My mind gets lost on our wedding day, the days we welcomed our babies into the world. The idea that Will, that ever gentle and compassionate Will, whom everyone likes, whom I’ve known half my life, could be a killer cripples me. I begin to cry. But it’s a silent cry because it has to be. I press my hand to my mouth, lean against the bedroom wall, my body nearly collapsing. I press hard, stifling the cry somewhere inside. My body convulses. The tears stream from my eyes.

I can’t let the others hear me. I can’t let them see me. I steady myself, tasting Will’s dinner as it moves back up and into my esophagus. By the grace of God, it stays there.

I know now that Will had a hand in Morgan’s murder because he was in on Erin’s, too. Erin’s murder, I think, and not a horrible unfortunate accident. But why kill Morgan? I go back to the threatening notes and decide: she knew something he didn’t want the rest of the world to find out.

With Will downstairs, I begin to search our bedroom for the missing things: the knife, the washcloth, Morgan’s necklace. Will is too smart to hide these things in obvious places, like under the mattress or in a dresser drawer.

I go to the closet. I search the inside of Will’s clothing for secret pockets, finding none.

I drop to my hands and knees, crawling across the floorboards. It’s a wide plank floor, which could conceivably house a secret compartment beneath. I feel with my fingers for loose boards. With my eyes, I scan for subtle differences in the height of the boards and in the wood grain. Nothing immediately catches my eye.

On my haunches, I think. I let my eyes wander around the room, wondering where else Will could hide something from me if he wanted to. I consider the furniture, the floor register, a smoke detector. My eyes move to the electrical sockets, where one is placed evenly in the center of each wall, totaling four.

I rise to my feet, foraging inside the dresser, under the bed, behind the curtain panels. And that’s when a fifth electrical outlet catches my eye, tucked behind the heavy drapery.

This outlet is not evenly placed as the others are—in the dead center of each wall—but disproportionately placed in a way that doesn’t make sense to me. It’s mere feet to the left of another outlet and, on close examination, looks slightly different than the rest, though an unsuspecting person would never notice. Only someone who very much believed her husband had something to hide.

I let my gaze fall to the doorway. I listen, making sure Will isn’t on his way up. The hallway is dark, empty, but it’s not quiet. Tate is wound up tonight.

I drop to my hands and knees. I don’t have a screwdriver, and so I plunge a thumbnail into the head of the screw. I turn and turn, warping the nail, tearing it low enough that it makes my finger bleed. The screw comes out. Instead of peeling the outlet cover away from the wall, it opens, revealing a tiny safe behind. There is no knife, no washcloth, no necklace there. Instead there’s a roll of cash, hundred-dollar bills mostly, which I quickly, ham-fistedly tally up, losing count, landing somewhere well into the thousands of dollars. My finger bleeds on the dollar bills. My heart races inside of me.

Why would Will be hiding this money in the wall?

Why would Will be hiding this money from me?

There’s nothing else there.

I don’t replace the contents of the safe. I hide that in my own dresser drawer. I drop the drapes back into place. I stand from the floor, press a hand to the wall to steady myself. Around me, the world spins.

When I get control of myself, I walk lightly from the bedroom and down the stairs. I hold my breath. I bite down hard on my lip as I descend the steps one at a time.

As I approach the bottom steps, I hear Will humming a happy tune. He’s in the kitchen, washing dishes, I think. The sink water runs.

I don’t go to the kitchen. I go to the office instead, turn the knob and softly close the door behind myself so there is no audible noise of the latch bolt retracting. I don’t lock the door; it would rouse suspicion if Will found me in the office with the door locked.

I check the search history first. There’s nothing there. It’s all been wiped clean, even the earlier search I found on Erin’s death. It’s gone. Someone sat at this computer after me, got rid of the internet search just like the knife and the washcloth.

I open a search engine. I type in Erin’s name for myself and see what I can find. But it’s all the same as I saw before, detailed accounts of the storm and her accident. I see now that there was never an investigation into her death. It was ruled an accident based on the circumstances, namely the weather.

I do a search into our finances. I can’t understand why Will would be hiding so much money in the walls of our home. Will pays the bills for us. I don’t pay much attention to them unless he leaves a bill lying around on the counter for me to see. Otherwise the bills come and go without my knowledge.

I go to the bank website. The passwords for our accounts are all nearly the same, some variation on Otto’s and Tate’s names and birth dates. Our checking and savings accounts seem to be intact. I close the site and look into our retirement accounts, the kids’ college savings, the credit card balance. These seem reasonable, too.

I hear Will call for me. Hear his footsteps go up and then down the stairs, looking for me. “I’m here,” I call out, hoping he doesn’t hear the tremor in my voice.

I don’t minimize the screen. Instead I enter another search: dissociative identity disorder. When he comes into the room and asks, I tell him I’m trying to learn more about my disease. We haven’t yet talked about how he knew and I didn’t. It’s just another thing he’s been keeping from me.

But now that I know about it, there’s a new worry: that I’ll simply up and disappear at any moment and someone else will take my place.

“I poured you a glass of Malbec,” he says, standing in the office doorway with it, carrying it in a stemless glass. He comes farther into the room, strokes my hair with his free hand. My skin crawls as he does and it takes everything in me not to pull away from his touch. “We were out of the cabernet,” he says, which he knows is my favorite wine. Malbec is decidedly more bitter than I like, but it doesn’t matter tonight. I’ll drink anything.