I woke up in the middle of the night—my husband wasn’t in bed. The digital clock on the nightstand pulsed a rhythmic, bleeding red: 3:12 a.m. I lay there for a moment, waiting for the sound of the shower or the flush of a toilet, but the house was tomb-silent. My skin prickled. Mark was a heavy sleeper, the kind of man who drifted off during movie credits and didn’t stir until the coffee pot hissed at 7:00 a.m. I rolled over and felt his side of the mattress. It was cool. He had been gone for a while.
I padded down the hallway, my bare feet silent on the hardwood. I checked the kitchen—empty. The living room—empty. Then, the heavy click of the deadbolt echoed through the foyer. The front door swung open, and Mark walked in. He was wearing his heavy winter coat over his pajamas, his face pale and tight.
“Where were you?” I asked, my voice cracking the silence.
“TAKING OUT THE TRASH,” he said. His voice was too loud, too rehearsed.
“At three a.m.?” I was stunned. A cold draft followed him in, smelling of wet pavement and something metallic.
“Yes,” he said flatly. He didn’t meet my eyes. He walked past me, shed his coat, and went straight back to bed without another word.
It was obvious he was lying. I knew it in my marrow. I marched into the kitchen and yanked open the cabinet under the sink. The bin was empty. A fresh lemon-scented liner had already been tucked into the rim. He had actually taken the trash out—but why? We lived in a gated suburb. The garbage truck didn’t come until Tuesday. It was Sunday night.
I had nothing. No proof of an affair, no smell of perfume, just an empty plastic bin and a husband who was acting like a stranger.
The next night, I resolved to stay awake. I lay stiffly under the duvet, staring at the shadows dancing on the ceiling, listening to the rhythmic whistle of Mark’s breathing. I wanted to catch him. I wanted to see the moment he slipped out of the sheets.
But exhaustion is a heavy blanket. Somewhere between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m., the adrenaline faded, and I dozed off.
When morning came, the sun was streaming through the blinds. I reached out. Mark was already gone, likely in the shower. I bolted to the kitchen. I hadn’t even cooked dinner the night before; there should have been nothing in the bin but a few coffee grounds and a yogurt cup.
The trash was gone again. The cabinet door swung open to reveal another pristine, empty bag. My heart hammered against my ribs. It wasn’t about the chores. Nobody is that dedicated to sanitation. He was disposing of something. Or he was meeting someone.
The night after that, I didn’t leave it to chance. I set my phone to vibrate and tucked it under my pillow. When it buzzed at 3:00 a.m., I jerked awake instantly.
I reached out to my left. His side of the bed was cold.
I didn’t turn on the lights. I grabbed my robe and stepped into the hallway. This time, I didn’t wait in the kitchen. I went to the heavy curtains in the living room and peeled back a sliver of fabric to look at the driveway.
Mark was there. He wasn’t walking toward the curb where our large rolling bins sat. Instead, he was walking toward the detached garage at the back of the property. He was carrying a black heavy-duty contractor bag, the kind used for construction debris. He was struggling with the weight of it, his shoulders hunched, his knees buckling slightly.
He disappeared into the garage. Five minutes passed. Ten.
Then, he emerged—empty-handed. He locked the garage door with a key I didn’t recognize, wiped his hands on his pants, and looked around the yard with a frantic, darting gaze. He looked terrified.
I ducked behind the curtain, my heart in my throat. I heard the front door open and close, the lock turning, and his heavy footsteps heading toward the stairs. I waited until I heard the bedroom door shut before I moved.
I didn’t put on shoes. I grabbed the spare set of house keys from the junk drawer, hoping the old garage skeleton key was still on the ring.
The backyard air was freezing. The grass was slick with dew, numbing my toes. I reached the garage and tried the handle. Locked. I tried the three keys on the ring. None of them fit. Mark had changed the locks.
I walked around to the side window, which was painted shut years ago. I took a heavy decorative stone from the garden bed and, with a shaking hand, tapped the corner of the glass until it spider-webbed. I cleared the shards and climbed inside.
The smell hit me first. It wasn’t the smell of rotting food. It was chemical—bleach and ammonia, thick enough to sting my eyes.
I turned on my phone’s flashlight. The garage was usually a mess of rusted lawnmowers and half-finished wood projects. Now, it was cleared. In the center of the concrete floor sat a brand-new industrial chest freezer, plugged into the outlet near the workbench.
The contractor bags were piled next to it.
I approached the freezer. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely grip the lid. I pulled. It was heavy, sealed tight with a layer of frost already forming around the rim.
When the lid finally creaked open, I didn’t see another woman. I didn’t see evidence of a crime I could easily understand.
Inside the freezer were dozens of small, vacuum-sealed packages. Each one was labeled with a date and a name. My breath hitched as I read the closest one:
“SARAH. NOVEMBER 12. 40% RECOVERED.”
Sarah was my sister. She had gone missing three years ago. The police said she had wandered off, a victim of her own struggles.
I dug deeper, my fingernails scraping the ice. Underneath Sarah’s packages were more. “ELLEN.” My best friend from college. “MARCUS.” Our neighbor’s son.
They weren’t bodies. They were… pieces. Samples. Sorted and filed away like a macabre library.
Then, I saw a bag at the very top, fresh and glistening. It didn’t have a name yet. It just had today’s date. I looked closer at the “trash” Mark had been carrying. It wasn’t trash at all. It was the clothes I had been wearing the week before—the ones I thought the dry cleaner had lost—soaked in something dark and unrecognizable.
“I told you I was just taking out the trash, honey.”
The voice came from the broken window. Mark was standing there, silhouetted by the moonlight, holding the heavy garden stone I had used to break in. He wasn’t angry. He looked relieved.
“I was trying to keep the house clean,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying, dull light. “But you always were so messy. You just keep leaving things behind.”
He began to climb through the window. I looked at the freezer, then at the heavy padlock on the workbench, and realized that for the last ten years, I hadn’t been a wife.
I had been a collection.
