My Lovely Wife(43)

But now, he is starting to piss me off.

I am in his room. He is sitting at his desk. His computer is on, and Naomi is staring back at me. Forty-eight hours have passed since she was named as the only missing woman left. Her face is everywhere, all over the news and social media.

“Why are you looking at that?” I say, nodding to his computer.

“You’re changing the subject.”

He is right. I am avoiding the fact that he has just asked for hundreds of dollars to keep his mouth shut about my nonexistent affair. Or my one-night-stand, I should say, because I did sleep with Petra.

“How long are you going to keep this up?” I say.

“How long are you? I saw you sneak out just last week.”

It’s impossible to think of Rory as a child when he talks like this. Despite his floppy red hair and baggy clothes, he does not look like a fourteen-year-old. He looks like my equal.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I say. “I’ll give you the money, and we both stop. You will never see me sneak out again.”

“And if you do?”

“If I sneak out again, I’ll give you double.”

Rory’s poker face falls apart when his eyebrows shoot up. He covers his surprise by rubbing his chin, pretending to think about my offer. “I’ll be watching,” he says.

“I know you will be.”

He nods, thinks, and then says no to my offer. “I have another idea.”

I am already shaking my head at him, pissed off. Before, I was on the verge, and now I am there. “I am not giving you any more—”

“I don’t want money.”

“Then what?”

“The next time you sneak out, I don’t want money. I don’t want anything,” he says. “But I’m going to tell Jenna.”

“You’d really tell your sister?”

He sighs. It is not one of those old-man sighs, filled with weariness and fatigue. This is a child’s sigh, the kind that comes with a trembling lip. “Stop, Dad,” he says. “Just stop cheating on Mom.”

Now I am the one who is surprised. The full impact of what he has said spreads over me an inch at a time, until I have the whole picture.

He is a child. Adulthood is still years away, and he is not even close. Now, he looks younger than ever. He looks younger than he did the first time I lied to him, younger than the second and the third. He looks younger than he did the day I taught him how to hold a tennis racket and younger than the day he rejected it for golf. Rory looks younger than he did yesterday. He is still just a little boy.

This has never been about the money or the video games or even the blackmail.

This has all been about what he thinks I am doing. He thinks I am sneaking out to cheat on his mother. And he wants me to stop.

When I realize this, it feels like a shotgun blast to the stomach. Or at least how I imagine that might feel. It is much stronger than a punch. I do not know what to say or how to say it.

I nod and offer my hand.

We shake on it.



* * *



? ? ?

I keep all of this from Millicent, just as I have all along. I don’t even tell her that Rory has been reading about Naomi on the Internet. The kids see it all anyway. It’s everywhere.

Josh is still covering the story and is on TV all day, for breaking news and on the evening reports. He is still very young and earnest, but now he looks tired and needs a haircut.

For the past two days, he has been traveling around with the police as they check rest stops. That was where Owen kept his victims, in an abandoned rest stop, where he had hollowed out the building and turned it into a bunker. The police have been searching all of them, along with any bunker type of building on the map. They have not found a thing.

Tonight, Josh is out on an empty road, behind him a fleet of police cars. He is bundled up in a jacket and a baseball cap, which makes him look even younger, and he says they are checking on another possible location. They have been searching farther and farther out, even way out east near Goethe State Park.

It is because Naomi is still alive.

Josh does not say that. The police do not say it, either. But everyone knows that if Owen is still alive, so is Naomi. He always keeps them alive, and he does awful things to them. Things they do not talk about on TV. Things I do not think about, because Millicent is doing them now.

Or I assume she is. I assume Naomi is still alive, though I have not asked and have no idea where Millicent would keep her. The police searches make me wonder.

The next morning, while I am backing out of the driveway, Millicent comes out of the house. She raises her hand, telling me to wait. I watch her walk from the door to my car. She is wearing a slim pair of slacks and a white blouse with tiny polka dots.

Millicent bends down at the window. Her face is so close to mine I can see the tiny lines in the corners of her eyes—not deep wrinkles but well on their way. When she places her hand on the edge of the door, I see scratches on her forearm. Like she has been playing with a cat.

She sees where I am looking and pulls down the sleeve. My eyes go up to hers. In the morning sun, they almost look like they used to.

“What?” I say.

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a white envelope. “I thought this would be useful.”

The envelope is sealed. “What’s this?”