Free Switcheroo by Goldsmith Olivia

it’s a younger woman! Do you think men cheat on their wives because they miss their grandmothers?” Mildred glanced toward her husband. Jim was still in the living room and the GIs were still eating lead on the beach. He was entranced. If a sociopath with a can of acid and a butcher knife had been at the door, Mildred would be blinded and gutted at this very moment while Jim waited for a commercial break to channel surf. Men! What were they good for? “It’s your daughter,” Mildred called out to him.
    “Hi, honey. Want to watch the Nazis?” Jim called back, his eyes still glued to the screen.
    “No, dear. We’re going to have a little chat instead,” Mildred told him. She wasn’t sure if he heard or not, but since he didn’t move she figured he didn’t need any further communiqués from the front. Mildred took her daughter’s arm and led her upstairs.
    “Where are we going?” Sylvie asked, still wiping at her eyes with her hands, just the way she’d done when she was small.
    “To cry our eyes out for two hours. You’re getting into bed and I’m bringing you a hearing pad. Then we’ll talk.” Mildred led her into the bedroom, made her sit on the bed, then knelt and took off Sylvie’s shoes. “Lie down,” she said, and Sylvie did. Mildred drew the chenille spread up over her and tucked it under her shoulders, just the way she liked it.
    Sylvie awoke in her old canopy bed. Everything in the room was dated: teenager circa 1967. The house was a big one, and Mildred had left the children’s rooms just as they had been. There was a shelf of Barbie dolls still on display and a blue Princess phone. The light was fading outside. Mildred was sitting in the dimness on the bed beside Sylvie, who sat up slowly and stretched. “What time is it?” she asked.
    “Time to stop dealing with suspicion and start looking for facts,” Mildred told her.
    “Is the crane gone?”
    “The crane, your car, your brother, and Bob. They’re all wet and they’re all gone,” Mildred said. “The coast, as they say, is clear.”
    Sylvie threw the blankets off and stood up.
    “Where are you going?” Mildred asked.
    “Next door. Back home. I have some research to do.”
    Sylvie was sitting in the dimness of her dining room ensconced behind Bob’s desk. In all their years of marriage, she’d never even glanced at open mail on it. Now every pigeonhole and drawer was emptied. She’d even lifted up the blotter, to look under it. She had bits of papers, cards, and receipts spread out around her on the desk top and the dining room table. It had grown dark outside but Sylvie hadn’t bothered to turn on the lamp. She didn’t need to survey any more of this. What she had in front of her was not just a paper trail of betrayal but a sort of First-Time-Do-It-Yourself-Adultery-Kit. Her hands were shaking, but she hoped she had the strength to shoot Bob when he came in the door—if only she had a bullet. Or a gun to shoot it with.
    She wouldn’t aim for the heart or the head—she was enraged but not deranged. She didn’t want to go to prison. She would only shoot him in the legs, both of them. Then he’d hurt a little bit, but not the way she did. After he bled and cried for a while, he could drag himself behind her to his damn car and she’d drive it while he bled all over the upholstery. They could go to John, who would discreetly take out the bullets. After that, she’d leave Bob. Maybe she’d start her life over in Vermont with Reenie or alone in New Mexico. She had always wanted to see the desert. A nice adobe house, tumbleweed, and a dog. No, two dogs. Golden retrievers, and both of them female. She’d do a Georgia O’Keeffe thing and maybe, when she was ninety, some young man would come to her, too, and she’d be ready to try again. But not before.
    Sylvie got up and went through the darkened hall to her music room—the only place where she could find comfort. In the darkness she sat down at her piano and began to