When you rule something out, you limit your focus. Thankfully, I’m smarter than that. But I am disappointed. To say the least. I’m particularly pissed Adam expected me to use that credit card. Surely, he would have known that to do so would have been too close for comfort. He had to have understood it would’ve linked me to the scene. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. This wasn’t the first time he betrayed me. Nor was it likely to be the last. If only Adam hadn’t failed the test. I really wanted to believe in him.

Everyone slips up at some point

Just not me. When the driver delivered me to my house, I simply ran in and grabbed cash. I refuse to have my every movement tracked and traced. I won’t be tied to that lake house in any way.

Afterward, I was so tired that I dropped to Tom’s side of the bed and fell fast asleep. I dreamed that I woke up and my husband was downstairs making bacon and eggs. Only in my dream, my husband wasn’t Tom. Then the doorbell rings and my stomach sinks. In my dream, I realize I am going to live the same day, thousands of times, a lifetime of times, unless something is done.

Unfortunately, sometimes the dream world and real life collide because I am ripped from my dream to find the doorbell really is ringing, and it is because there are cops at my door. This is never a pleasant situation to wake to.

“Are you Melanie Anderson?” they ask when I open the door. Pretty standard stuff.

I fold my arms over my chest. “I am.”

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident involving your husband.”

I blink rapidly. Once. Twice. Three times.

“What kind of accident?”

The woman cop leans forward as though she’s rehearsed her lines a dozen times. “I’m sorry to tell you your husband didn’t make it, Mrs. Anderson.”

I drop to my knees. I try to cry, I really give it my best effort. But nothing comes. She’s supposed to use the word dead. Or some form of it. I read that once. I blink again, when I look up at them. Maybe if I hear the word, it will stir something. “Is he dead?”

They glance at one another. “Is there someone we can call?”

I don’t answer. There is someone, yes. But I can’t tell them. It’s not wise to start there.

“Mrs. Anderson?”

“Beth.”

“Beth?”

“My best friend.”

Again, they look at each other.

Then they break the news about the Joneses. They ask me questions. More routine stuff. Did I know them to be drinkers? Did I know they planned to go boating? Did they often take the boat out at night?

“Yes,” I say to all of it. Tom told me he was stopping by after work to pick up some paperwork. He was supposed to come straight home afterward. I fell asleep and didn’t realize he hadn’t.

They follow me into the kitchen. Flashes of the way things were come at me from the side, like ambushes. Or at least I want them to. I have to evoke some sort of emotion, otherwise eyebrows might be raised. Tom’s mug is there by the coffee pot as though it’s waiting to be filled. The ordinary, a reminder, poking at me. The angle just right. A knife in the back. The sight of it knocks the wind out of me. Tears fall, I lie, and in some ways, things haven’t changed that much.

The officers explain that they found the wreckage just after daylight, when a fishing boat saw smoke. Is there someone that could identify the body?

I say I want to do it.

They advise this isn’t a good idea. Before I know it I am sobbing—wailing, to be exact. I’m just so thankful to be out from under the life sentence I’d agreed to at the altar.

Adam can do it, I tell them finally. Let it be a warning to him. It probably won’t serve as a sufficient warning, since Adam still thinks I bailed from the boat prior to the accident. He thinks Beth and Tom hauled me into the water in hopes that I would drown. He doesn’t know what I’m capable of. Yet.

Of the three of them, Adam tells me Mark was the most recognizable. Blunt force trauma did the job, but the rest of him was in good shape. He could have been sleeping.

And Beth? I’d asked. Her neck was snapped in two. Her body bloated from the water.

I don’t ask about Tom. Adam volunteers. He was bruised a bit. But that’s just how dead bodies look, he said. Adam is a liar. And sadly, an almost believable one. It’s okay; we all have our secrets, I guess.

Secrets do a lot of things. They make you exciting. They make you adventurous. They make you important. But there comes a point where having a secret without anybody knowing loses its fun. And while, maybe you don’t necessarily want to let others in on what that secret is, you at least want them to know you have one.

I tell myself no one will ever know I killed Tom.

Soon, someone has to know.

Maybe it will be Adam I confide in. Sometimes saying nothing says too much.

After all, he started this whole thing that night in a hotel bar. If it had not been for him, I’d be back at my parents. I’d be happily married to someone who wasn’t Tom. If it weren’t for him, I would not be Melanie Anderson. I shouldn’t have fallen in love with him. I shouldn’t have played his silly, dangerous game.

Agreeing to that dinner was the start of something. It was the start of secrets neither one of us knew the magnitude of. What I did know then was he wanted power. He wanted to lead New Hope, and he had a plan to propel himself to the top. He said that if I wanted in, there was money to be made. Money sounded nice. But what I really wanted was a home. I wanted something of my own. I wanted not to have to go crawling back to my parents, tail tucked neatly between my legs. I wanted someone to love me. In the end, we both got what we wanted, I suppose. You have to pick your enemies carefully because the way those enemies fight is who you become. It’s too bad so much damage was done in the process.

I gut the house. I don’t want to stay here, but I can’t sell it too soon. I had half-expected that Tom’s adult children might have contested the will, but they don’t. It’s apparent that they have moved on with their lives and prefer to leave the past in the past. Tom had told me that he gave them their mother’s life insurance settlement, and that they were set. The looks on their faces at the funeral tell me they are sadder about what could have been than what they actually lost. I think about my own parents dying someday. I think I can relate.

Your father loved you, I said to them. He talked about you all the time.

I don’t know if they knew I was lying because this time I tried really hard.

Truthfully, Tom rarely spoke of his kids. But then, Tom was private about the things he cared about, and in the end this is how I won. It was his arrogance that blinded him. He wanted to take care of everything, his way, and in the end, I guess he did.

The investigation into the accident was simple enough. I wonder if Tom thought that through. That’s the only thing that still bothers me, really. That I’ll never know.

Three people go out on a boat. Two of them have alcohol levels near or above the legal limit. One is simply an innocent. A byproduct of trusting too much.

The service for Tom was nice. Quiet, contained. Simple. Cheap, like he would have wanted.

Beth and Mark’s was the exact opposite of that. It was quite the affair, and as leaders of New Hope this made sense. Their bodies weren’t even cold yet before a change of hands took place. Like the presidency, Adam told me. This is how it works. It’s that important. Beth wrote it into the agreement herself. I bet she hadn’t planned for this kind of ending.

It didn’t take long to find the money Tom transferred. He was good, but then, so was his secretary. She had the transfers he’d made reversed within a few days. Maybe he’d intended to cover his tracks better, but never got the chance. More likely, she knew him better than he thought. Who knows? Some questions are better left unanswered.

A few weeks after things settle, Adam and Cheryl host the quarterly dinner for newcomers. The party is bigger and better than anything we’ve done before, Adam assures me. No one expects me to be here, considering. I’ve lost so much. But I’ve gained something too. A church family. I always mention that. It makes people feel good.

Under Adam’s leadership, we will take things to new levels. New Hope is going to be better, bigger. We’re opening in three cities next month, and two more the month after that. We have a brand new rejuvenation center in the works and are in the process of drawing up plans for a new resort-like community. Thanks to my Instalook game we are doing well. Sell, sell, sell. That’s what I do. You wouldn’t believe the brand deals you can score if you’re good and you’re willing to deceive people appropriately. Companies practically throw free stuff at me. I have a whole room in the house dedicated to it, and I had to hire an assistant just to manage it all. You wouldn’t believe how much work it is with the scheduling. You really have to plan it all out. You can’t use competing products back to back, and that doesn’t even count the time it takes to photograph yourself using the stuff—or filtering and photoshopping the photos. It’s basically more than a full-time job. Kind of like what real advertising companies used to do. Only now anyone can do it. If they have influence, that is. If they’re likable, which I totally am. And who cares that half of it is overpriced crap made by children in sweatshops? My followers eat it up, and the direct deposits in my bank account say none of that matters. Sell. Sell. Sell. That’s what I do these days. Beth would appreciate this.

And thanks to the Women’s Alliance I created, the church is raking in just as much cash as I am.

“Hey, you.” Someone grabs my wrist. When I turn I see Vanessa.

I smile. “I wasn’t sure you were coming.”

“Me, miss a good party? Are you kidding?”

“You look great,” I tell her, and it’s true. She has a bit of light back in her eyes.

“It’s the vitamins.”

We laugh like it’s an inside joke.

We have a new brand of vitamins. I worked with a drug manufacturer personally to come up with something fitting. It’s important to keep our men young and healthy. “If we are taking them,” I said to the Women’s Alliance at our first meeting, “So should they.”

“Will it get them to pick up their socks?” a woman asked.

“It will do better than that,” I assured her. “Just wait and see.”

That was my moment. It was the moment I knew I had them in my pocket. It was the moment I became the heroine of my story. Maybe theirs, too.

“To vitality,” I said.

Of course, the men don’t take them willingly. The Woman’s Alliance came up with a plan for that.

“I hear you’re really shaking things up,” Vanessa tells me, glancing around the room.

“Not too much. It’s more like boiling a frog.”

She smiles, and it feels good to see her happy. Of everything, maybe this is what I’m most proud of. I have a real friend. Vanessa needs me. “Do you really think it’s okay? What I’m doing?”

“Yes,” I reply. "You have to get back in the business of taking what you want, rather than thinking you need to shove it away so it'll find its way back.”

“Take what I want?”

“Why not?” I tell her. “Everyone else does.”

“You have a point,” she says, looking around at all the secondhand opinions in the room. There are too many to count.

“But really though,” I offer, changing the subject. “You look great. What are you doing?”

“It’s all the treatments.” We can both see she is lying.

Across the room, there’s an uproar of laughter. My eyes search until they meet Adam’s. His arm is draped around his wife. “It’s not fair that she gets all the credit,” Vanessa says with a nod. “We all know it’s you who is doing the work.”

“Ah, it’s fine…I can’t complain.”

“No,” she tells me. “I suppose you’re smarter than that.”

My options are wide open. I’ve had three offers of marriage so far. Just not the one I want. Funny, how men are quite peculiar that way. Always varying alliances, vying for self-interests. Whatever. Now that I don’t need the money, now that I don’t need a home or friends, because I have all those things, I hardly need a man. Plus, I have something better than any of that, something better than money even. I wasn’t sure there was such a thing. As it turns out, there is. For the first time in my life, I have power.

People look up to me. Tom’s death may have been unexpected. But I have handled it well. That’s not to say I don’t miss being someone’s wife. Having all the boxes mostly checked was nice. That’s where Adam comes in.

Later, I sidle up to him. “We should find a dark corner somewhere.”

This used to make him smile. These days he’s too on edge to entertain such indulgences.

His fingertips brush mine. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.

Wanting something and having it is not the same thing.

“Power looks good on you,” I say. It’s a concession. The largest I can make, considering.

His voice wavers. “You think?”

“I do. How’s it feel to have so much control?”

He looks at me then. “Better than I imagined.”

“You promised.”

“I know,” he says. And then, a concession of his own. “Wait three minutes and meet me in the guest bathroom.”

“Why?” I ask. “So you can show me how powerful you are now that I’ve gotten you what you wanted?”

A small smile creeps up, threatening to show itself. He likes it when I remind him of what he already knows. Most people do. He shifts and then shakes his head and with it goes any trace of amusement. “No,” he tells me. “So, I can give you what you want.”

“About that,” I start to say. But he walks away before the rest of the words slip out. I want to tell him he’s a liar. I want to cause a scene. I want to raise a glass and make a toast. I want to tell everyone about his broken promises. I want to tell everyone how he said if I did what he wanted, we’d be together. And yet, he is here with his wife, sneaking off with me to the guest bathroom, giving me what’s leftover. In this way, I guess not everything has changed.

“Have you any interest in playing a game?” he asks, peeling my dress up my thighs. Only seven percent of any given message is based on the words. Thirty-eight percent comes from the tone of voice, and fifty-five percent from the speaker’s body language and face. This feels like déjà vu. His expression is foolish. He has power on his mind, and illusions can blind you if you’re not careful.

I want to tell him that I hate this bathroom. I hate myself for loving him. I want him to know I wish I could go back to before. Back to a time when I hadn’t yet learned what it meant to love another person. But then his hands find the spots on my body he knows so well, and we speak a different language, and I don’t say any of that. “Depends on the game…” I sigh.

He grins. “It’s a fun one.”

Like always, I believe him.

Adam comes in two minutes flat and once again, I am the one on the losing end. “Sorry,” he offers. “It’s just that dress. And you in it. “

“It’s okay,” I lie. “At least we have a minute…there’s something I want to discuss with you…”

He’s looking for a way out. “I don’t have time.”

“You owe me.”

“Fine,” he relents. “What is it now?”

“I want to discuss the Replacement Wife Project with you.”

“That was Mark’s idea.” His eyes narrow. “How’d you know?”

“Tom told me.” Adam isn’t the only one who gets to lie.

I watch as he washes up. You can learn a lot about a person when you aren’t supposed to be looking.

“I think we should see it through.”

He shakes his head. “I never thought it was solid.”

“Well, what else are we going to do about that wife of yours?”

“Stop,” he says, checking himself in the mirror. “We have to be careful.”

I stare at his reflection. He fastens his belt. “We will be,” I promise, and then I wait for his eyes to find mine. I need to do something drastic. I need to show that I can handle the role of a leader. The church thinks they aren’t ready for a woman yet. But then, they haven’t seen what I am capable of.

“She’ll get what’s coming to her,” I tell Adam. It makes me think of Tom, and I smile. “Everyone does, eventually.”