Page 63 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer

“Unless he crawled out and is watching true crime documentaries to critique our form.”

Amy stretches her legs out in front of her. “I also brought wine and a family-size pack of mini peanut butter cups for dessert. Plus, tequila to switch it up when we celebrate later.”

“Solid priorities.”

“Anything else happen while I was gone?” she asks, toeing off her shoes.

“Aside from almost fucking my ex-husband to keep him from finding the corpse I’ve hidden in the garage that I had a breakdown over in the shower. Nope.”

Amy doesn’t even blink. “So... a normal Tuesday.”

I let out a short, strangled laugh. “God, what are we even doing?”

“We’re improvising. Poorly. But we’re doing it together.”

My throat tightens. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

“Yeah, you can. You’re just not supposed to do it alone.”

“He’s going to find out, Ames.”

“He’s not going to find out. Now, tell me what happened when happened after I left today.”

We open the wine, settle on the couch, and I tell her about meeting with the school and how I fell asleep on the couch, and then Noah came back wanting to get tools from the garage and work on the bathroom. I bring my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them. “I’ll be honest, Ames, I was kind of hoping you’d come back with a full plan. Maybe a backhoe. Or fake passports.”

“I called a guy about a wood chipper, but he didn’t call back.”

I laugh again, but it’s thinner now. The kind of laugh that only holds back the scream.

Amy refills our wine glasses and lines up her peanut butter cups like little edible soldiers. “You kind of side-lined me with all your talk of hot sex and composting. I haven’t told you my news yet.”

“You have news?” I ask.

“I texted you a million times.”

“Right,” I say nodding. “Your plan.”

“My perfect and brilliant plan.”

I motion with my hands for her to continue.

She sits forward on the couch, excitement lighting her face. “So, my plan is called, wait for it, Operation Concrete Slab!” She pauses for reaction. “That’s funny, right?”

I nod. “Lay it on me, sister.”

“Okay.” She sits forward, excitement lighting up her face. “You know how there’s those new houses being built over on Hyacinth Street?”

“Yeah, they look nice.”

“Right, well, they just started pouring the concrete slabs, but they haven’t finished all of them yet.”

“You want to bury him in a concrete slab?” I ask.

“Nooo,” she says drawing the word out. “That would be next to impossible.” She pauses for another sip of wine. “I want to bury him in the dirt underneath where they plan to pour the concrete slab.”

“Can we do that? Like, logistically? I mean, aren’t those spots all pounded down and leveled out?”

“I thought about that.” She points a finger in the air, illustrating her point. “How hard can it be to just re-level a Doug-sized portion of that?”