My Lovely Wife(17)

“Everyone was talking about you today,” she says. Jenna types into her phone while she talks. She always does this. “They said you’re so stupid you had to look up the spelling of your own name. That’s why you were cheating.”

“Ha ha,” Rory says.

“They said you’re too stupid to be older than me.”

Rory rolls his eyes.

Millicent is in the kitchen. She has changed out of her work clothes and is now wearing yoga pants, a long sweatshirt, and striped socks. Her hair is piled on top of her head, secured with a giant clip. She smiles and holds out a bowl of salad for me to put on the table.

The kids continue to bicker as she and I put the food out.

“You’re so stupid,” Jenna says. “They say I got all the brains in the family.”

“You sure didn’t get any beauty,” Rory says.

“Mom!”

“Enough,” Millicent says. She sits down at the table.

Rory and Jenna shut up. They put their napkins on their laps.

It is all so normal.

When we are done eating, Millicent asks Jenna and me if we will take care of the dishes. She wants to go over Rory’s schoolwork with him to make sure he got it all done today.

I see the panic in his eyes.

It is going to be a long evening for Rory; I can hear it from the kitchen as Jenna and I clean up. I rinse, she stacks the dishwasher, and we talk a little.

Jenna babbles about soccer, going into details I cannot possibly understand. Not for the first time, I wonder if I should become more involved and volunteer to be an assistant coach or something. Then I remember I just don’t have the time.

She keeps talking, and my mind wanders to Millicent. To our date night.

When the dishes are done and Rory is out of excuses, everything winds down for the night. Rory goes to his room to do the homework he didn’t do earlier. Jenna chats and talks and texts all at the same time. When it is time to go to bed, Millicent takes both of their computers. She takes them every night at bedtime so they won’t stay up and chat with strangers on the Internet after we’ve gone to bed. I think there are strangers on the Internet at all hours, but I do not argue with her about this.

Once the kids are in bed, Millicent and I go to the garage for our date night.





Eleven




We sit in Millicent’s car. She drives the nicer one, a luxury model crossover, because she often drives clients around while showing them houses. The leather seats are comfortable, it’s roomy, and with the doors shut, the kids can’t eavesdrop.

My hand rests between us, on the center console, and she put hers on top of it.

“You’re nervous,” she says.

“You aren’t?”

“They won’t find anything that leads to us.”

“How can you be sure? Did you think they’d find her?”

She shrugs. “Maybe I didn’t care.”

It feels like what I know could fit in my hand and everything I don’t know would fill the house. I have so many questions but don’t want to know the answers.

“The others have never been found,” I say. “Why Lindsay?”

“Lindsay.” She says the name slowly. It makes me think back to when we first found her. We did that together: We looked, we chose, I was a part of every decision.

After I went hiking with Lindsay a second time, I told Millicent she was the one. That was when we first devised the code, our special date night, except we didn’t meet in the garage. While a neighbor watched the kids for a little while, Millicent and I went out for frozen yogurt. She got vanilla, I got butter pecan, and we walked through the mall, where everything was closed except the movie theater. We stopped in front of an upscale kitchen store and stared at the window display. It was one of Millicent’s favorite stores.

“So,” she said, “tell me.”

I glanced around. The closest people were at least a hundred yards away, in line to buy movie tickets. Still, I lowered my voice. “I think she’s perfect.”

Millicent raised her eyebrows, looking surprised. And happy. “Really?”

“If we’re going to do it, then yes. She’s the one.” She wasn’t the only one; she was the third. Lindsay was different because she was a stranger we chose from the Internet. We picked her out of a million other options. The first two we didn’t pick at all. They had come to us.

Millicent ate a spoonful of vanilla yogurt and licked the spoon. “You think we should, then? We should do it?”

Something in her eyes made me look away. On occasion, Millicent makes me feel like I cannot breathe. It happened right then, as we stood in the mall deciding Lindsay’s fate. I looked away from Millicent and into the closed kitchen store. All that new and sparkly equipment stared back at me, mocking me with its unattainability. We could not afford everything we wanted. Not that anyone could, but it still bothered me.

“Yes,” I said to Millicent. “We should definitely do it.”

She leaned over and gave me a cold vanilla kiss.

We never said anything about holding Lindsay captive.

Now, we are sitting in the garage having another date night. No frozen yogurt, just a small bag of pretzels I have in the glove compartment. I offer them to Millicent, and she turns up her nose.