The Wife Between Us(72)

Richard nodded as he picked up a knife and buttered his roll. “It’s good to remember it’s always there, though.”

When Richard left for an overnight business trip the following week, I brought Duke’s bed upstairs and placed it next to mine. When I awoke in the night, I looked down to see that he was awake, too. I let my arm drape over the side of the bed so I could touch his head, then I fell back asleep quickly. I slept deeply and dreamlessly, better than I had in months.

I’d told Richard I was doing tons of walking with Duke to get rid of the extra pounds I’d put on since moving to the suburbs. It wasn’t just the fertility pills. In the city, I could easily trek four miles a day, but now I drove even to buy a half gallon of milk. Plus, we ate dinner so late. Richard had never commented on my weight, but he stepped on the scale every morning and worked out five times a week. I wanted to look good for him.

When Richard returned, I didn’t have the heart to move Duke back downstairs, to our cold, sterile kitchen. Richard couldn’t believe how quickly my attitude toward Duke had changed. “Sometimes I think you love that dog more than me,” he joked.

I laughed. “He’s my buddy. When you’re not around, he keeps me company.” The truth was, the love I felt toward Duke was the purest, most uncomplicated affection I had ever known.

Duke was more than just a pet. He became my ambassador to the world. A jogger we often ran into during our daily walks stopped to ask if he could pet Duke, and we ended up chatting. The gardeners brought him a bone, shyly asking me if it was okay. Even the mailman grew to love him, once I told Duke the mailman was a friend—another of the words Duke understood. On my weekly calls with my mother, I gushed about our latest adventures.

Then, on one of those early-spring days when every tree and flower seems about to burst into bloom, I took Duke to a hiking trail a few towns over.

Looking back, I would think of it as the last good day—Duke’s, and mine—but as we sat on a big flat rock, my fingers absently weaving through Duke’s fur, the sun warming us, it just seemed like a perfect afternoon.

When Duke and I returned home, my cell phone rang. “Sweetheart, did you get to the dry cleaner’s?”

I’d forgotten Richard had asked me to pick up his shirts. “Oh, shoot. I just need to pay the gardeners and then I’ll run out.”

The team of three had grown especially fond of Duke, and sometimes if the weather was nice, they would stay a little late to play fetch with him.

I was gone thirty, maybe thirty-five minutes tops. When I returned home, the gardeners’ truck was gone. The moment I opened our front door, I felt a coldness rush through my body.

“Duke,” I called out.

Nothing.

“Duke!” I yelled again, my voice trembling.

I ran to the backyard to look for him. He wasn’t there. I called the gardening service. They swore they’d closed the back gate. I ran around the neighborhood, calling for him, then phoned the Humane Society and the local vets. Richard rushed home and we drove through the streets, shouting Duke’s name through the open car windows until our throats were raw. The next day Richard didn’t go into work. He held me while I cried. We put up posters. We offered a huge reward. Every night I stood outside, calling for Duke. I imagined someone taking him or Duke jumping the fence to go after an intruder. I even googled wild-animal sightings in our area, wondering if Duke could have been attacked by a larger animal.

A neighbor claimed she had seen him on Orchard Street. Another thought he’d spotted him on Willow. Someone called the number on our poster and brought by a dog that wasn’t Duke. I even phoned a pet psychic, who told me Duke was in an animal shelter in Philadelphia. None of the tips materialized. It was as if the ninety-pound canine had vanished from my life as magically as he had appeared.

Duke was so well trained; he wouldn’t have just run off. And he would’ve attacked anyone who’d tried to take him. He was a guard dog.

But that wasn’t what I thought about at three A.M. when I crept down the hallway, putting distance between me and my husband.

Right before Duke vanished, Richard had called to ask me about the shirts. I’d assumed he was calling from work, although I had no way to verify that; he’d never given me the passwords to his cell phone and BlackBerry, and I’d never asked him, so I couldn’t check his call records.

But when I’d gone to the dry cleaner’s, Mrs. Lee greeted me with her usual exuberance: So good to see you! Your husband just called a little while ago, and I told him his shirts were ready, light starch, like always.

Why would Richard have phoned the cleaner’s to make sure I hadn’t gotten the shirts, then called me to see if I’d picked them up?

I didn’t ask him about it immediately. But soon it was all I could think about.


I grew hollow eyed from insomnia. On the nights when I managed to catch a little sleep, I often awoke with my arm dangling over the side of the bed, my fingers touching the empty space where Duke used to lie. Much of the time I was numb. I rose with Richard and made him coffee, downing several extra cups myself. I kissed my husband good-bye when he walked out the door to work, staring after him as he strolled to his car, humming.

A few weeks after Duke disappeared, when I was listlessly planting flowers in our backyard, I came across one of his favorite toys, a green rubber alligator he loved to chew. I clutched it to my chest and bawled as I hadn’t since my father’s funeral.