The Teacher

Chapter One

EVE

THREE MONTHS EARLIER

PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS TELLING me how lucky I am.

They tell me that I have a beautiful house, a fulfilling career, and I constantly get compliments on my shoes. But I’m not kidding myself. When people tell me that I’m lucky, they’re not talking about my house or my career or even my shoes. They’re talking about my husband. They’re talking about Nate.

Nate is humming to himself as he brushes his teeth. It took me almost a year of brushing my teeth next to him in the morning before I realized that it’s always the same song. “All Shook Up” by Elvis Presley. When I asked him about it, he laughed and told me his mother taught him the song clocks in at exactly two minutes, which is how long you’re supposed to brush your teeth for.

I have started to hate that song with every fiber of my being.

The same damn song every single morning for eight years of marriage. I could probably solve the problem if we didn’t brush our teeth at the same time each morning, but we always do. We try to maximize our bathroom efficiency in the morning, given that we leave at the same time and are going to the same place.

Nate spits toothpaste in the sink, then rinses his mouth out. I have already finished brushing my teeth, but I linger there. He grabs the mouthwash and gargles the caustic blue liquid.

“I don’t know how you stand that stuff,” I comment. “Mouthwash tastes like acid to me.”

He spits it back into the sink and grins at me. He has perfect teeth. Straight and white, but not so white that you need to look away. “It’s refreshing. Cleanliness is before godliness, you know.”

“It’s horrible.” I shudder. “Just don’t kiss me after gargling with that stuff.”

Nate laughs, and I suppose it is funny because he rarely kisses me anyway. One perfunctory peck when we part ways in the morning, one when we greet each other in the evening, and then one before bed. Three kisses per day. Our sex life is equally regimented—the first Saturday of every month. It used to be every Saturday, then every other Saturday, and now for the last two years, we have settled into the current pattern. I’m tempted to program it into our shared iPhone calendar as a recurring appointment.

I pick up the blow-dryer to eliminate the residual dampness from my hair, while Nate runs a hand through his own short strands of brown hair, then picks up a razor to shave his face. As I watch the two of us in the mirror, it’s hard to deny the plain fact that Nate is by far the more attractive of the two of us. There’s no contest.

My husband is incredibly handsome. If somebody made a movie about his life, they would be tapping all the sexiest stars in Hollywood to fill the role. Short but thick deep brown hair, chiseled features, an adorably lopsided smile, and now that he bought that set of weights to keep in our basement, his chest is turning into solid muscle.

I, on the other hand, am decidedly plain. I’ve had thirty years to come to terms with it, and I’m absolutely fine with the fact that my muddy brown eyes will never have the playful glimmer that Nate’s have, my dull brown hair will never do anything but lie limply on my scalp, and none of my features are quite the right size for my face. I am too skinny—all dangerously sharp angles and no curves to speak of. If someone were to make a movie about my life… Well, there’s no point in even talking about it because such a thing would be impossible. People don’t make movies about women like me.

When people say I’m lucky, what they really mean is that Nate is way out of my league. But I’m a little younger, so at least there’s that.

I leave the bathroom to finish dressing, and Nate follows me to do the same. I select a crisp white blouse, buttoned up to my throat, and I pair it with a tan skirt, because in New England, you’ve got only three months of skirt weather—four if you’re lucky. After sliding into a pair of pantyhose, I slip my feet into a pair of black Jimmy Choo stiletto pumps. It’s only after I’ve got them on my feet that I notice Nate is watching me, his brown tie hanging loose around his neck.

“Eve,” he says.

I already know what he’s going to say, and I’m hoping he won’t say it. “Hmm?”

“Are those new shoes?”

“These?” I don’t lift my eyes. “No. These are years old. In fact, I think I wore them on the first day of school last year.”

“Oh. Okay…”

He doesn’t believe me, but he looks down at his own shoes—a pair of brown leather loafers that really are years old—and doesn’t say another word. When he’s upset, he never yells. Occasionally, he will scold me for things I should not have done, but he rarely even does that anymore. My husband is admirably even-tempered. And in that way, I suppose I am lucky.

As Nate does the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt, he glances at his watch. “You ready to go? Or do you want to grab breakfast?”

Nate and I both work at Caseham High School, and today is the first day of school. I teach math, and he teaches English. He is probably the most popular teacher in the entire school, especially now that Art Tuttle is gone. My friend and fellow teacher Shelby told me that Nate topped the list that the senior girls made of the five hottest teachers at Caseham High. He won by a landslide.

We rarely carpool to work in the morning. It does seem decadent to leave from the same place and arrive at the same location and yet take two different cars, but he always stays later than me at school, and I don’t want to be stuck there. But since today is the first day of school, we are traveling together. “Let’s go,” I say. “I’ll grab coffee at school.”

Nate nods. He never eats breakfast—he says it unsettles his stomach.

My Jimmy Choo pumps clack satisfyingly against the floor as I make my way to the front door of our two-story house. Our house is small—we had to pay for it on two teachers’ salaries—but in so many ways, it’s the house of my dreams. We have three bedrooms, and Nate talks about filling the other two bedrooms with children in the near future, although I’m not sure how we will achieve that on our current schedule of intimacy. I went off birth control a year ago, just to “see what happens,” and so far it’s been a lot of nothing.

Nate climbs into the driver’s seat of his Honda Accord. Whenever we go anywhere together, we always take his car, and he always drives. It’s part of our routine. Three kisses per day, sex once a month, and Nate is always the one who drives.

I am so lucky. I have a beautiful house, a fulfilling career, and a husband who is kind and mild mannered and incredibly handsome. And as Nate pulls the car onto the road and starts driving in the direction of the school, all I can think to myself is that I hope a truck blows through a stop sign, plows into the Honda, and kills us both instantly.