Buried Truths and Cursed Vows

They were nothing but echoes in an otherwise empty home. To save his life, Mark Thompson would either have to kill her, or kill himself and this was proving to be quite a difficult decision to make. The problem was, people assumed she—his wife—had died a long, long time ago— something about an obituary, or an accident? A couple mistaken dates and a one hell of a slip-up at the DMV—later, he was in a pickle. He couldn’t just kill her again, how would that work? Besides, she hadn’t done anything wrong. She was the perfect wife, until she wasn’t.

Everything changed when a letter arrived at the Thompson’s house— an uninvited guest—whose appearance seemed to stir up more problems than it did good for both Lana Thompson and her husband Mark. But, if Mark Thompson was bothered he made no declaration. There’d been no discussion, arguments, or mentions of any such letter arriving at their home. In fact, if one was paying attention, it would seem the letter and its contents had never even been opened. That is what Mark Thompson would have you believe and he surely wasn’t about to tell his wife about this latest discovery. She would have to find out for herself.

His eyes adjusted to the familiar haze of his kitchen and how pointless it felt. No bustling home-cooked meals, or half-drunk wine glasses scattered about. None of the usual frivolities, just him alone with his thoughts as that letter burned a hole into the kitchen table, quietly tucked under a placemat—for what, he had no clue. It sure as hell wasn’t for safekeeping. Maybe one day, his wife would come to understand the truth, but that day wouldn’t be today. For now, she slept quietly unaware of the trouble brewing just one floor below, simmering heavy beneath the veil of a long-forgotten spouse.

It would be three-weeks exactly before Mark Thompson realized the danger he was in, or the choices he would have to make. No one could have seen it coming. But that was the point, right? Lana Thompson met with the only remaining friend she had—Marjory Edenfield, the one person who knew the truth. The women pondered life over the hottest coffee in town as they discussed their next set of road-trips. But first, you need to understand, nothing bad was ever supposed to happen and if it had been any other ordinary marriage, Lana Thompson might have missed the signs—just like you or I had.

“Do you think people create rivers between themselves? Gulfs, craters, barriers? I do. Deep in conversation their eyes tell a thousand stories. If you watch carefully, half-truths will surely slip from their lips, all in vain effort to persuade themselves that they are in fact, fine. Everything is fine. Life is fine, we are fine, nothing is wrong. All the right things are said and done, just maybe not at the right time and that is exactly how we got into this mess to begin with. Dozens of tiny little secrets left to pile up once the damage settles and the unspoken thoughts begin to unpack themselves. It’s how the cycle continued to repeat itself day in- and day out until someone does something drastic, crazy, or unthought of.”

Of course, as it were, everything always looks better from far away, or at least, it usually does. Especially from the outside looking in.

Just hours before, the Thompson’s bedroom faded into view of Lana’s weary eyes as the heavy crescendo of aggressive classical music flooded the dead air of her mind. Specs of dust floated aimlessly towards the soft cotton duvet. A thickly wool pullover tucked over their bodies as half-slept drool pooled over Lana’s fingers. She’d barely slept a wink. Her husband’s familiar snore sounded from nearby as her eyes traced the outline from his eyebrows to the end of his nose—wondering how they had gone this long without talking or when the next time would be that she could steal the time to stare at her beautiful husband in his peaceful state of slumber. Now this was all she had to remember him by. Looking back, she couldn’t recall what he was wearing, or how his voice sounded on the day he went missing. It was guys night at the nearby Thirsty-Tap. Had he mentioned changing his plans for the evening and she just forgot?

It was well into the evening by the time Lana stepped over the shower wall. The icy hold of fear graced her spine as she reached for a towel. Things were about to go terribly wrong, she just had no clue how terribly until she felt the excruciating pop of the tendon in her ankle as it snapped, sending her face first into the damp tile below, bright red puddling between the grout lines as something in her mind split all the way open for the world to see.

When she awoke, hours must have passed by. The house was eerily silent and the scent of dried blood clouded her nostrils. Their bed sat unmade and empty and the world around her was dark. The computer monitor that housed her remote job sat quiet, having timed out earlier in the day.

It had been an agonizing crawl from the bathroom to the nightstand, a trail of smeared blood followed in her wake. Lana clutched her cellphone as Marjory struggled to make sense of what was going on.

“He’s gone,” Lana whimpered. Barely giving her friend time to answer her call.

“Please come...” Lana continued, her throat tightening around the welling lump of fear rising from her stomach.

“How do you know he is gone, maybe he is still out with the boys,” Marjory tried consoling Lana but it was to no avail. “It’s 2:30 in the morning Marge…he should be back by now, something’s very, very wrong.”

Lana flipped through what she could remember of the day—but everything was cloudy. “I am on my way. If you really think something happened, we need to call the police.”

“I know Marge, I know…but what if they find out?”

“You can’t worry about that now. Don’t bring it up unless they ask, and even then…” Marge fell silent. It was a difficult thing to ask a friend to do—lie. Especially when police were involved but she’d been doing such a good job of keeping their stories together, what would one-more little lie be amongst friends.

The video released to the news showed Mark Thompson walking away from the Thirsty-Tap around 1AM. Stills frozen in time, only ten-seconds of footage was ever released to the public and Lana had memorized every horrifying detail as her husband wandered aimlessly into the cold night. His towering muscular frame disappearing into the fog forever. Just as she, herself had done so many years before. No other camera seemed to pick up anymore movement. Detectives began the mind-numbing task of digging through the Thompson’s life, trying to understand what had actually taken place. Now the entire world would know his face and his name. Maybe a bored, listless housewife would dig into their pasts and dredge the whole dreadful thing back up to the surface. He had to know disappearing would bring a whole slew of problems for his wife.

“He’d better be dead,” Lana whispered into the back of her teeth, hoping no one had heard, her eyes growing large at the thought of what else could be.

“It’s not much to go on,” Detective David Rothmeyer mused, nodding at another Detective off in the corner as he began sorting his notes. Lana huddled close to Marjory, the blood still caked in dried clumps to her hair. “The wife was passed out in the bathroom. EMS already tended to her ankle and her head injuries. Crime-Scene has picked over this place with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing out of the ordinary was found. He left his car a few blocks from the bar. Walked in, met with friends. Was seen chatting up a female towards the exit—and from there, he simply walked out into the night and vanished. We are still working on locating witnesses. The bar gave us some receipts. Starting from there...but his phone and cards have not been used or recovered.”

“Mrs. Thompson, could your husband have been seeing someone else? Maybe he went off to be with another woman?”

The color drained from Lana’s face as the words collided into her like an out-of-bounds freight-train. Lana Thompson had never thought of that before. She had the perfect marriage to the perfect husband—albeit a bit of an unusual arrangement but nothing had ever been bad, or different, they’d never even had an argument. He was the most easy-going, understanding guy she’d ever known. Maybe that was where they’d gone wrong all those years before. She’d been so wrapped up in becoming the person she was pretending to be, that she’d forgotten the most important thing—her husband.

He had after-all, learned everything from her, so what made this any different? Was it likely he had left her to start another life with someone else? It wasn’t an impossible notion to imagine—it was sort of how they’d met.

“Lana, you were passed out for several hours and there are signs someone tried to move you. Is it possible your husband came back to the house to get a few things, realized you were unconscious and used that as the perfect opportunity to leave without you ever knowing?”—a females voice cut over the loud thoughts and idle chatter—a Detective, Detective Anita Johnson stood alone, leaning firmly against the wall where her husband Mark usually held their nightly ‘recaps’—using the trim to scratch his back as he discussed updates regarding his day-to-day interactions at work and all the things she had to give up to keep this life going.

Lana shook her head.

“Something is missing. We are running down every lead, but if you can think of anything else, please call me immediately, my cell phone is on the back.”

Once the house fell quiet again, and Marjory and the last of the officers left. Lana thought back to everything her husband had sacrificed to be married to her. It wasn’t easy, everything had been in his name. Everything, by design, or else this wouldn’t work and yet, somehow, someway, it still hadn’t worked. Maybe her husband had fallen in love with someone else, yes, that had to be it. The whole ‘mourning period’ for a young, attractive man was not ideal and couldn’t be stretched past two-years. They’d made it to five. Five agonizing, grueling years of pretending to be an unwed, grieving husband—and all for what? It would seem she’d lost everything now. They’d been living two very separate and parallel lives held together by one common glue—lies.

His friends wouldn’t allow him to go that long without forcing someone much younger and prettier onto him. He was after-all, a widow. He couldn’t just go on explaining that his dead wife was secretly living in their house in a whole new town under a whole new name.

I was married, then I wasn’t—Lana Thompson mused quietly to herself. Nervously twisting the rings on her finger as she wondered what next to do. It had all happened so fast, knocking the wind from her sails as she felt her world collapsing around her. The only world she’d ever known. How easy it must’ve been for her husband to just decide to leave, just like that, overnight, without warning—and to think, all of this was his idea. New job, new city, new identities. So why, why was he keeping her a caged bird, locked away from the world? Why couldn’t they just have started over together? They were still legally married, there was just a small paperwork mix-up that declared her dead—or at least, it declared Katherine Benson dead.

Suppose this is better than the alternative—maybe he had thought she was dead, lying on the floor in a blanket of blood. She’d made it easy for him to leave, was that his plan all along? If he had been in the house he hadn’t rendered any aid, or called for help—it sure seemed that way.

Lana Thompson crumpled the pages of the letter, but thought against throwing it away. She wondered why he’d left it hidden. Her heart skipped several beats. Her husband must have known the gig was up, so why hadn’t he warned her. The words flooded the pages— “I know who you are Katherine, not the wife your husband thinks you are. Tell your husband I will see him soon; his secret isn’t safe with me and neither is yours.”

Her real identity sat exposed, pulled apart by some figment of her past—a ghost. A woman she’d long forgotten about.

The unfortunate thing was, Lana, or Katherine, or whomever she was now had lived an easy, simple, peace-filled life for years, flying just enough under the radar to not be seen. With Mark, she was safe. Now, with him gone, their past was going to be uncovered and she had no idea what to do to save herself.

Lana’s eyes lingered on the kitchen counter, a small wicker basket that usually held his keys and wallet were empty, bare. She hobbled back and forth, pacing the familiar steps of her house. Each room a stark reminder of the gaping hole. A staged trap. Was he the bait, or was she? Lana wondered what he had done all those years before. He’d been a doctor in his previous life, that’s all she knew. They’d never actually talked about what happened. I mean, her secrets were bad enough.

Scrawled on the back of the envelope, his familiar scribbles— “I’m sorry, she came back. Hope you understand. This is how it was supposed to be."

The words etched into her soul like a geyser, erupting into a continuous void. He’d left, hoping she would understand. He had left her and for what? To save her, or himself?

It was true, her husband had disappeared, not from a bar, but from their life and the past she had thought they long buried. Lana stared out the window, the street calm, no signs of life as the wildflowers gently swayed on the uncut grass. The world was going on around her whether she liked it or not. It was suburban finery. Lana held her breath, the house suffocating her as she stifled another scream. How did she find them?

The question wasn’t where her husband had gone, the question was—was she next?

A faint scratching sound came from just overhead as a thud rang out. It was something she had heard off-and-on for years, now this time it sounded with purpose as a small voice hissed from within— “how did you like the letter, must have been hard to read, hard for your husband to find out this way.”

Lana’s blood ran ice-cold. It’d been twenty-years since she had heard that voice. The voice of her former class-mate Diane Heffernan.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Lana hissed, her hands balled in fury.

“So are you, my dear. I saw that husband of yours decided to leave town. Must’ve known this day was coming. I think it’s about time we sort through the pieces, what do you think?”

Lana backed into the bar-stool, tipping it over—Diane wasn’t alone. She never was.