The Marriage Lie(86)

But the police didn’t come, and we’re still waiting for Will.

“Max Talmey,” Corban says, stopping his incessant pacing to turn to me, slumped on the den sofa. “Bet you don’t know that name, do you?”

I shake my head. I’ve been awake for what feels like weeks, and now that the adrenaline has burned off, I can barely sit up straight.

Corban hits the end of the carpet and whirls around, punching a fist into the air. “What about Dennis Sciama or Andrea del Verrocchio? No?”

“No.” I stifle a yawn.

“Mentors to Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Leonardo da Vinci, respectively.”

“Oh.”

It doesn’t help that Corban has been talking nonstop. Long, rambling verbiage that goes round and round and nowhere at all...except maybe crazy town. I stopped listening ages ago.

“Why is Will getting all the credit? What is wrong with our society that we only acknowledge the quarterback and not the rest of the team? The lead singers and not the band? When in reality, we’re the brilliant ones here. Without us to lift them up, they’d have never made it out of obscurity.”

Corban’s narcissistic personality disorder is textbook. A grandiose sense of self, a preoccupation with power and success, an outrageous sense of entitlement and a distinct lack of empathy. The symptoms are all there. In his manic state, he’s no longer bothering to disguise any of them.

“Kind of like Neta Snook,” I say. What a narcissist wants, more than anything else, is the accolades he feels he deserves.

“Who?”

“The female pilot who taught Amelia Earhart to fly.”

“Exactly!” He stabs a finger at my face. “You understand what I’m talking about.”

What I understand is that this isn’t just about Will taking the money. It’s about Will taking the money and running away. Corban feels abandoned. He feels rejected and cast aside, and it’s this emotion that has triggered his rage.

He resumes his pacing, launching into yet another tirade about how no one seems to appreciate his brilliance. How it was his idea to transfer stock and not the more easily traceable money to a company in the Bahamas. He’s the one who knew when to sell the stock for top-market price. If it weren’t for him, Will would still be selling dime bags on the street corner. Narcissists love to play the victim.

He stops, looking down at me with a frown. “I’m beginning to think your husband is going to stand us up.”

“He wouldn’t.” I say it with much more confidence than I feel. Will’s already proved he loves money more than me. Why not let Corban make good on his threats to rape me? Why not let him get his revenge?

Except he said he was coming. He told me he was on his way.

I’m so sorry, Will says in my head, as clearly as if he were sitting right here, on the couch next to me. For a second or two, I see him driving down a dusty Mexican road, one hand flicking in a wave out the open window.

No, Corban was right about one thing. Will would hate it in Mexico. Too damn hot.

Corban’s gaze whips to the back door. “Did you hear that?”

I push myself up on the couch, ears straining. “Hear what?”

“Shh!” He cocks his head, then sticks a finger into the air. “That. Did you hear it?”

I think I might have heard something, a crunching outside the window, maybe, or the snap of a twig, right before a neighbor’s dog goes ballistic. His barks spark another, then another, carrying across the neighborhood until the barking comes at me in surround sound. It’s like that cartoon scene, when the dogs are alerting each other to a couple of missing dalmatians.

Only this time, they’re alerting Corban to someone right outside my window.

I flip around on the couch and cup my hands to the glass, trying to see out, but it’s like looking into a black hole, dark and endless. Somewhere in the near distance, the dogs go nuts.

The house line rings.

Corban frowns, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing I am: Why wouldn’t Will call on my cell like he did last time?

The phone rings again.

“Should I—”

“Don’t move,” he barks. He fetches the handheld off the stand in the kitchen and looks at the display. “It’s a 770 number.” He reads the rest of the digits out loud. “Do you recognize it?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

My phone flips the call to voice mail, and the caller hangs up. If there’s someone still under the window, I can’t hear it over the dogs and the thundering of my heart. Two seconds later, the phone starts up again.

This time, Corban hits the button to pick up on the first ring. “Hello.” Not a question but a demand.

Corban’s expression changes as distinctly as storm clouds scudding across the sun, turning light to dark. Whoever is on the other line is a surprise and not a pleasant one.

“You’ve got it all wrong, friend. I’m here as a guest. Iris is—”

The caller cuts him off, and the fact that Corban lets him tells me it’s someone Corban is trying to appease. Narcissists are masters at manipulation, and though his silence says he’s listening, his movements are preoccupied. His eyes scan the windows, and his body draws in on itself, like a rattlesnake coiling to spring.

“I’d love to do that,” Corban says, his tone steering toward cajoling, “but her Ambien just kicked in. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but she recently lost her husband, and she’s not handling it very well.”