A Good Marriage
| "A Good Marriage" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Stephen King |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Suspense |
| Published in | Full Dark, No Stars |
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Publication date | 2010 |
A Good Marriage is a novella by Stephen King, published in his collection Full Dark, No Stars (2010).
Darcy Anderson has been married to Bob, a Portland, Maine accountant, for 27 years. They have a happy yet humdrum relationship, running a mail-order business selling and appraising rare coins. One day, while Bob is away on business, Darcy goes into the garage to search for batteries. When she rummages through Bob's belongings, she stumbles across a pornographic magazine showing sadomasochistic images. Unnerved by the magazine – and the fact that it is in Bob's possession – Darcy finds a secret compartment behind the garage's baseboard and makes a more horrific discovery: a small box containing the ID cards of Marjorie Duvall, a victim of a serial killer called "Beadie".
Bob calls Darcy and senses her distress. Afterwards, Darcy Googles Beadie and cross-checks Bob's business records with the locations of the murders, finding that Bob was in close proximity to most of the crimes. When Darcy wakes up the next morning, she finds that Bob has deduced her discovery and returned home early. He calmly explains his insanity to his horrified wife, recounting how he and a sadistic friend named Brian Delahanty – nicknamed "BD", from which Beadie's name was derived – planned a school shooting as teenagers. Delahanty was hit by a truck before they could carry it out, but Bob claims he had "infected" him with "certain ideas," resulting in his homicidal urges.
Bob claims that after he started his family with Darcy, his murderous alter ego receded and he was not driven to kill again for several years. He pleads to Darcy to put the matter behind them, for the sake of herself and their family. After mulling it over, Darcy feigns an agreement to do so, on the condition that he bury Duvall's ID cards deep in the woods. Bob believes Darcy has put the truth behind her, when in fact she is trying to think of a way to stop him from killing again. A few months after Darcy's discoveries, an elated Bob finds a rare 1955 doubled die cent, and the couple goes out to Portland to celebrate. When Bob becomes drunk from champagne, Darcy devises a plan to murder him.
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