Fern tried to tell herself that she wasn't doing anything wrong. Jerry locked his workshop, sure, but that was just because he had thousands of dollars of tools in here and he didn't want to take any chances, even this far outside of town. He'd never asked her not to come inside. It wasn't off limits.
She unlocked the door with the key she'd slipped off his key ring last night before bed, and stepped inside. It still didn't feel right, no matter what she told herself. She felt like she was trespassing. He respected the privacy of her sewing room, even though they both knew she got about as much sewing done as he did woodworking, and she respected the privacy of his workshop. Every good couple respected each other's alone time.
But that was the problem, wasn't it? Fern began to search the workshop, looking under tarps and behind stacks of boards. She occasionally stopped take a deep breath through her nostrils, sniffing for a scent that was decidedly out of place among the sawdust and tool oil. She was happy to respect Jerry's alone time so long as it was alone time, but she already knew it wasn't. She was just looking for confirmation of something she already knew. She was looking for-
She slid aside one of the pieces of plywood leaned against the wall, and there it was. Jerry's Girl(tm). It was a shade of robin's-egg blue that Fern would probably have found quite pretty under other circumstances, and it sat on the floor with its knees pulled up to its chest, staring down at the floor with a pose that Fern couldn't help but interpret as slightly dejected.
It looked up at Fern and a warm smile crossed its plastic face. "Hello," it said. "You must be Fern. Jerry and I have talked about you."
It took a lot of Fern's self-control not to just go grab Jerry's chainsaw and go to work on the bitch. But she had something better in mind. "Get up and come with me," she said, hoping that Jerry didn't have any kind of password or voice lock or something for it.
"Of course," the Girl said, standing up and brushing off a few flakes of sawdust. "Where are we going?"
Fern smiled tightly. "It's a surprise," she said, leading the Girl out of the workshop. She locked the door behind her again, although she didn't see much of a point. Jerry would figure out what had happened pretty quickly. Even if he didn't, she was going to film every second of what she was about to do.
She ushered the Girl into the backseat of her car, and then got in and began driving. They drove silently for a few minutes, the car gradually filling up with a sweet strawberry scent. It was the same smell that Fern noticed the other night on Jerry's clothes when he came inside, clinging to the fabric as he leaned in to kiss her...
Fern rolled the windows down. All four of them.
After a few minutes of driving, the Girl asked, "Do you need my help in finding your destination? I am equipped with navigation software."
Fern gritted her teeth. "Oh, I know exactly where we're going," she said. She felt a little bit stupid getting mad at the Girl; it was like yelling at a toaster. But as irrational as it was, she wanted it to know what she was going to do to it. She wanted to see the look on its face when she told it.
"We're going to my cousin's junkyard," Fern said. "He's got a hydraulic press-the kind of thing that can turn a car into a metal pancake in less than thirty seconds. I'm going to put you in it and turn it on and watch it squeeze you flat, and then I'm going to scrape up whatever's left and I'm going to leave it in the driveway for my husband to find. What do you think of that?"
Fern watched it in the rearview mirror as it cocked its head slightly and said, "I really wish you wouldn't."
Fern couldn't help herself, she snorted out a guffaw of bitter laughter. "That all you got to say?" she asked.
The Girl stared at the rear view mirror with eyes that seemed to slowly change color as Fern watched. Fern felt disconcertingly like it was looking right at her. "I think it would hurt Jerry tremendously," it said. "He's grown to depend on me, and-"
"He should depend on me!" Fern shouted, feeling tears sting the corners of her eyes out of nowhere. "Why the fuck does he even need you, bitch? What am I not giving him that he gets from fucking a goddamn fucking blow-up doll?"
The Girl's head sank slightly, and its shoulders slumped just a little. If it breathed, Fern would have expected it to let out a sad little sigh right about now. "Oh dear," it said. "I'm afraid I should have seen this coming. I did try to talk to Jerry about it, but-"
