Twisted

card envelope, sealed. After he’d left she’d taken it out of the drawer and put it in the pocket of her black silk robe. There was no name or address on the front.
    He cradled the envelope and it seemed to him that the card was a burning ingot. His fingers stung and he could barely lift it, the cardboard square felt so heavy. He went into the bathroom and locked the door, just in case Mary came home early. He turned the envelope over and over in his hands. A dozentimes. Two dozen. He studied it carefully. She hadn’t licked the flap completely; he could pry up most of it but one part was firmly fixed and he couldn’t get it open without tearing the paper.
    He dug under the wash basin and he found an old razor blade then spent a half hour carefully scraping away at the glue on the flap.
    At six-thirty, with another quarter inch of flap to go, the phone rang and for once he was actually glad to hear Mary’s voice telling him that she’d be late. She said she’d met a friend at the mall and they were going to stop for a drink on the way home. Did Dennis want to join them?
    He told her he was too tired, hung up, and hurried back to the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, he scraped off the last bit of glue and with shaking hands he opened the flap.
    He pulled the card out.
    On the front was a picture of a Victorian couple, holding hands and looking out over a snowy backyard as candles glowed around them.
    He took a deep breath and opened the card.
    It was blank.
    And Dennis Linden understood that all his fears were true. There was only one reason to give someone a blank card. She and her lover were too afraid of being caught to write anything—even a harmless note. Hell, now that he thought about it, a blank card was far worse than an inscribed one—the understood message was of such deep love and passion that words wouldn’t convey what they felt.
    The little things . . .
    Something within his mind clicked and he knewwithout a doubt that Mary was seeing someone and probably had been for months.
    Who?
    Somebody at the company, he bet. How could he find out who’d gone with her to San Francisco in September? Maybe he could call the company and pretend to be somebody with an airline, asking about travel records. Or an accountant? Or he could call the men in her company phone directory . . . .
    Rage consumed him.
    Dennis tore the card into a dozen pieces, flung them across the room, then fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a half hour. Trying to calm himself.
    But couldn’t. He kept replaying all the opportunities Mary’d had to cheat on him. Her church bake sales, her drives to and from work, her lunch hours, the nights she and Patty (well, she claimed it was Patty) would stay in the city after shopping and a play . . .
    The phone rang. Was it her? he wondered. He grabbed the receiver. “Yeah?”
    There was a pause. Sid Farnsworth said, “Den? You okay?”
    “Not really, no.” He explained what he’d found.
    “Just a . . . You said it was blank?”
    “Oh, you bet it was.”
    “And it wasn’t addressed to anybody?”
    “Nope. That’s the point. That’s what makes it so bad.”
    Silence. Then his friend said, “Tell you what, Den . . . I’m thinking maybe you shouldn’t be alone right now. How ’bout you meet Doris and me for a drink?”
    “I don’t want a goddamn drink. I want the truth!”
    “Okay, okay,” Sid said fast. “But you’re sounding a little freaked out, man. Let me come over, we’ll watch the game or something. Or go up the road to Joey’s.”
    How could she do this to him? After everything he’d done for her! He’d put food in her mouth, a roof over her, he’d given her a Lexus. He satisfied her in bed. He struggled to keep his temper in check. And the one time he hit her . . . hell, he apologized right after and bought her the car to make up for it. He did all of this for her and she didn’t appreciate it one bit.
    Lying whore . . .
    Where the hell was she? Where?
    “What’d you say, Den? I couldn’t hear you. Listen, I’m on my way—”
    He looked at the phone then dropped it into the cradle.
    Sid lived only ten minutes away. Dennis had to leave now. He didn’t want to see the man. He didn’t want his friend to talk him out of what he had to do.
    Dennis stood up. He went to his dresser and took something that he’d hidden not long ago. A Smith & Wesson .38 revolver.
    He pulled on his down jacket—a birthday present from