“If we don’t kill him, he’ll kill us,” I said. “He’ll definitely at least kill you.”

Ben laughed. “Wouldn't it be easier to just divorce the guy?”

“It’s not that simple, Ben. He’s dangerous. He’s taken everything from me. And running is useless. He found my dad who was trying to remain hidden. And I don’t know the first thing about disappearing.”

Ben's expression turned serious. "You're right then. We have to kill him."

"Okay, where do we start?" I asked.

"We'll need the perfect plan. Does he usually come in the front door or the back door?"

"Front door."

"Okay," said Ben. "Do you have any paper? No, scratch that. We need poster board."

"I think so..." I got up and rummaged through the closet. For some reason, we actually had some. I grabbed it and brought it back to Ben.

He smoothed it out on the table and popped the cap off a sharpie with his teeth. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen anything sexier.

He started drawing the floor plan to my house.

"How do you know my house so well?" I asked. "You really have been snooping around a lot, huh?"

"What? Oh.” He laughed. “My house has the same design. Anyway, what do you like better for the front door? A toolbox booby-trap above the door, or an electrocuted doorknob?"

"Hmm...I think the electrocution would be better. But only dialed up to like, half power. Not enough to incapacitate him. The gawkers might see it if he collapses on the front porch."

"Oh, absolutely. Good call. Electrocuted door knob it is." He drew a lightning bolt on the front door of the floor plan. "What does he usually do next?"

Hurts me. "Walks upstairs."

"Does he take his shoes off?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Why don't we smash some Christmas ornaments right in front of the stairs then."

"Oh, I like that."

Ben drew it on the plan. "For the stairs, there's really only one choice."

"Loaded shotgun with a trip wire?" I asked.

Ben shook his head. "Na, too loud. I say we put a paint can on a rope. If we make the rope just the right length, he'll take it right in the kisser."

"And it'll knock him back onto the broken ornaments."

"Boom. Double whammy. I love it when a plan comes together. What's next?"

The conversation went on like that for at least half an hour. By the time we were done, the poster was covered in all sorts of booby-traps. Light fixtures replaced by blowtorches, kerosene in the toilets, staple guns hidden in door knobs. We had it all. We even had a zip-line from the bedroom window to a tree out back to use as our escape.

"This plan is great," I said. "But I'm worried about all the evidence it will leave. What are we going to tell the police when they come looking for him?"

"We'll just tell them that we caught the sticky bandits. They'll understand."

"Huh?" I asked.

"You know...in Home Alone?"

"Wait, you're going to make me be home alone when I do this? We're going to have to rethink everything then. How am I supposed to lure him into phase 2 if you're not there to release the paint can?"

"What? No. The movie, Home Alone. You do realize that we basically just combined all the traps from Home Alone 1 and 2 into this plan, right?"

I laughed awkwardly. "Of course I do. So scrap all that then.” I eyed the detailed poster board. Damn, such good ideas. “Maybe we’re over-thinking it?”

“Definitely. Let’s just go get a couple of unregistered guns with silencers and shoot him.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It’ll be totally untraceable. Easy peasy.”

“Yeah. Or we could ambush him when he comes home tomorrow night. We could each stand on either side of the front door and hit him with shovels when he walks in. He’d probably try to overpower me, but he wouldn’t see you coming.”

“Sounds perfectly reasonable.”

I didn’t expect him to be this agreeable so quickly. It was all coming together. “I’ve always thought burying him alive would be satisfying. But it’s better if we know he’s dead. So once he has no pulse we can bury him in the backyard. There’s a spot back there with a few rocks. I figured we could move them a little, dig the hole for him there then put the rocks back. That way there won’t be freshly dug dirt visible. Or maybe the woods would be better…”

“Jesus, Addy, I was joking.”

“But you just said…”

“I thought we were playing around. Like a back and forth of things we’d never actually ever do. That’s why I mentioned Home Alone.”

“Oh. Ha. Me too.” Crap, I thought he was on board. I needed to watch whatever movie that was. It seemed to have good ideas.

“We can’t kill your husband.” He was staring at me in the way I loathed. Like my mind was slipping.

Technically we can if you stop being so disagreeable. “I know that. Obviously. I was just joking.” I laughed awkwardly.

“Were you, though? It sounded pretty well thought out to me.”

“So did your plan.” God, I sounded like a child.

“But I was actually kidding. You…” he scratched the back of his neck. “You’ve clearly planned it out.”

I laughed. It sounded forced. “Ben, I’m not a crazy person. Of course I’m not going to murder him.” Damn it. The look he was giving me was the proof I needed. My plan was insane. Which meant all the doctors were right. That my husband was right. Just the thought made my stomach churn.

Ben didn’t say anything. He was just staring at me, probably trying to tell whether he was safe sitting next to me. I wasn’t sure why he was looking at me like that. I had no intention of hurting him.

I leaned forward and lightly punched his arm. “Geez, learn how to take a joke, Mr. Serious.”

He finally laughed. “Addy, you really had me going. I thought you were a psychopath for a second there.”

Psychopath. Huh. That stings. “You should have seen your face,” I said and laughed again. “Yeah…no…I’m not a murderer.” I tried not to sigh. “Let’s just pretend I never said anything. Do you want to watch that movie you mentioned? Home Alone?”

He was still staring at me like I was crazy again. “You just told me that your husband beats you. No, we can’t watch a movie.”

What did he want me to say? He wasn’t down with my awesome murderous plan and I wasn’t down with his lame plan of calling the cops. Stalemate.

“Can we just rewind for a second,” he said and exhaled slowly. “If you don’t feel comfortable going to the cops without hard evidence, then let me help you get the evidence.”

“How?” I thought about the box. The basement was calling for me. But I refused to go down there with Ben. It was too much. Besides, as far as I knew, the box didn’t exist. And pictures wouldn’t help anything. Pictures could be explained away.

“As much as it pains me to let him put his hands on you again, we have to videotape him doing it.”

My mind starting racing. Him calling me a psychopath was weighing on me. What if I was making everything up? What if the videos showed nothing? “I don’t know…”

“What other option is there? You won’t go to the cops. You won’t run. If you want me to talk to him…”

“No. You can’t, Ben. I’ll do the tapes.” I swallowed hard. “But how do you think we can get him on camera? He’d see them. And if he found the tapes…I don’t know what he’d do to me.”

“I can have the video-feed sent to my computer instead of yours. I have a few small cameras we can use that he won’t see unless he knows to look for them.” He stood up. “I’ll go grab them and get them set up tonight. Hopefully we’ll catch him tomorrow and he’ll be behind bars by the weekend.” He started to walk out of the family room.

“Why do you have cameras like that?”

He stopped and turned back toward me. “Oh.” He laughed. “You know the group of deer I mentioned that roam around in the woods behind my house? They just had a fawn. I thought it would be cool to get video of her.”

“That’s odd. Aren’t fawn usually born in the spring?”

“Yeah. Normally the spring through early summer. Not this one, though. I’ll be right back.”

For the first time I got the sense that maybe it wasn’t so odd for Ben to be falling for me. If he was filming some oddball fawn in his free time, he was clearly pretty lonely.

I heard the back door shut and sighed. I had been so close to getting him to help me commit murder. But maybe this would be better. Getting evidence against my husband was better than getting myself sent to prison. I wouldn’t do well behind bars.

But my plan was foolproof. If this deer camera thing didn’t work, I’d revert back to my first plan. This time, I’d just leave Ben out of the particulars. I was strong enough to lug my husband’s body out of the house and into the backyard. Especially once my ankle and shoulder were healed.

I looked down at my hurt ankle. Hurry up and heal. It ached today. A throbbing pain that was almost all-consuming. Much like the feeling in my fingertips. Because they ached to feel my lovely husband’s bones snap beneath them.