My Lovely Wife(31)

—Owen

Josh will have the letter by Tuesday. Once again, I spritz it with the musky cowboy cologne before mailing it. The letter will first be examined by the police, and who knows how many discussions must take place until they decide to go public with it. Or at least the part about Friday the 13th.

In the meantime, back to my real life. I’ve canceled too many lessons over the past few weeks. My work schedule is now packed all day, every day, in addition to all the little things that must get done. Picking up the kids, dropping them off, quick runs to the store for whatever we are missing. Burying myself in the minutiae makes my life feel normal. It almost makes that nervous twitch I always feel go away. And if Millicent didn’t keep looking at me, asking so many questions with her eyes, it might have.

Her answers arrive on Thursday evening.

Millicent and I are at the country club, attending a retirement party for someone on the board. Soirees at the club are garish to the point of vulgar. The food is rich, the wine is heavy, and everyone congratulates everyone else on their success.

We go because we should; networking is part of both our jobs. We even have a system. After walking in together, we separate. I go left, she goes right, and we make our way around the room and meet again in the middle. We switch sides, separate again, and come together back at the entrance.

Millicent is wearing a bright yellow gown; with her red hair, she looks like a flame. From my side of the room, I catch glimpses of her as she moves within the crowd, that yellow dress never far from my eye. I see her laugh, smile, show concern or delight. When her lips move, I try to guess what she is saying. She carries a glass of champagne but never drinks it. No one has ever noticed.

Tonight, her eyes are the lightest I’ve seen in a long time, like a brand-new leaf under the sun. They shift up to mine. Millicent sees that I am staring at her.

She winks.

I exhale and move on with my own networking.

Andy and Trista are here, both with full glasses of wine. Andy pats his stomach and says he really needs to start working out or something, which he does. Trista doesn’t say much, but she looks at me a little too long. She must remember our conversation about Owen, or at least parts of it.

Kekona is also at the party. She is with a young man, her latest escort, and she doesn’t bother to introduce him. Instead, she talks about everyone else—who looks good and who doesn’t, who has had work done and who needs it. As one of the wealthiest members of the club, Kekona can say anything she wants and people will still accept her.

Beth, a waitress at the club, passes by with a tray of drinks and offers me one. Her Alabama accent sticks out and makes her always sound perky.

I shake my head. “Not tonight.”

“ ’Kay,” she says.

I move on to a newer couple, the Rhineharts. Lizzie and Max just moved into Hidden Oaks. My wife sold them their house, and I met them once. Max is a golfer, but Lizzie says she used to play tennis. She thinks she should get back into it. Her husband tires of the topic and changes it to marketing, which is his business. Max thinks he can do great things for the Hidden Oaks Country Club, although he hasn’t officially been hired by anyone.

I move on, telling Lizzie to call if she wants to play tennis again. She promises she will.

Millicent and I meet at the halfway mark. Her glass of champagne is still full. She pours half of it into a plant.

“You okay?” she says.

“I’m fine.”

“Another round, then?”

“Let’s do it.”

We separate a second time, and I move through the other side of the room, greeting everyone I haven’t seen yet. It feels like I am moving in circles, because I am.

The announcement comes before the eleven o’clock news. I don’t know who saw it first or who mentioned it, but I do see people pulling out their phones. Too many of them, all at once.

A woman next to me whispers, “It’s him.”

And then I know.

Someone turns on the TV screens in the bar. We are surrounded by Josh, who is in the middle of his shining moment. He doesn’t look quite as young tonight, and it might be the glasses. They’re new.

“I received this letter earlier in the week. After discussing it with both the police and the owner of the station, we decided that in the interest of public safety, we had no choice but to put it on the air.”

A shot of the letter appears on the screen. We all follow along, reading the typed words as Josh says them out loud. When he gets to the part about a woman disappearing on Friday the 13th, a collective gasp erupts from the party guests.

I look around and find the yellow dress.

Millicent is looking at me, a half smile on her lips and one eyebrow raised, as if she is asking me a question.

I wink.



* * *



? ? ?

“Brilliant,” she says. “You are brilliant.”

Millicent is lying on the bed, naked, the yellow gown thrown over a chair.

“You think everyone believes it now?” I know they do. I want her to say it.

“Of course they do. They all believe it.”

I am standing at the foot of the bed, also naked, smiling, and feeling like I captured the flag.

Millicent stretches her arms up, grabbing on to the headboard.

I fall back onto the bed next to her. “They’re all going to be looking for Owen.”