… whispered: “He’s practicing.”<\/p>\n
I spun around, my heart hammering against my ribs. At the end of the hallway, the door to the master bedroom was cracked open, spilling a thin slice of light onto the hardwood floor.<\/p>\n
I crept forward, instinctively positioning my body between the hallway and my terrified son. The silence in the house was suffocating, broken only by a strange, rhythmic muttering coming from behind the bedroom door.<\/p>\n
I leaned in and peered through the narrow gap.<\/p>\n
My husband, David\u2014the charming, gentle man I had married just four weeks ago\u2014was standing in front of my full-length mirror. He was fully dressed, but his posture was entirely foreign. He was slumped forward, his shoulders shaking violently, his hands burying his face.<\/p>\n
“Officer, I swear I just stepped out to the pharmacy for five minutes,” David sobbed, his voice cracking with a devastation that sent ice through my veins. “The stove… I didn’t know she left the burner on. I tried to pull them out of the smoke, I swear I did!”<\/p>\n
Suddenly, he dropped his hands.<\/p>\n
His face instantly smoothed out. The tears vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating, dead-eyed stare. He cleared his throat, adjusted his collar, and narrowed his eyes at his own reflection.<\/p>\n
“No, too dramatic,” he muttered to himself in his normal, casual tone. “They’ll think I’m overcompensating.”<\/p>\n
He took a deep breath, pinched the bridge of his nose, and started again, forcing his voice to break perfectly. “Please, tell me they’re okay. My wife… my little boy. Please!”<\/p>\n
A wave of pure nausea hit me. I backed away, clapping a hand over my mouth to stifle the gasp clawing at my throat. Suddenly, all the tiny red flags I had ignored came rushing back: the heavy scent of natural gas I had dismissed as a fluke near the kitchen two days ago, and his absolute insistence on taking out that massive joint life insurance policy right after we returned from our honeymoon.<\/p>\n
Toby was right. David wasn’t sleeping. He was acting. He was rehearsing our tragedy.<\/p>\n
I turned back to the living room. Toby was still frozen on the rug, clutching his favorite stuffed bear. I didn’t pack a bag. I didn’t grab my purse. I just scooped my five-year-old into my arms, pressing his face tightly into my shoulder so he wouldn’t make a sound.<\/p>\n
We tiptoed toward the front door. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like a gunshot in the quiet house. As my trembling hand reached for the deadbolt, David’s voice drifted out from the bedroom again, louder this time.<\/p>\n
“Perfect,” he whispered to himself. “That’s the one.”<\/p>\n
I twisted the lock. Click.<\/p>\n
The bedroom door immediately swung wide open. Heavy footsteps stopped dead at the end of the hall.<\/p>\n
“Babe?” David’s voice called out in the darkness\u2014smooth, calm, and sickeningly sweet. “Is that you? You’re home early.”<\/p>\n
I yanked the front door open, sprinted barefoot down the driveway, and threw Toby into the backseat of my still-running car. I slammed the door and jammed the gearshift into reverse, tires squealing violently against the asphalt.<\/p>\n
As I sped out of the driveway, I looked back at the house. David had emerged onto the front porch, illuminated by the porch light. He was watching us drive away, his face twisting into that exact same mask of rehearsed, weeping horror I had just seen in the mirror.<\/p>\n
Only this time, I knew the monster hiding underneath it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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