Dear Wife(24)

“Would you stop looking at me like that?” he says. “Sabine is missing.”

“It’s just that I’m having trouble letting go of the fact that she made time in her day to go to the hospital for fifteen minutes with you, when she can never squeeze in a lunch with me. She’s hardly ever home for dinner!”

Trevor sinks onto a stool at the counter, shoving aside a coloring book and a Solo cup packed with colorful markers. “What about her car? Has anyone seen it?”

“Not that I know of. Ingrid gave the detective her license plate number, though, so I’m assuming he’s on the lookout.” I take a long pull from the bottle, then make a face. It’s one of those snobby IPAs, bitter and aggressively hoppy. I check the label and see it’s also organic. “Do you have any normal beer?”

Trevor plucks a blue marker from the cup. “What’s his name?”

“Whose name?”

“The detective. What’s his name?”

“Oh. Something Durand. Mike or Mark or something like that.”

I pour the rest of the IPA down the drain while Trevor calls 9-1-1 and demands to be put through to the detective. He uses his doctor’s voice, polite but overly self-important, each word delivered in a tone that commands attention. He introduces himself—Dr. Trevor McAdams, Chief Obstetrician at Jefferson Regional, romantically involved with Sabine for the past five months—then rattles off Corey’s name and number. Sabine’s schedule until the moment she left the hospital, at sometime around one thirty. Her cell plus another number I didn’t know existed, for a phone I didn’t know she had. The entire conversation lasts no longer than five minutes. He thanks the person and hangs up.

I slam the bottle onto the counter with a clap, and the dog, who’d curled into a sleepy ball on its bed by the table, looks up with a start. “Five months?”

Trevor frowns.

“You told the detective just now that you and Sabine have been romantically involved for five fucking months.” Those were his words, “romantically involved.” The beer turns to acid in my throat.

“Like I said, this isn’t the way we wanted you to find out, but can we drop the guilt trip for a minute? At least until Sabine is found.”

I grip the granite with both hands. “Five months ago, Sabine started to cringe whenever I’d touch her. She started turning her head when I kissed her and complaining about headaches any time I reached for her in bed. I thought it was me, but it was you, wasn’t it?”

Trevor sighs, and he lifts a hand from the counter. “I don’t know what to tell you, Jeffrey.”

“That phone number you gave the detective just now. Let me guess. Sabine got it when she started seeing you, didn’t she?”

He doesn’t answer, but his expression tells me it’s a yes. Sabine has a secret phone. She got a separate device so she can talk to Trevor without me knowing. A Trevor hotline.

He opens the coloring book, scribbles across a smiling Dumbo in bright purple marker. “Corey lives in those gated condos on Old Warren Road. He must know something. I need to know what it is.” He rips out the sheet and holds it across the counter to me, waiting for me to take it. “Please, Jeffrey. My kids are upstairs. I can’t leave them. My wife...” He shakes his head. “She’s already taking me to the cleaners. I can’t have her taking them, too. Please.”

I sigh, a hard huff filled with resentment and something sharper, something that gnaws at me like hunger—but for revenge. When I get home, I’m going to look up the number for this guy’s wife and volunteer as a witness.

“You do realize that Sabine leaves her shit all over the house, right? If you actually lived with her, if you spent time with her on a regular basis, you’d know she’s demanding and forgetful and selfish. That she pees with the door open and she hogs the couch and she never bothers cleaning up her own dishes. You don’t want her because she’s your soul mate. You only want her because she’s not yours.”

He gives the paper a shake. “Please, talk to Corey. Don’t do it for me. Do it for Sabine. For our—” He stops himself just in time, but it’s too late. I already understand. I heard the words he didn’t want to say.

“You motherfucking fucker.” I pause, the realization lighting me up from inside—hot, smoldering coals that seethe in my stomach and spread outward until my limbs feel like they’re on fire. One good spark, and I’ll blow. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”

He doesn’t nod, but his eyes are glassy in the dim light.

Finally, after all these years of wishing and wanting and eventually giving up entirely, Sabine is pregnant. With Trevor’s child.

His gaze dips to the paper. “Please,” he says, and his voice breaks on the word.

I take the paper, but then I stalk around the island and punch him in the face.



BETH

That night, you come to me in my sleep, a blur of lightning limbs and shouted curses, tearing through the house. Opening and slamming doors, whipping off pillows and bedcovers, flipping couches and tables, ripping pictures off the wall. You are searching for something, for me.

I teeter on the edge of awake.

I see you gaining speed, moving closer, and my stomach clenches into a spiky knot. You puff your big chest and scream, and that lock of hair I used to love to run my fingers through falls flat on your sweaty forehead. You push it off with the back of a fist, and that’s when I see the gun.