Dear Wife(69)

I drum my fingers on the counter and fume while at the end of an aisle, a teenager slips a pair of Bluetooth earphones into his pocket. As shoplifters go, he’s not very good. Too obvious, and way too oblivious that a cop is standing twenty feet away at the counter. But he’s fast, I’ll give him that, in and out the door in thirty seconds flat.

My phone buzzes against my hip, and I’m checking the screen when the manager returns from the back office. It’s Ma, and I push her to voice mail. With a grunt, the manager shoves two sheets of paper my way, still warm from the copy machine. I smile at what I find there: four receipts, each with a cell phone number. By now she’ll have burned through two, maybe three of them, but if I’m lucky, one of them will still be trackable. I only need one to lead me to her.

I spread the papers on the counter and take a picture of each. I’m attaching them to an email when my mother calls again. She’s not going to like it when I push her to voice mail for a second time, but I’ll call her back as soon as I send the images to Jade to start tracking. I hit Send, then gather up the papers, carry them to my car and pull up my mother’s number on the screen.

She picks up on the first ring, and she’s pissed. “Marcus, what the hell is going on here?”

I stifle a sigh. Tough to feel self-righteous when you’re getting scolded by your mother. “What’s going on is I’m in the middle of a missing-person case. I’m a little busy.”

I fall into the car, where it’s easily a hundred degrees, even though I parked in the shade. I crank the engine and aim the vents at my face.

“I realize that,” she says, “but—”

I lose her when the call flips to the hands-free system, a two-or three-second spot of dead silence.

“Ma. You still there?”

“What? I’m here. I’ve been here all along.”

“What were you saying?”

She sighs, an annoyed sound. “I was talking about your house.”

“What about it?”

“Why does it look like a hobo lives here?”

My skin ices over despite the heat. She’s at the house. I shove the gear in Reverse and punch the gas, lurching backward into the lot. “Where are you exactly?”

“I just told you. I’m at your house.”

“Where at the house? Where are your feet right now?” I work the gearshift into Drive. “Be specific.”

“Specifically, my feet are parked on your living room carpet, though I can barely see the thing for all the papers. When’s the last time you picked up?”

I floor the gas, and whatever my mother says next gets lost in the squeal of my tires, peeling across the pavement. At the end of the lot I take a hard right, pulling into traffic to a chorus of beeps and tire screeches. Just in case, I lay on the horn.

Her voice crackles over the squad car speakers. “And Marcus. Where’s Emma?”

  Mistake number one: giving my mother a house key, though for the record, that was all Emma’s doing. But what was I going to do when I found out, ask for the key back? Ma would’ve had a fit, and I would’ve had to hear it every holiday and birthday for the rest of my life. I let her keep the key, but if I had any sense at all, I would have changed the locks.

Mistake number two: leaving the house in such a state—though again, it couldn’t be helped. Police work is messy at times, and I’m a visual kind of guy. I like to spread my files across tables and floors, tape notes and pictures to the walls. I picture my mother walking through the kitchen and living room, piecing everything together and shaking her head, and I lean on my horn.

“Move it!” I scream at the driver in front of me, flashing my lights, and he flips me off over his shoulder. I swerve onto the shoulder, slam the gas and fly past.

Thirteen eternal minutes later, I screech into my driveway, coming to a hard stop behind my mother’s white Honda. The front door pops open, and she comes out slinging—her arms, her words, that expression she always used on me when I was a kid, the one that still to this day can give me phantom pains of an almost-constant childhood bellyache. Even now, all these years later, trying to please this woman is a full-time job. She’s fussing at me before I’ve even clambered out.

“...looks like somebody tossed the place. Now I know you’ve been busy, but I didn’t raise my son to live in a pigsty. Did a tornado blow through town and no one thought to tell me?”

I jog up the walkway, boots tearing up the concrete. “Ma, what are you doing here?”

She gives me an insulted frown. “What do you mean, what am I doing here? I made another batch of chicken soup for Emma. That’s what people do when one of their loved ones is sick. They bring them chicken soup.”

“That key was for emergencies only.”

She points a finger over her shoulder. “Have you seen your house? This is an emergency. And I’ll have you know I rang the bell for at least fifteen minutes, just ask that nosy Ms. Delaney next door. I went around the side and saw Emma’s car in the garage. I thought something happened to her. I thought maybe she’d fainted, or fell down the stairs.” She pauses to take me in, shaking her head. “You look awful. When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”

For Ma, every bad or busy day, every sickness or heartache or worry—it all boils down to food. What kind, and when you’d last had some, and if it was prepared with loving care and the correct amount of salt. I don’t dare tell her the truth—that for the past three days I’ve been living off the leftovers from Annabelle’s birthday dinner: standing over the counter, shoveling cold bites straight from the container, barely tasting any of it. But only when I remember to eat, which isn’t often.