My Lovely Wife(70)

“Stop it,” she says.

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“Wait, are you talking about Faith Hammond?” Millicent says.

Rory does not answer, which means yes. It also means Millicent knows Faith’s parents, likely because she sold the Hammonds their house.

“Why didn’t they catch him?” Jenna says. She is staring up at the TV.

Maybe we are not quite back to normal.

“They caught him before,” Rory says. “And he got out.”

“So they can’t catch him?”

“They will. People like him don’t stay free forever,” I say.

Rory opens his mouth to say something, and Millicent shuts him up with a look.

Everything I think of to say sounds stupid in my head, so I keep my mouth shut. Not even Rory speaks. No one does until Jenna says something.

“I don’t feel so good.” She rubs her stomach. Jenna had the barbecue-and-onion dog, which was almost as large as my chili cheese dog. I do not think it’s the stress that has upset her stomach today.

Millicent gives me the look.

I nod. Yes, this is my fault for suggesting the hot dogs.

Millicent grabs her bag and motions for us to go. She has been a good sport about the hot-dog thing, considering we did not discuss it beforehand, and I take her hand in mine. We follow the kids out to the parking lot.

“And how’s your stomach?” she says.

“Perfect. Yours?”

“Never better.”

I lean over and try to kiss her. She turns away.

“Your breath is disgusting.”

“And yours smells like tofu.”

She laughs and I laugh, and my stomach does not feel nearly as good as I claimed. As soon as we get home, both Jenna and I are sick. She goes upstairs to the bathroom, but I can’t make it. I end up using the one in the hall.

Millicent runs between the two, bringing us ginger ale and cold compresses.

“Sick as dogs!” Rory yells. He laughs, and inside I am laughing with him.

Tonight, everything is funny, even while I am sick on the bathroom floor. Tonight, it feels like I have exhaled.

I didn’t even realize I’d been holding my breath.





Fifty




That hot dog kept me up at night, so I sleep in a little the next morning. By the time I get out of the house, it’s too late to stop at the EZ-Go. Instead, I go to a coffee shop just outside the Hidden Oaks gate. It’s the kind with five-dollar coffee and a male barista who has an obnoxious beard and stares at the TV. He shakes his head at it as he pours me a plain cup of coffee.

“I gotta stop watching the news,” he says.

I nod, understanding this more than he knows. “It’ll only depress you.”

“Word.”

I did not know people still said “Word” in a real way, but this big bearded fellow says it like he means it.

I leave without asking about the news. They are still talking about whether or not Owen is really gone, but there is no real news. No updates. Just new ways of repeating the old.

And already, Owen is starting to fade. He is still the lead story but no longer dominates the entire broadcast.

Just as I thought.

And now, my thoughts revolve around my family, my kids. About Rory’s girlfriend, whom I still haven’t met. I did figure out the Hammonds live on the next block. It would take Rory all of sixty seconds to get from our house to theirs if he cut through the middle of the block. I should have known this already, should have known Rory was sneaking out, but I was too busy doing it myself. Now I am making up for lost time.

Jenna has a new fascination with makeup. This has just started in the past week, perhaps because she is no longer trying to hide from Owen. I caught her putting lip gloss on before we left for school one morning, and Millicent said it looked like someone had been in our bathroom.

And she still has that knife under her mattress. I am starting to wonder if she forgot it was there.

These are all things I would miss if I were still distracted by Owen, by Naomi and Annabelle and Petra. I cannot remember the last time I charged the disposable phone.

And Millicent. We have talked about having a real date night. It has not happened yet, but when it does, we will not talk about Holly or Owen or anything of the sort. In the meantime, she has started an anti–hot dog crusade on the Internet.

I took the tracker off her car. Now, I want to look at my wife, not the blue dot representing my wife.

Even work has been booming, I have two new clients, because my schedule is no longer as erratic. Most of my day is at the club, and so when I’m not teaching, I have time to network.

Andy. I haven’t spoken to him since he moved out of Hidden Oaks. He left right after Trista died; he put the house up for sale, and I haven’t seen him since. He no longer comes to the clubhouse. It doesn’t seem right that I have let him disappear out of my life. In part, that’s been because of my own schedule. But it is also because of Trista.

I call him to see how he is. Andy does not answer and does not call back. I make a half-hearted attempt to search for him online, to try and figure out where he is living now, but I give up after a few minutes.

I still have that bottle of eye drops, though I have seen no evidence that Rory, or anyone, is using drugs of any kind. It doesn’t make sense why they are in the house, much less in the pantry. Eye drops don’t need to be hidden.