Dear Wife(38)

I know from their questions that the police and their merry band of volunteers have searched everywhere there is to search. Pine Bluff’s fields and patchy woods, the town’s parks and hills and riverbanks. No bits of fabric to show for their efforts, no long strands of brown hair found stuck in a tree. If Sabine is anywhere close by, if she’s on Pine Bluff soil or in her muddy waters, chances are good that she’s dead.

Anger and grief, remorse and regret, the emotions churn in my empty stomach. There are a million things I want to say to Sabine, and now it looks like I’ll never get the chance.

The light in the room has shifted, the afternoon sun finally climbing high enough to hit the bedroom windows. I stare up at the ceiling, listening to the camera crews on my front lawn, and a wave of anxiety drags me from bed. I need to run. To pump my legs until my heart wants to explode and my chest burns with the lack of oxygen. To abuse my body until I forget these past few days ever happened.

I pull on running shorts and a T-shirt and grab my phone from the nightstand. A hundred and twenty-seven messages. I scroll through the texts and emails, variations of the same message. OMG, so shocking. Anything I can do to help? Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. I’m pleased that the tide hasn’t turned, but I’m not naive enough to know that it won’t. Ingrid is probably out there right now, alerting the world of the two-hour hole in my day. It won’t be long until she tells the press, too.

I peel the shade from an upstairs window and take a peek outside. Reporters stand in clumps on my front lawn, drinking coffee and shooting the shit like my life is a fucking happy hour. The Arkansas sun beats down on their heads and reflects off the pavement behind them like water. Good. I hope they’re roasting out there.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I inspect the contents of the fridge, searching for breakfast. Leftover pizza, a half-empty pack of eggs, some fuzzy cheese and a gallon of spoiled milk. Sabine didn’t spend any of the time I was out of town at the grocery store, and why would she? My trip to Florida was like a birthday, anniversary and Christmas rolled into one, four whole days of unmonitored time with her lover. They probably spent every free second together, especially since his wife moved out. No nagging spouses at home, asking what’s for dinner.

I grab the eggs and slam the refrigerator door.

If I’m going to hide out here all weekend, I need to go to the store. Tension creeps into my shoulders at the thought of backing my car through the throng of reporters. Maybe I should talk to a lawyer. Get him to chase them off with the threat of a lawsuit, and while I’ve got him, ask what the implications might be now that Detective Durand knows about the unaccounted-for patch in my Wednesday. Then again, what is the detective going to do, arrest me? He can’t do that without evidence, without a body. A two-hour window doesn’t make me a murderer.

I’m cracking the last of the eggs into a pan when the doorbell rings, and I check the window by the garage. Somehow, my brother Derrick has managed to plow his Camaro past the reporters, and now he’s out there, preening for their cameras.

Shit.

I drop the blinds and return to the eggs, watching them pop and hiss in the pan. To open or not to open, that is the question.

The doorbell rings again, four quick punches followed by a fist pounding on the door. “Come on, Jeffrey. I know you’re in there. It’s me, Derrick. Let me in.”

I poke at the eggs with a fork.

Letting him in would mean uncorking a spiky, barbed ball of age-old grievances and passive-aggressive rage. Derrick resents me for my job, my house, my wife—ha! joke’s on me—my car and my clothes, the inch-and-a-half height I have on him, even though he’s the older brother. I resent him for the way he tortured me at school, bullying me with taunts and ridicule and once, a wedgie delivered in front of the entire football team. We are like Mentos and Coke—put us in a container together and it’s not long before we explode.

I hear him clomping up the steps to the back door. He finds the spare key Sabine hid under the flowerpot and slides it in the lock. There’s a whoosh of sliding glass, a roar of rushing water, and a few seconds later, he’s standing in my kitchen.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he says, tossing the key onto the kitchen counter. “I’ve been banging on your door.”

My brother is his usual, slouchy self. Faded and ripped T-shirt, cutoff jeans, flip-flops. Derrick is the high school star quarterback who never made it off the bench in college. He flunked out sophomore year, and his life has been shit ever since.

“I heard you. What are you doing here?” Not the nicest greeting, but considering our relationship, not the worst one I could give him, either.

“I figured you could use the moral support, but I can just as soon go back home.” He hikes a thumb over his shoulder, but it’s all for show. His soles are superglued to the hardwood. “So I guess your wife finally had enough of you, huh?”

“You’re a real dick, you know that, right?”

“Jesus, chill out, will you? I’m only kidding.” He moves farther into the room, taking a look around—kind of like that detective did in my foyer. Like he’s cataloging all the things he can’t afford and silently judging me for them. He whips off his shades and hangs them from the collar of his shirt. “Seriously, man. What can I do?”

“Nothing.” I turn back to the stove. “Though I really appreciate you coming over to gloat and all, but you can go now.”