She didn’t know how well Michael had cleaned his tracks, and she needed time to think through all the possibilities before risking any suspicion being cast on her. Her mind raced ahead. If Michael learned she had been to Audrey’s condo, taken his shirt and locker key, he could turn it around and paint her as the jealous wife who suffered from insomnia and lost control. She played out the scenario. Michael would call the police from the house, looking her straight in the eyes.
“My wife hasn’t been well,” she imagined him saying to the dispatcher in a dispassionate voice. “She’s accused me of having an affair and now I think she may have done something quite horrible … Audrey Adler, yes that’s the name. I believe she lives on Magoun Avenue. You should do a welfare check on Ms. Adler. I’m honestly worried.”
He’d end his call with a cagey look on his face. Later on, evidence would surface that Audrey had filed a stalking complaint with HR against Natalie. That’s all it would take for the police to hit her with a murder rap.
Natalie imagined her kids crying as she was being led away in handcuffs, the trial, the guilty verdict, Michael in the courtroom looking crushed as she was being escorted to her prison cell. Go to the police with the key and shirt and risk becoming a suspect, proof she’d been in the apartment on the night of the murder, keep them hidden and Michael could turn the tables on her. Dammed if she did, dammed if she didn’t. Rock meet hard place.
“I’m going to sleep in Addie’s room on the trundle,” Natalie said with ice in her voice.
“Nat, babe.”
Michael adopted a pleading tone as he took hold of her arm, too forcefully. She pulled free from his grasp.
“Don’t,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She trudged up the stairs knowing full well that she’d see the sun catch fire without catching a single minute of sleep.
How could she go on living with a killer under her roof?
Her next thought was even more jarring.
How could she keep her children safe from their father?
She needed help. She had to tell someone.
Come morning, she would.
CHAPTER 25
NATALIE
Rain.
Oh, hell, why did it have to start raining?
Natalie blasted the radio and the air-conditioning simultaneously, but the noise and cold couldn’t offset the soothing sound of rain.
Pat-pat-pat-pat-pat.
Just like before when she was trying so hard to stay awake in the McDonald’s parking lot, she felt the pull of sleep as the steady rhythm of rain sent Natalie into a trance. Her bleary eyes began closing, but snapped open as soon as she caught herself. She’d always hated driving in bad weather. Now, her bone-weary state made every second of this journey a sheer test of will.
Twenty minutes outside Zanesville, she thought of the Fairfield Inn as an oasis, one that had turned out to be a mirage. God, what she wouldn’t give to be snuggled in that bed right now. She glanced in the rearview. All looked normal in the backseat with Addie and Bryce. The children gazed absently out their respective windows, watching the rain coming down in sheets.
In a matter of a day, confusion, chaos, and constant motion had become their new normal. And yet, they’d adjusted to it, leaving Natalie in awe of their adaptability. They weren’t questioning her every mile as they had at the start of this journey. They’d come to terms that Mom had a plan, some plan, whatever it might be, and they’d be fine as long as they did as she instructed.
Poor things were utterly guileless and trusting, and their mother was so not. But her mantra was in charge: Move. Move. Move.
The rain was falling even harder now. One minute the roads were wet, and the next there were puddles everywhere as thick drops fell from black clouds. From off in the distance came the sound of thunder and a few streaks of bolt lightning. Like the crows from her nightmare, Natalie took the severe weather as a sign.
Michael.
He was coming.
She was sure of it.
During a brief stop at a convenience mart, Natalie used her Tracfone to check her credit card account. Just as she feared, her inbox contained a fraud alert. Computers were quick on the draw. Michael, she knew, would get the same alert, probably sent to him via text message. She’d probably received one as well, but didn’t dare turn on her cell phone to confirm.
No matter. Natalie had to assume Michael knew she had been in Zanesville. What he’d do with that information was anyone’s guess.
Water sliding off the front windshield distorted the taillights of the cars in front of her as the wipers struggled to keep pace. The sound of rain hitting the roof reverberated inside the car like steady applause. She was driving west on I-70 in the left lane of a two-lane highway, zipping past the barren flats going five miles over the speed limit, wishing she could do fifteen.
Bad idea in this weather.
Natalie tried to ease her foot off the gas, but it was no use. She was hard on the pedal, pushing the speedometer needle higher than it was safe to do in the rain. From the backseat, Bryce sneezed a hearty achoo into his new teddy bear. The noise smacked her back to reality. The kids. She was doing this for them.
Even with two packs of Sno Balls bought at the mini-mart providing a sugar rush, her children would never make eight hours on the road. Meanwhile, Natalie wasn’t sure she could make it eight more minutes. The rain splattered and plunked. She thought of Michael, departing for the airport, be it LaGuardia, JFK, or Logan, coming to get her.
Then what?
The clerk at the Fairfield could give him a description of her and the kids—the dye jobs weren’t that helpful. Dammit. Maybe they’d change color, maybe go darker? She needed to ditch the rental car, too, thinking she might do that in Columbus at some Avis location. Then, she’d rent from Hertz or one of the other car companies, didn’t matter. The license plate was the problem, not the vehicle.
Back to Michael.
She wasn’t certain he’d have enough to go on to find her, but she couldn’t risk making a beeline for Elsberry and Kate’s farm. Perhaps he’d already scoured her life, looked up all her friends, new and old. Maybe he’d remembered that party, how they’d met, and how it was her work friend Kate who had taken her there. She worried he’d use a map to plot potential destinations. He’d cross-reference that to anyone who lived near I-70 in Zanesville. That would give him all he’d need to figure out where she might be going. Best she could do was detour. She thought about heading north to Bloomington, make her trail go cold before venturing south again. But the miles were getting harder to travel.
Thank goodness the rain stopped almost as suddenly as it had started. Natalie breathed easier. No sooner had the rain gone than the sun came out. Right away the kids started an earnest search for a rainbow.
All the while, Natalie was desperate for something else. Sleep, sleep, sleep, whispered a voice in her head. It felt like her eyelids were being pulled down by weights attached to her eyelashes with tiny chains.
“Mommy, you okay?”
Natalie lifted her head like the tail end of a whip. Beneath her she heard a heavy whomp-whomp-whomp. It took a moment to realize that the driver-side tires were off the road and bumping along the grassy, gravelly median. Pulling the wheel to the right, Natalie course-corrected back onto the highway, just as she caught a flash of red and blue lights in her rearview mirror.