The Killing Vision Read Online Free PDF Page A

note up to the kitchen and dialed
the number, and when a groggy, young female voice answered, Marla said, “Is
this Missy?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Hi, Missy.  This is Wade Roberts’s wife.”
    The line went dead.
    It wasn’t as if this had been the first time.  Wade
had been cheating on her for years, practically since they had been married. 
The few times she had confronted him, he had at first denied it, then admitted
it.  Then flaunted it.  Then punished her for it.
    At first she thought maybe she was to blame,
that if only she were a little more inventive, a little less prudish, a little
more willing to give him the things he wanted...  And gradually she began to
understand that it didn’t matter.  No matter how much she did for him, he would
want something different, more and more extreme.  He would want to push the
envelope.  That was one of his favorite expressions.  “That Dale Earnhardt— he
knew how to push the envelope .”  Or, “Come on, baby, let’s push the envelope tonight.”  Once, when they had been married just a few months, he had pushed
the envelope too far, and she had bled for two days.  After that, she started
to become unavailable.  Always sleepy.  Or sick to her stomach.  Not that she
had to pretend to be reviled by him; the thought of his touch was enough to
revolt her, to disgust her.  Little by little, he asked her for it less often,
and by the time she realized what was happening, it was too late.  She had
pushed him away.  Driven him to the sluts and whores he now used to satisfy
himself.
    They had been married two years when she found the
first evidence.  She had gone out to the old Buick for the checkbook (she was
always leaving it in the glove box), and when she opened the driver door,
something peeking from beneath the back seat caught her eye.  She pulled it out
and stared at it.  It was a pair of pink panties with a lacey waistband.  A
size smaller than her own. 
    That night, when Wade returned home from work and
two-year-old Derek was safely in front of the TV in the other room, she flung
the panties onto the dining room table.  Wade was nursing his second beer of
the evening, and it took him a moment to register what he was seeing in front
of him.  He stared at them.  Took another sip of beer.
    “Whose are those?” Marla said, her voice quivering
with anger.
    He looked at her, his gaze steady.  “None of your
goddamn business.”
    Her breath left her, and she stared at him.  “It is my goddamned business.  If somebody else is fucking my husband, I want to know
who it is.”
    She never saw the fist coming until it connected
with her jaw.  She was suddenly sitting in the floor, dazed, the room spinning
away, blood dripping from her mouth.  She held out both hands to steady
herself, not believing he had actually punched her.  She moved her tongue, not
surprised to discover that a couple of her teeth were loose.
    He towered above her, his chest heaving.  “I said
it’s none of your goddamned business.”
    Later, when he rolled into bed beside her, he said
softly, “I’m sorry.  But you hardly ever let me touch you anymore.”  She lay
there with her back to him, silent.  In a few minutes, he was snoring, and she
realized she had been holding her body rigid since he had come into the room.
    It was not the last time he exploded.  Over the
years she had learned to stay out of his way, to not provoke him.  She had
learned how to hide bruises and cuts, how to lie about how clumsy she was and
how she kept bumping into things.  She had learned how to pretend everything
was fine.  People were always asking how she was—at church, at the
supermarket; she learned how to say, “ Fine .”  She could even smile when
she said it.
    There had been a few times when she thought of
leaving, when she thought of driving away some day while he was at work, but
she knew she could never do that.  She couldn’t do that to Derek.  As much as
she feared Wade,