I had met Rebecca two years earlier at a charity dinner in downtown Chicago.
I was sixty-one, widowed, lonely, and convinced I was old enough to recognize dangerous people.
Rebecca was fifty-two, polished, funny, and patient.
She never pushed at first.
That was what made everything harder to understand.
For almost a year, she seemed nearly perfect.
She remembered my late wife’s birthday without acting threatened by her memory.
She brought soup when Emily had pneumonia.
She bought Noah dinosaur pajamas.
When I proposed, Emily congratulated us.
Only later did things begin to change.
Rebecca started asking about my retirement accounts.
She wanted to know if Emily’s name appeared on my deed.
She suggested updating my will.
Individually, every question sounded reasonable.
“You’re sixty-three,” she told me. “Planning isn’t morbid. It’s responsible.”
I agreed.
I even scheduled an appointment with an estate attorney.
I had no idea Rebecca appeared to be making plans of her own.
That evening, police contacted Emily about her report.
An officer asked whether she wanted to submit additional digital evidence.
She said yes.
Michael drove her to the station.
I stayed with Noah.
While he played with wooden trains on Sarah’s living-room floor, I watched him with a painful heaviness in my chest.
A three-year-old had protected his mother while I had been getting ready to marry the woman who frightened him.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“Are you still marrying Rebecca?”
“No.”
His face relaxed.
“Okay.”
That one word nearly broke me.
Later, I checked the security cameras at my house.
Rebecca had access because we had planned to live there together after the honeymoon.
At 8:42 p.m., her car entered the driveway.
I immediately called Michael.
“She’s at my house.”
“Don’t go there.”
NEXT PAGE
