times to make sure the bed is the center of the focus, then replace the vent.
Onward to the living room. There’s a vent in the living room that faces the kitchen, so I unscrew it and set to work getting that camera positioned correctly. Once that’s done, I test it by walking into the kitchen and saying “Hello again, Jane” in a normal speaking voice. I return and sit on the couch to greet myself once more. When I play back the video, I can hear myself clearly. The cameras were worth the exorbitant sticker price.
Before I leave, I go through Steven’s dresser drawers, then his office file drawer. I find nothing. No secret offshore accounts, no love letters, not even a little tube of lubricant for jerking off. Everything is boring. It pisses me off.
Not all monsters are terrifying. Some of them are so tedious they’ll just make you wish for death.
The worst part about Steven is that he doesn’t have to be cruel. He wasn’t born this way. He could choose to do better, choose to go to therapy and talk his cruelty away. Mine is hardwired from childhood, and even I try harder than he does.
He’ll get away with it forever if I don’t stop him. He’ll treat woman after woman like utter shit. But let’s be honest. I’m not doing it to protect those women. I just need him to pay for Meg. Then we’ll be even.
“Even Steven,” I say, and then I smile for the camera. Even Steven.
I look through closets until I find the vacuum, and I suck away all my tracks before I leave the house.
CHAPTER 21
When I first heard she’d died, I didn’t even feel surprised. Maybe I was in shock. Maybe it wasn’t real to me because I lived halfway around the world and never saw her anyway. Maybe it’s just that I’m a monster.
Whatever the reason, I didn’t feel much of anything except frustration. I’d told her that asshole didn’t matter. I’d told her she’d be better off without him. And she clearly would have been if she’d given it time.
Shit, I’d even invited her to come to Kuala Lumpur and live with me for as long as she wanted. It seemed like the perfect solution. How could she possibly miss that loser if she was busy having an adventure in Malaysia with me? She was young and blond and she’d have been popular with the businessmen here.
But she’d decided to die instead.
After my frustration came anger. He’d called her a stupid bitch all the time, and maybe he’d been right, because Meg had believed him instead of me. Him. Some pissant nobody she’d known less than two years. She’d loved him so much that she’d taken herself away from me? Forever?
Fuck that.
Within a week, I’d decided that I hated her. That I’d never needed her and never would.
Then I received her letter.
Jane, it’s me. I’m so, so sorry . . .
Whatever half-living thing there was inside me had opened up and I’d cried my eyes out. I’d sobbed. And screamed. And broken a lamp and a chair and several vases. I’d raged and cried, and that was when the grief had put its claws into my bones and settled down for a long meal.
CHAPTER 22
I gasp as Steven pulls into his driveway. “Oh my God, what a beautiful yard!”
“Thank you.” The garage door rises and I see that the garage is perfectly clean, tools hung on walls and shelves neatly lined with boxes.
“Everything is so pretty. And it seems like such a great neighborhood.”
“It’s nice. There are a lot of older folks here, so there aren’t too many asshole kids around. But the school district is one of the best, so home values are solid.”
He’s so cold and practical that I have trouble imagining what free spirit Meg saw in him. She never thought about home values or school districts during her walks around town. She liked pretty trim and brightly painted porches. But opposites attract, I suppose. His serious and responsible nature must have felt like safety to her.
She told me he was the best boyfriend she’d ever had. He had a job and a home. He paid for all their dates. He came from a good family. He wanted a better life for her.
I could see why she believed that at first. Compared to her previous boyfriends, he was a catch. She’d had a bad habit of collecting weirdos and taking care of them. She’d collected me, hadn’t she?
Steven was so strong. That’s what she said. He tricked her with that, and then he overwhelmed her completely.
She was proud of the way he’d revamped her finances and set up electronic payments on all her accounts. “I’m so bad with money,” she started saying constantly.
I’d never heard her say that before. She’d seemed fine to me. She’d supported herself. Had her own apartment, her own car, her own life. After Steven it was always “He says I need to learn to be more responsible.”
Whenever I snorted in response, she defended him. “I had two overdrafts last month, Jane! Two! I was so embarrassed when he found out. Do you know how much all those fees added up to? I’m so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. And how did he even find out?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why does he know anything about your checking account?”
“He’s balancing it for me now.”