The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford

probably has, that he’s likely in pursuit of Peter to see if his is the unclear face in Celia’s cell. Dana feels a slight wave of relief, a second or two of normal breathing, until it occurs to her again that she’s the one he’s watching. Observing. Stalking.
    â€œSo is he around much these days?”
    â€œNot really. Why?”
    â€œI just . . . I was thinking we could all get together, but then I— Sometimes I forget she’s gone.”
    Dana stares at him, at the way he fidgets with the objects in his hands, his slinky, half-crazed eyes. He’s acting very weird, although, really, he always seemed to her a little off. Still, the husband is often a prime suspect in a murder like Celia’s. She remembers this from many late-night Law & Order reruns, and she reminds herself that stereotypes exist for a reason. She wonders how much Ronald knows about his probable cuckolding. If he’s found the photo in the phone, he’s also found the almost certain cluster of calls to and from Peter. Has Ronald pushed his fat little thumb down on Peter’s name—or possibly a simple “P” for the sake of clandestiny—and reached Peter’s answering machine? Has Ronald started putting two and two together? Is he on some sort of mission to avenge his dead wife? Dana looks away. She avoids his eyes, hard and scanning, always scanning—the aisles, her face, scanning, scanning, scanning. He seems out of control. He seems slightly crazy. She studies the contents of her shopping cart, fiddles with her purse strap. “Will there be a service?”
    Ronald shakes his head. “We can’t do anything until they finish the”—he takes a deep breath—“the autopsy. Here,” he says, and he hands her a business card.
    â€œThanks.” Dana drops it into her bag. “You’ll let me know, then?”
    â€œSure thing,” he says, which Dana thinks is a totally odd thingfor him to say, all things considered. Or possibly it’s the cheery way he says it, the inanely pedophilic items he’s sticking on the conveyer belt.
    â€œThese yours, ma’am?” The cashier holds up a box of carob-covered animal crackers and a rubber duck.
    â€œUmm . . . no,” Dana says.
    â€œThey’re mine.” Ronald moves closer. “My stepchildren—” he starts to say, but Dana swipes her debit card, reaches for her receipt, and picks up her bags.
    â€œRonald,” she says, “do you by any chance have Celia’s cell phone with you?”
    â€œWhat,” he says, “here?”
    Dana nods.
    â€œNo,” he says. “I left it back in my room. Why? Why do you ask?” He turns toward her, and his face is red in the natural-childbirth lighting of the Root Seller. He looks like someone else for a minute; he looks like a stranger. Confrontational, like a road-rager pulling alongside her on the highway.
    â€œI’d like to look at her photos.”
    He scrunches up his face; his eyes are tiny circles, like drills boring. He opens his mouth to answer, but then he snaps it shut, leaving a small, slightly boozy bubble in the air between them. “Do you have my key?”
    â€œYes. God! Here.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out an overloaded key ring. The colorful braided attachment Jamie made in eighth grade swings madly as she struggles to free Ronald’s key. “I forgot I had this,” she says, thrusting it toward him.
    He frowns. “You sure about that? I—” But before he can go on, Dana grabs her bags.
    â€œBye,” she calls out, and disappears through the automatic doors, nearly running across the parking lot. It will push her over the edge if she has to spend another minute with Ronald, who is clearly now an angry, scary man, probably a millisecondfrom accusing her of breaking into his house the night Celia died. The bigger issue is how he knows this. Was he inside,