The Perfect Wife(56)
And if you had stopped loving Tim for whatever reason, it would have been a shame—but there would always have been the option of divorce. This was a man who gave you a beach house as a wedding gift. You could have separated and both still been ridiculously wealthy.
Most of all, though, you can’t understand how you could ever have abandoned Danny. No mother, surely, would walk out on her child like that—especially not a child as heart-achingly vulnerable as him.
People do, an internal voice reminds you. It happens.
But not people like you and Tim. Not strong, unselfish, principled people. Good people.
If that’s what you are.
“Awesome,” Nathan breathes. He’s looking at the numbers flying across the screen. “I can literally see your mind working.”
“What do you mean?” you say sharply.
“Don’t worry—I can’t read your thoughts. Just see you’re thinking hard.” He glances at the printout you’re still holding. “Going to take that to the police?”
“I haven’t decided.” But already you can see how tricky that would be. The police will reopen the investigation. You don’t know if it’s legal to fake your own death, but you suspect that if they do find Abigail Cullen-Scott alive and well, at the very least there’d be a charge of wasting police time.
More to the point, Tim will know what you did. That you walked out on your marriage. Your disabled son. And him.
You remember what Mike said, that time he came to see you. Remember how fragile he still is, would you?
You can’t hurt Tim like that. At least, not yet.
“If you take that printout to the cops,” Nathan says slyly, “they’ll confiscate the iPad. And there’s more on it, I bet.”
Abruptly, you reach down and pull the cable out of your hip. “Hey!” he protests. “That should be properly ejected—”
“How much more?”
“I’m not sure.” He gestures hungrily at the cable, now dangling from his laptop. “Hook me up again, and I’ll start another batch tonight.”
“No,” you say, taking a step back. “Unscramble some more, and then I’ll see about letting you plug it in again. Nothing gets nothing in this world—remember?”
SIXTEEN
(FEEL FREE!) was probably Abbie’s highlight as our artist-in-residence. People would say to her, “How’re you going to top that?” and she’d just smile and shrug. “Something’ll come,” she’d reply. “It always does.”
But as the weeks, then months, went by, the smile faded. Someone suggested she could do a whole series of putty statues, and she just sighed and said, “Maybe I should,” as if they’d suggested she get a job in an insurance company or something. There was talk of a project making 3-D busts of our heads that came to nothing. It was ironic that, because of the time lag with social media, the height of her viral success with the pictures of (FEEL FREE!) coincided almost exactly with Abbie herself going through a lean period.
We felt disappointed, initially—we’d gotten used to the regular entertainment of her artworks; they lightened the mechanical drudgery of our lives—but we also felt protective of her. Why should she feel obligated to amuse us, like a magician pulling yet another balloon out of his pocket at a party, or a musician playing his greatest hit for the thousandth time? She was an artist, our artist, and her function was lofty and holy.
Plus, she was the founder’s girlfriend. Their romance had started to make headlines, at least on local websites devoted to tech-valley gossip. For her twenty-fifth birthday, Tim hired the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus to sing “Happy Birthday” outside her bedroom window. Then he took her wing-walking, followed by a trip in a private jet to Lanai, Larry Ellison’s Hawaiian island, for a couple of days’ surfing.
But he was still the founder, and work came first. Most nights he’d still be in the office until ten P.M. or even later. And along with the amazing shots on social media of the two of them standing by the edge of a live volcano on Hawaii, there were also darker, more disturbing whispers. Someone spotted Abbie in Slim’s late one night with a bunch of musicians, clearly wasted. Somebody relayed an incoherent conversation they’d had with her in Mezzanine, covered in sweat. She showed up to the office less frequently. And if she did put in an appearance, it was generally in the afternoon, while Tim was always in by seven.
So when she stopped turning up altogether, we all jumped to the same conclusion. We assumed she’d dropped us, and probably Tim, too. “Seen Abbie recently?” became a question we no longer even asked one another, because the answer was always the same. It was as if she’d vanished.
Her six-month-residency end date came and went without being marked, or even mentioned.
It was about three weeks after that that the news flashed around the office. Abbie was coming back! The residency had been extended! No—not extended: resumed. Unbeknownst to us, Abbie had been on sick leave. After that was taken into account, she had twelve weeks left to run in her contract, and would be back with us for at least that length of time.
We did the math: She had been out sick for just over ninety days. We quickly turned to the internet. A link went around to an article headed: “Study Shows Optimal Time for Residential Rehab Is 90 Days or Longer.” Someone else checked the company’s health insurance. Rehab was a co-pay, which meant hefty bills for the individual. But somehow we doubted Abbie had picked up the bill herself.