The Couple Next Door(56)

But she doesn’t wait. She runs upstairs; she’s sobbing loudly now. He follows on her heels up the stairs, pleading with her to talk to him, to let him explain.

But he has no idea how he will explain. How will he explain why he was sneaking over to Cynthia’s without revealing the existence of the video?

He expects Anne to go into their bedroom and throw herself down on the bed in tears, which is what she usually does when she’s upset. Maybe she’ll slam the door in his face and lock it. She’s done it before. She’ll come out eventually, and it will give him time to think.

But she doesn’t run into their bedroom and fling herself, crying, onto their bed. She doesn’t lock him out of their bedroom. Instead she runs down the hall into the office. He’s right behind her. He sees her drop to her knees in front of the air-intake grate.

Oh, no. God no.

She tears the grate off, sticks her hand inside, and rips the cell phone off the side of the air duct. He feels sick. She puts the phone in her palm, holds it up to him, the tears streaming down her face. “What the hell is this, Marco?”

Marco freezes. He can’t believe this is happening. Suddenly he has to fight the urge to laugh. It’s comical, really, all of it. Cynthia’s video. This. What the hell is he going to tell her?

“This is how you’ve been communicating with Cynthia, isn’t it?” Anne accuses him.

He stares at her, momentarily baffled. Just in time he stops himself from saying, Why would I use a cell phone to call Cynthia when she’s right next door? His hesitation suggests something else to her.

“Or is it someone else?”

Marco can’t tell her the truth—that the hidden cell phone she now has in her hand was the only way he could communicate with his accomplice in the kidnapping of their baby. With the man who is now dead. Marco has hidden an untraceable, prepaid cell phone in the wall, to use for calling his partner in an unforgivable crime. She thinks he’s been having an affair—with Cynthia or someone else. His immediate instinct is to keep her away from Cynthia. He will make something up.

“I’m so sorry,” he begins. “It’s not Cynthia, I swear.”

She screams and throws the phone at him, hard. It clips him on the forehead and bounces to the floor. He feels a sharp pain above his right eye.

He pleads with her. “It’s over, Anne. It meant nothing. It was just a few weeks,” he lies, “right after Cora was born and you were so tired. . . . It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do it—it just happened.” He’s blurting out every excuse he can think of.

She glares at him in disgust and rage, tears smearing her face, her nose running, her hair a tangled mess. “You can sleep on the couch from now on,” she says bitterly, her voice edged with pain, “until I figure out what to do.” She pushes past him into their bedroom and slams the door. He hears her turn the lock.

Marco slowly picks the phone up off the floor. He touches his forehead where the phone struck him; his fingers come away bloody. Absently, he turns the cell phone on, automatically swipes the pattern to unlock the phone. There is a record of his calls—all are to one number. All unanswered.

Marco tries to find a way through his fear and confusion. Who could have known that Bruce had Cora? Had Bruce told someone else about their plan, someone who then turned on him? It seemed unlikely. Or had he been careless? Had someone seen the baby and recognized her? That also seemed unlikely.

Idly, Marco looks down at the cell phone in his hand and, with a jolt, notices the missed-calls symbol. It wasn’t there the last time he looked. The ringer is turned off, of course. Who would be calling him from Bruce’s phone? Bruce is dead. Marco presses REDIAL, his heart hammering behind his ribs. He hears the phone ring. Once, twice.

And then a voice he recognizes. “I was wondering when you’d call.”

? ? ?

Anne cries herself to sleep. When she wakes, it’s dark outside. She lies in bed, listening carefully for sounds in the house. She hears nothing. She wonders where Marco is. Can she even stand the sight of him? Should she kick him out of the house? She hugs her pillow close to her body and thinks.

It wouldn’t look good if she kicked him out now. The press would be on them like a pack of animals. They’d look guiltier than ever. If they were innocent, why would they split? The police might arrest them. Does she even care?

In spite of everything, Anne knows Marco is a good father and loves Cora—he’s in as much pain about the baby as she is. She knows he had nothing to do with Cora’s disappearance, in spite of what the police have said to her and suggested with their sly questions and hypotheticals. She can’t turn him out, at least for the time being, even if thinking about him with another woman makes her sick.

Anne closes her eyes and tries to remember that night. It’s the first time she’s tried to put herself back in that room, the night Cora went missing. She’s been avoiding it. But now she sees it in her mind’s eye, the last time she saw her baby. Cora was in the crib. The room was dark. Cora was on her back, her chubby arms flung up beside her head, her blond hair curling damply on her forehead in the heat. The ceiling fan swirled lazily overhead. The bedroom window was open to the night, but it was still stifling.

Anne remembers now. She stood by the crib looking down at her baby daughter’s tiny fists, her bare, bent legs. It was too hot for covers. She resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the baby’s forehead, afraid of waking her. She wanted to gather Cora in her arms, bury her face in the child’s neck and sob, but she stopped herself. She was swamped with feelings—with love, mostly, and tenderness, but also with hopelessness, and despair, and inadequacy—and she was ashamed.