The New Husband(78)

“I got your message just now. I’m sorry, we’re trying to get to all of Dr. Wilcox’s patients. There’s … there’s been a terrible…” Nina heard the sharp intake of breath over the phone. “There’s been a terrible tragedy,” the woman finally got out.

“Oh, my God,” Nina said. “Is Dr. Wilcox all right?”

“No, she’s not,” said the woman. “There was a home invasion.”

Nina had heard something about that on the New Hampshire news channel but did not recall that a victim had been identified.

“The doctors aren’t sure she’s going to make it.”





CHAPTER 42


I met Ben in the library during lunch period to catch him up on the conversation with my father. We found a quiet corner near the biography section for us to talk. Reliving the conversation I had with my dad brought all those messy emotions right back to the surface. When the tears came, as I knew they would, Ben was at the ready with a tissue. It was sweet how much he cared, but I felt terrible about monopolizing our friendship with my problems.

“I’ll tell you when you become annoying,” Ben said with a smirk that almost put a smile on my face.

“Thank you,” I said, dabbing my eyes, feeling exhausted and more than a bit embarrassed. Ben must have thought I went through the day crying.

“Do you remember the area code where he called you from?” he asked.

“It was an eight-oh-two,” I said. With my emotions so supercharged, I had forgotten to look up the location. Ben took my phone, and two seconds later he had the answer.

“Vermont,” he said.

“Vermont?” My voice inflection implied it was the last place in the world I thought he might be. “What’s he doing there?”

Of course Ben couldn’t answer, so instead he gave a shrug.

“Could be he’s there. Could be the call was spoofed.”

“Spoofed?”

“Caller ID spoofing,” said Ben, as if those extra words would jog some memory. “It’s a hacker thing,” he explained. “You can make calls that look like they’re coming from anywhere in the country, the world even. It’s super easy to do, and I think it’s even legal.”

“You don’t own a cell phone,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously. “How do you know all that?”

“There are other ways to get on the internet, Maggie,” he said, kind enough to not punctuate his observation with a “duh.”

I took my phone from him so I could see what was on the screen, and there it was, clear as could be: an area code search showing 802 as belonging to the entire state of Vermont. We’d gone to Vermont a few times on family trips, including during the February vacation before Dad had disappeared. We went skiing at Jay Peak, a mountain near the Canadian border, and it was so cold that I spent most of the time in the indoor waterpark.

They had this ride called La Chute, which is French for “you’ll scream your face off.” Riders enter a tube something like sixty feet in the air, and then drop almost vertically, going fifty miles an hour before you hit the loop, a 360-degree put-your-stomach-in-your-nose total freak-out. Connor wouldn’t do it, but Dad would. We probably scrambled our brains riding that thing over and over again. Maybe that’s why he snapped and had to go into hiding.

“So you don’t think he’s in Vermont?” I asked.

Our librarian shushed me from behind her desk. I guess I’d shouted at the thought of yet another of my father’s deceptions.

“I’m hypothesizing. It’s a possibility,” said Ben, talking like a science teacher.

“And I know he loves to fish. He’d go every Saturday,” I said, feeling a powerful need to defend my father, trying to dispel the possibility of yet another of his lies. “So why not go there? Doesn’t Vermont have great fishing?”

“Why go anywhere at all?” asked Ben.

“Back to that,” I said. “The big mystery is why he left in the first place.”

“Tell me again what he said.”

So I told him, as best as I could remember. I wished now that I had recorded the call, if only so I could’ve heard Dad’s voice again. It had been a disturbing, strange, emotional, and confusing conversation. I kept hearing him crying; something I’ll never forget.

“Sounds to me like it’s really important to your dad that Mr. Fitch looks after you all, like with money and stuff,” Ben said, reflexively using Simon’s last name, because we were in school. I nodded, having had the same impression.

“I get it,” I told him. “I just don’t get why he can’t come home, and why I can’t tell Mom or Connor that Dad’s alive and well. And why would he say he’s done bad things and hurt people? And what did Mom do? He’s blaming her for something and told me it can’t go unpunished. What’s that all about?”

Ben gave another shrug. “I don’t understand my parents. How the heck can I understand yours? But he told you to make nice with Simon, right?”

Again, I nodded. “Yeah, make the peace because Simon’s helping out financially and my dad can’t.” I made it sound as if sucking up to Simon would be harder than taking one of Ben’s math tests. “I suppose I could get Mom to quit her job. That would make Simon happiest of all.”