My Lovely Wife(86)

Run and hide. Stay and fight.

The options repeat over and over, like those words written on the wall of the basement. Millicent stated these options as if they were the only ones that existed. As if it were an either-or choice.

She is wrong. The options are wrong.

First, I will stay. Leaving my kids isn’t going to happen.

And if I stay, I have to hide. At least until I can find a way to make the police believe me about Millicent.

That means I have to fight.

Stay, hide, fight. The first is easy. No running.

The police. I could go to the police and tell them everything, tell them …

No. Cannot do that. I have real blood on my hands, and even a rookie will figure that out. And if I cannot go to the police, I will have to avoid them.

Money. I have two hundred dollars in my wallet, and that will not last long. I head straight to the bank and withdraw as much cash as I can without triggering an alert to the IRS. Millicent will know about it, because the tracker is still on my car.

Millicent. How long did she know? How long has she been tracking me? When did she start to plan this? The questions are endless, unanswerable.

With all we have been through, with all we have done together, it is unfathomable to me that she did not talk to me, ask me about it, even give me the benefit of the doubt. Instead, I had no chance, no opportunity to explain.

It seems a little bit crazy.

And heartbreaking.

But I do not have time to think about either one. In less than an hour, my life has been reduced to its most base level: survival.

So far, I am not very good at it. Millicent knows where I am, and I have no idea what to do next.



* * *



? ? ?

Home. It is still where I always go.

I grab what I can—clothes, toiletries, my laptop. The one we used to search for the women is gone, probably destroyed, but I find Millicent’s tablet and take it. And photographs. I take a couple of pictures of the kids right off the walls. I also send them a text.

Don’t believe everything you hear. I love you.

Before leaving, I turn off the GPS tracker but keep it with me. For a while, she will wonder if I am just sitting in our house. Maybe. But that is assuming I know my wife at all.

I pull out of the driveway and drive down the street, having no idea where to go next.

An empty building, a roadside motel, a parking lot? The swamp, the woods, the hiking trails? I have no idea, but it does not seem smart to be in a place I am unfamiliar with. I need somewhere quiet, somewhere I can think. Somewhere no one will bother me for a few hours.

A complete lack of options and originality sends me to the country club.

As an employee, I have a key to the office, which I never use, along with the equipment rooms and the courts. I make a quick stop at the store for a bag of food, mostly junk, and stay out of sight until after nine o’clock. That’s when the lights are shut down on the tennis courts, and security locks them up for the night.

This is where I go. The club has cameras inside the building. There are none on the courts.





Sixty-three




Everything about the tennis courts is familiar. I grew up here, on these courts. This is where I learned to play tennis, but that wasn’t all I did. My coach made me run around these courts endless times to get into shape. I won trophies here and had my butt whipped, sometimes on the same day.

This was my escape; this is where I came to get away from my friends, school, and especially my parents. At first, I came here to see if they would look for me. When they never did, I used it as a hideout. I even had my first kiss here.

Lily. She was a year older than me and far more experienced, or so it seemed. On Halloween night, about a million years ago, my friends and I dressed up as pirates. She and her friends dressed up as baby dolls. We all ran into each other somewhere in the Oaks, while trick-or-treating, and Lily told me I was kind of cute. I assumed that meant she loved me, and I think she did.

One comment led to another, and it wasn’t long before I asked if she wanted to go somewhere cool. She said yes.

“Cool” might have been an exaggeration, but when I was thirteen I thought it was cool to be outside the house, at night, with a girl. Lily didn’t think it was too bad, either, because she kissed me. She tasted like chocolate and licorice, and I loved it.

For a second, I am so enveloped by this memory that everything seems okay. It is not. I am on this tennis court because the police are after me and I cannot go home.

But thinking about Lily makes me realize I do have somewhere to go.



* * *



? ? ?

The alarm on my phone wakes me up at five. I jump up, gather my things, and get into my car. Trying to sleep on a courtside bench gave me plenty of time to come up with a plan. The Internet on my phone helped make it a good one. Turns out there are dozens of websites that explain how to disappear, how to go off the grid, how to elude the police, your boss, or your angry wife. Everyone wants to escape something.

I drive out of town, down the interstate, and do not stop for at least an hour. Eventually, I pull into a gas station, turn on the GPS tracker, and attach it to the bottom of a semi. After taking the battery out of my phone, I stop at a convenience store and buy a cheap disposable.

Then I head back to Hidden Oaks.

The Internet does not recommend this part, but the Internet does not have children. If I didn’t, I would keep driving, change the license plate on my car or get rid of it altogether. Take a Greyhound from state to state and eventually end up in Mexico.