Page 47 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

Back when Molly and I were friends, I used to watch her cat when she went on vacation.

Felix was deranged, and I adored him. He had a huge, poofy tail like a squirrel’s and performed death-defying acts of acrobatics across the apartment.

Occasionally, he went into attack mode, in which he decided our legs were the enemy and left deep scratches in our skin.

“Why don’t you get your own cat?” Molly asked me once.

“I don’t want my own cat. I just want Felix,” I told her.

One of the subtler stings in the end of our friendship was that I lost access to Felix, and thus, when I opened Molly’s door with the key that she had given me all those years prior for the purpose of pet sitting, I was delighted when Felix immediately rubbed his furry body against my legs.

I made Aidan wait in the car. I told him it was because I was worried about him being caught.

I explained that my DNA was already embedded in the seams of Molly’s couch from all the time we spent lying on it, watching reality television together.

His DNA, however, was foreign. His presence could only be nefarious.

In reality, I wanted a quiet moment in which to say goodbye.

When it was all said and done, I’d probably spent more hours with Molly than I had with Noah.

Romantic breakups were the subject of countless great works of literature and film, but friendship breakups didn’t receive the same treatment.

I’d jumped so quickly into my relationship with Rebecca that I hadn’t given myself time to mourn the loss of Molly.

Mourning, I thought, was something that other people did.

As I stood in Molly’s living room, something unlocked within me.

Her apartment had an open floor plan, which allowed me to view the whole space in a single glance.

There was the kitchen where we’d prepared meals that spanned from frozen pizza rolls to complicated cuisine.

There, the couch on which we drank wine and watched television.

There, the stain from when I spilled a glass of red wine on the floor, which still hadn’t come out.

A part of me wished that Molly were there so that I could tell her everything I was thinking.

I made a new best friend. It’s amazing how easy you were to replace. She watches all the same shows that you and I do. She drives a really nice car.

I’ve finally realized that you were correct about one thing, that Noah was wrong for me. To be fair, I don’t think he’s right for you either. I wish he’d gotten the chance to live as a person on his own before he was chopped into a million pieces.

I’ve started seeing a new guy, who knows about my parents. Actually, he’s obsessed with my parents. I think that maybe this one will stick.

I’m not sure if you’re the one who was working with Nicole. I’m not sure that I care. You can’t really think that I would let you get away with what you did.

I miss you. I think I always will. You were supposed to be a different kind of forever. I’m sorry that we didn’t last, but I’m not sorry for what I have to do.

Another part of me was glad that she wasn’t there, because if she were I might’ve had to kill her. I was no longer pretending that there were things that I wouldn’t do.

Felix trailed behind me as I made my way deeper into the apartment. There were traces of Noah throughout.

A pair of gym shoes by the door.

A laundry basket with boxers and scrubs.

A telltale glass of water on the bedside table, gathering dust.

I wondered what the days they’d spent together had been like, the glorious high of announcing a long-secret affair, followed by the comedown.

That was one of the problems with affairs.

They were built on the thrill of the secret rather than on true compatibility.

Of course, there were strong relationships that had started that way, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

How quickly did Molly realize that Noah was everything that I’d said he was, the absentee boyfriend who cared more about his work than about the people around him?

A nearly immediate shift? When she was a secret, he’d had to schedule her in.

When she became his girlfriend, she became another part of the background.

I imagined the way that she must have raged at him when he’d returned to her apartment after sleeping with me.

How could you? I thought you loved me. You told me you didn’t want Lexie anymore. Which is it, Noah? Who do you want?

Noah didn’t know how to handle a woman’s tears.

That was one of the reasons that he liked me.

I never cried, or asked anything of him.

I was easy. It was possible that I’d gone too far in that direction.

Maybe he liked how vulnerable and human Molly was.

He liked how much she needed him, until she needed him to be a good boyfriend, and then he didn’t like her anymore.

He packed a gym bag full of things and left.

Where had the bag gone? Where was the rest of his body?

I thought of the night that Molly showed up at my doorstep, asking if I knew where Noah was.

In retrospect, I thought she was trying to create a trail of plausible deniability.

Sooner or later, the police would come knocking on both our doors, and she wanted me to vouch for her goodness—but I couldn’t, not anymore.

Molly must’ve colluded with Nicole. Nicole had referenced having a “couple of elves,” which implied that she was working with more than just Ethan.

Molly must’ve been the one to tell her about my parents.

Molly’s part in conspiring with Nicole was hurt on top of hurt.

She knew how much I disliked Nicole, and she’d gone to her anyway.

She must’ve really hated me. I couldn’t believe that I’d never sensed her animosity.

It seemed so unfair that, outside of losing Noah, Molly had emerged unscathed.

She’d stolen my fiancé, murdered him when he wouldn’t stay, deposited his body parts at my house, and sabotaged my work.

I needed to show her some degree of the pain that she’d caused me.

I wanted her to be forced to sit and evaluate all the things that she’d ever done, to be broken down until she realized she wasn’t any more worthy of love than me.

That was why I hid the body parts throughout her apartment.

Molly was messy, a shopaholic. She fed my own worst monetary impulses.

Why save when I could buy something new?

She liked to buy fast-fashion hauls that she wore once and then never again.

Her square footage wasn’t enough to hold everything she bought; her apartment was bursting at the seams. It wasn’t difficult to find places to hide the body parts.

Now that they were no longer in the freezing cold, they would start to decompose, a process that would cause a stink.

Likely, that wouldn’t matter, as Molly was prone to procrastinating on taking out the garbage.

More than once, I’d walked into her apartment to find it reeking.

She didn’t seem to notice. To her, the odor emanating from the trash just smelled like home.

“How did it go?” Aidan asked when I got back to the car.

“When it’s done, we have to come back for Felix,” I said.

I stripped off my gloves and dropped them into a garbage bag.

“Who’s Felix?”

“Molly’s cat. He doesn’t deserve to be caught up in all this. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Projection” was another term that I’d learned in my college psychology courses. I couldn’t help but see myself in Felix, a victim of his mother’s wrongdoings. That Felix was feline seemed insignificant.

Aidan nodded.

“We’ll come back. Felix shouldn’t be left alone,” he said.

If I had any doubts about being with Aidan, they were erased in that moment.

We drove to a gas station, where I picked up a cheap burner phone. I’d never done such a thing before, but I’d learned quite a few tricks from watching movies. Whoever claimed that television wasn’t educational clearly hadn’t spent enough time watching it.

I called in a bomb threat. It was a practice known as “swatting,” and in several states it was illegal in itself.

Here was how it went: someone called the police to tell them there was a bomb planted in a particular location where, almost always, there was none.

The police swarmed said location, sometimes harming innocent people in the process.

I didn’t care if Molly got hurt, because Molly wasn’t innocent.

I made my threat—“There’s a bomb! Come quick! She’s a psychopath!”—then disconnected the call, dismantled the burner phone, and deposited it in a dumpster.

I found out later what happened next.

The police hurried to Molly’s building. They were aware of swatting as a practice, but they still needed to take bomb threats seriously.

Their arrival coincided with her return home from work.

She looked awful, worse than the last time I’d seen her.

Every day since Noah’s disappearance ate away at her a little more, probably because she’d killed him.

There was no bomb in her apartment, of course. The police canines determined that quickly enough. Molly was grateful for their presence. She thought they were protecting her. Though they didn’t find any bombs, they did find an assortment of human body parts. A heart, a foot, a liver.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Molly screamed as they cuffed her.

Tests confirmed that the body parts belonged to a man. Further tests confirmed that they belonged to Noah. The police did an investigation into who had made the call, but their search came up empty. Did it matter? Did it matter that they had only scattered bits and pieces of Noah?

“Where is the rest of him?” they asked.

“I don’t know! I didn’t do this. Someone is setting me up. I don’t know where he is!” Molly insisted.

No, they decided. It didn’t matter. She was the last one to see him. They’d fought, and he’d disappeared. Then parts of his body were found in her apartment. How could she be anything other than guilty?

Meanwhile, I brought Aidan home to the town house.

“This isn’t your house,” Aidan said.

“It is,” I insisted.

“No, this is the home of the person you were pretending to be,” he said. “The two of us will get something better.”

I thought of my favorite house, one where my parents and I had lived when I was a child, the one where my parents had murdered the first woman. It had been so nice until she died.

That was what I wanted. A house like that. Something that stood out from its neighbors. A place that people walked past and said things like I wonder who’s lucky enough to live there. They have amazing taste .

“You’re right,” I said.

I looked around the space that now appeared foreign to me, at the gray walls, gray floors, gray carpet.

I couldn’t remember who I’d been when I wanted that.

I was trying to fit in with all the women I’d gone to high school with.

They had bland homes, husbands, and children.

But I was wrong to think I could pull it off.

“I’m thinking of a nice Victorian,” I told Aidan. “Something big enough that I could have an in-home therapy practice when I finish school.”

“Sounds perfect,” he said.

And it did.