Just the Nicest Couple(20)

I’m worried about Jake. But I’m also feeling guilty and ashamed that I waited all this time to come to the police. It never crossed my mind that something might be wrong, that something might have happened to Jake. I only thought that he was upset with me, that he was avoiding me.

“Who’s missing?” she asks.

“My husband,” I say. “Jake Hayes. Dr. Jacob Hayes.”

“Okay, ma’am.” She pulls something up on the computer screen. “When did you last see him?” she asks.

“Monday,” I say.

I think back to Monday morning. Jake and I were both up and getting ready for work. That is the last time I saw Jake. Because it wasn’t a surgery day, he didn’t have to be in the office until eight, which meant we were getting ready at the same time. Usually on mornings like that, Jake and I would talk, catch up. I looked forward to them. There was less of an urgency on nonsurgery mornings. We would have breakfast together and talk about our plans for the day. But not this Monday because, this Monday, we moved in silent circles, giving each other a wide berth because we were angry with each other, and hurt. We didn’t speak to one another, at all. We didn’t say a single word, not until Jake left, leaving me with three final words that got under my skin. It wasn’t so much what he said but the way he said it. What if those are the last words he ever speaks to me?

Instead of talking that morning, chair legs scraped against the floor. Doors slammed. Drawers were flung noisily shut. Tension hung low and heavy in the air like fog.

I’d spent Sunday with my mother. She needed things like groceries for the week, and a new fall coat because the days are getting cool. I’d taken her to the mall and the grocery store, in that order, but first we went to church because that’s another thing my mother can’t do without me and, for the most part, she’s a devout Christian and loves going to church.

Later, when we got back to her house, my mother asked me to stay for dinner. She didn’t say so, but I know she hates being alone. She gets so lonely. “Let me make you dinner to repay you for taking such good care of me,” was how she phrased it, but I knew she wanted me to stay because she didn’t want me to leave. She was desperate for company. I said okay and I stayed. I texted Jake to let him know. He never replied to my text. My mother made my favorite meal, like she did when I was a girl and she had a rare night off work. I could tell she enjoyed having someone to cook for again, other than herself. It was a struggle, because of her vision, but she did it mostly by herself, cooking from a recipe she had memorized. Her mother, my grandmother, also had macular degeneration. It’s hereditary. If someone in the family has it, then you’re far more likely to get it too. It’s hard, watching my mother struggle and knowing this is very likely my own fate.

The problem was that Jake doesn’t work on Sundays, unless he’s on call. He wanted me home with him. He didn’t tell me that. I was just supposed to know, to use mental telepathy I suppose, to read his mind, though lately, even when we are both home, he likes to be alone and not with me. It seems like whenever I come into a room he’s in, he finds a reason to leave it.

When I came home after seven, he stared icily at me from across the room. He didn’t speak. He was drinking a whiskey sour. At first I felt threatened by the lowering look. For whatever reason, I thought of that patient of Jake’s who died after surgery. The one he told me about. The young woman who was shot dead by her husband. The one with brain stem death. I don’t know why I thought of her just then, but I thought again about why her husband might have shot her, and then wondered if she did something as innocuous as spend the day with her mother.

“Is your husband considered high-risk?”

I come back to the present.

“Meaning?” I ask.

“Do you have reason to suspect foul play?” the front desk officer asks, inexpressive, staring at me from the other side of a large reception desk, seated behind bulletproof glass.

“Such as?”

“Such as evidence of a struggle, or a home or vehicle in disarray. Blood. A weapon.”

I shake my head. “No, no, nothing like that. But I don’t know where his car is.”

“Make and model of the car?”

I tell her.

She nods. “Okay, ma’am. Is your husband in need of medical attention that you know of, or does he take prescription medicine that he doesn’t have on him?” Again I shake my head. Jake doesn’t take medicine, only his supplements, which he can live without. She breaks her gaze to type something into the computer, and then looks back at me to ask if Jake is mentally impaired.

“No,” I say. I understand where she’s going with this. High-risk persons and minors understandably get more care and attention than an almost-forty-year-old, able-bodied man like Jake.

“Is it possible your husband’s absence is voluntary, Mrs. Hayes?” she asks, looking up at me.

“What do you mean?”

I know exactly what she means. I don’t know why I ask, other than to delay answering.

“Is it possible he willingly left?”

“Yes,” I say, being completely honest because it is entirely possible Jake willingly left. Until that woman called from the hospital, I was sure that was the case. But it’s uncharacteristic of Jake to miss work. In all his years of practicing medicine, he has never missed work, even as a resident when he was working grueling eighty-hour weeks and was exhausted beyond belief. He still showed up every day as scheduled. Jake’s work means everything to him. It’s the one thing more important to him than me.