Dear Wife(37)

I laugh, not because the joke is funny, but at the idea it originated from a man of God. What happened to not taking the Lord’s name in vain? Father Ian would lose his shit.

Martina hands me the vacuum hose, shows me how to work the on and off button on the side. I flip it on, and the nozzle suctions itself to the carpet.

“Good gear is half the work,” I say before I can stop myself, one of your favorite one-liners. I flip the switch, both on the machine and in my mind, and turn to Martina. “I still don’t understand. He didn’t ask me one single question that was relevant to the actual job. No personal questions, either, other than silly things like whether I put on both socks before my shoes, or do one foot at a time. The whole time I’m just sitting there, waiting for the bomb to drop.”

“The Reverend says the past only defines us if we let it. He says you can let it hold you back, or you can be set free.” Martina takes on that church-like expression I’ve come to know so well, a combination of holier-than-thou satisfaction and wondrous, drank-the-Kool-Aid joy, and this is what Father Ian could never explain to me about organized religion. You are invited into the flock because you are damaged goods, and then you are expected to transform into a righteous follower, to throw out your doubts with your sins and just believe. In the end, after all that happened while going to that church, I couldn’t do it.

I lean in and lower my voice, even though we’re the only two in the room. “He also said they needed my IDs so they wouldn’t get fined by the USCIS. That’s the Citizenship and Immigration Services, Martina.”

Her eyes narrow. “What would you know about the USCIS?”

The accusation in her words revives my doubt of her Grady-baby story, and what about that Spanish-tinged accent she tries to bury under a Southern drawl? If Martina were born here, in a hospital in the state of Georgia, like she said she was, what would she know about the USCIS?

“I know what the letters stand for,” I say, “but I’m also assuming they have these things called computers, which will light up like a Vegas slot machine at my fake ID and social security numbers.”

She chews her lip. “They won’t,” she mumbles, but I catch a flash of panic in her eyes. “Jorge recycles the numbers. He only uses ones that are real. Ours won’t get flagged.”

Whatever uncertainty I had is wiped away, just like that. Martina is a Jorge customer, too. A fugitive posing under a name she wasn’t born with. Maybe I’m right to guard the cash strapped to my waist.

Suddenly, this room feels too crowded, too hot. I need to get away from here, away from her. I gesture to the machine strapped to my back. “So where do you want me to start with this thing?”

“Upstairs,” she says, stepping to the shelves for a vacuum of her own. “We start at the top and work our way down. Like a team.”

But I’m not blind, and I’m no fool. I caught her glance at my waistline. Whatever Martina is after here, I’m pretty sure it’s not teamwork.



JEFFREY

When I wake up on Saturday morning, I shoot off a text to my boss explaining why I’ve been MIA for the past two days, then pull the pillow over my head. It smells like Sabine, like that sweet-spicy stuff in the overpriced bottles on our shower shelf, and I shove it to the floor.

I stare at the ceiling and tell myself to get up, but my limbs feel hulking and heavy, like those sandbags they pile everywhere when the National Weather Service issues a flood warning. I barely slept, thanks to the constant hum of the search boats in the waters behind my house. They’re out there now, and I waver between worry and fury.

What kind of idiot do they think I am? Like I would be stupid enough to dump my wife’s body in my own backyard. Like I would ever be that reckless. I watch Dateline. I know to not pollute my own property with evidence. They could give me a little credit and search farther downstream.

Then again, I haven’t given them much reason not to suspect me, not after my miserable performance in Detective Durand’s office, my nonanswers about my whereabouts Wednesday afternoon. I’d blame it on being rattled, the knowledge he’d been checking up on me, unsettling me enough to stumble over my answers.

But the truth is, it was Ingrid. If she hadn’t been sitting right there, weighting the air in the room with her huffed sighs and cheap perfume, then I might have told him the truth. The detective is a guy; he might have understood, but not Ingrid... No fucking way I was telling her.

It was like when you get a Trivial Pursuit question you know the answer to, that panicked, white-hot moment before the answer rolls off your tongue. I took some deep breaths, blew them all out, but the answer didn’t come.

And now Detective Durand and his Keystone Cops are determined to pin Sabine’s disappearance on me, instead of finding the person actually responsible. Because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that though they say they’re looking for Sabine, what they’re really searching for is her body.

By the time I wake again, it’s well past noon, and the noise of the boats is muffled by a low rumble coming from my front yard. Reporters have descended on the house like a flock of starving vultures, pecking at me through the glass. It’s not enough that they ruined my front lawn with their vans, they hurl questions at the house whenever I so much as walk by a window. Yesterday I pulled all the shades, but I can still feel their presence the way you feel a tornado bearing down outside, ominous and deadly.