Death Before Facebook

hours.”
    “I can already feel you against me, your hair tickling my chest…” He was playing their game.
    Her voice exploded in his ear. “Don’t, I can’t stand it!”
    “Ouch.”
    “Come.”
    “I can’t come into your house. You’re crazy.”
    “Come and I’ll do things you never even heard of; I’ll lick every part of your body and then I’ll do it again.”
    He didn’t answer.
    “I need you, Cole. My skin heats up when I think of you, and I’ve been thinking of you for hours. I’m burning alive. I have to have you. I’m going to light all the candles in the house and think about you till I feel you next to me. I’ll leave the key under the mat.”
    When he slipped into bed with her, on Leighton’s side, at first he thought her skin felt rough. But she was wearing lace, black lace, and black mesh stockings, with three-inch heels, in bed. She’d actually worn her shoes to bed.
    She had done what she said; she had lit all the candles and she had taken them into the bedroom.
    She was on top of him, the candlelight playing on her face, her hair cascading down her back, her body lithe and white under the black lace, when they heard the unmistakable sound of a door opening.
    The rest was a blur, the last real memory he had being Marguerite jumping off him. He remembered so well because it hurt so much. She had twisted her body, forgetting he was inside her, and had swung a leg over his chest, sitting on him rather than straddling, a lot of weight at once.
    She had screamed and thrown her hands up, he didn’t know why. And then he saw Leighton with the gun, looming over the bed, practically on them. But not quite.
    Marguerite ran at him, threw her body at him, and they fought. Cole got out of bed, ran at both of them, but it was too late; the gun went off, he wasn’t sure how, and Leighton was dead by the time he got there.
    He and Marguerite figured out what to do: make it look like a burglary and leave. It was only about ten o’clock; Marguerite could come home and find the body by eleven-thirty or so.
    They left Leighton where he was.
    All they had to do, really, was make up the bed as if nothing had happened. And remove the candles, of course.
    Then ransack the room a little.
    Marguerite had kept a surprisingly stiff upper lip throughout the whole thing, had been almost chipper.
    A good woman in a crisis
, he had thought at the time.
    As they were leaving, she gave him the gun to dispose of and an heirloom ring, something flashy but not valuable. So she could find something missing.
    They’d kept the door closed, in case Geoff woke up, and when they opened it, he was in the hall. Marguerite knelt and gathered him to her, saying, “Oh, my poor baby,” or something of the sort, and for the first time gave way to tears.
    He patted her shoulder. “It’s all right, Mommy.”
    “Sweetheart, how long have you been here?”
    He looked at the floor. “I don’t know. What was that big noise?”
    “You must have been dreaming, honey. I didn’t hear anything.”
    Cole made up Geoff’s bed and put away his pajamas while Marguerite got him dressed to go to his grandmother’s.
    When he thought about it now, Cole was glad Geoff was dead, that he never had to find out his mother had killed his father.
    * * *
     
    “Mom, are you all right?”
    It was the last thing Neetsie had said before they stuffed Marguerite into the back of a police car, as if she were the one who was guilty. Now she was hunched down, making herself as small as she could. She wasn’t sure why she was sitting that way, but it was the way her life was.
    Smaller.
    She didn’t know how to answer Neetsie. What did you say when your life disappeared chunk by chunk over the course of a week? When you realized the husband you loved had turned you into a drug addict? Worse still, that you had willingly collaborated.
    I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to think about it..
    I knew he killed Geoff. I must have known, as soon as I heard about the TOWN, and the flashbacks. But I was so out of it no one talked to me about it. I could keep quiet and I could sleep most of the time so I never had to think about it.
    Now she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
    It’s my fault. It’s all because I insisted on his coming over that night. Why did I do that? Was I crazy?
    But she knew she wasn’t, really. She was just young and in love and rebellious. And the times were right for illicit love and daring trysts.
    Yet how stupid. What a