My Wife Is Missing(77)
Michael let out a heavy sigh.
“I don’t think you’re a bad guy, Mike. I think you did a bad thing. But marriage is complicated, and it really takes two people to make it work, or otherwise … bad things may happen.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s right,” Michael said. “Maybe not.”
“Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? Lighten your load? Anything you want to share? That’s part of the healing process, Mike. Come clean.”
Kennett flashed his teeth in a crooked smile. Michael bristled inwardly as he glanced at the speedometer, which showed him going twenty over the speed limit. He let up on the gas.
Kennett’s smile only deepened.
“The thing about guilt is, Mike, no matter how fast you go, you can’t outrun it.”
CHAPTER 33
NATALIE
BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED
It was Saturday afternoon, just after her lunch with Tina Langley and Sarah Fielding at La Hacienda. Papers were strewn about Natalie’s usually tidy home office. She’d gone to the attic to retrieve several boxes of documents, most of which deserved a shredder more than a half-assed filing system. Those boxes were filled with old insurance invoices, bank statements from banks where they no longer had accounts, telephone bills for phone numbers no longer in service.
She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for. Maybe something with a mention of South Carolina, a yearbook from one of the local high schools with Michael’s picture in it, perhaps receipts or old invoices that showed a home address from Charleston. She’d come up short all around. Sarah Fielding could have sped up the process, but Natalie was hoping to keep her personal pain and office life separate as much as possible. As far as she was concerned, Sarah had linked Michael to Audrey and that was enough for her, at least for now.
Michael was out for the afternoon, running errands. The television was doing an okay job at keeping the children occupied, but Natalie knew it wouldn’t be long before she was needed again for this or that. She sat cross-legged on the floor, papers crinkling beneath her as she shifted position to get more comfortable, all the while thinking about another document she couldn’t find.
Where was Michael’s birth certificate?
Only now, after Sarah’s big reveal, was Natalie aware that his wasn’t in the file safe along with the others. That box contained their most important documents: passports, insurance policy information, their respective wills, keys to the safety deposit box, and a thousand dollars in emergency cash.
Had it ever been in the safe? She hadn’t looked at his birth certificate when they obtained their marriage license all those years ago—a town clerk had overseen the document exchange. Did Michael intentionally keep it from her? It was impossible to say who had handed the clerk the documents back then, but conceivably Michael had orchestrated it.
Natalie realized she’d had no occasion to review the official certification of her husband’s birth until an investigator tasked with scouring Michael’s life, his past, had given her one.
Natalie heard Michael’s car in the driveway, and after greeting Addie and Bryce, who sounded far more interested in the TV than they did their father, he strode into her office.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” he said, with a sardonic grin. “Did you download a homemade confetti recipe off Pinterest?”
Natalie gathered some loose papers into a neat pile, but it didn’t make the slightest difference to the overall mess.
“Back already?” she asked, trying to appear calm.
“Yeah, Home Depot didn’t have what I needed. What on earth are you doing, hon?”
Natalie knew she was handling a bomb, a man with a secret, a threat to her and to her children. She hadn’t demolished her office without formulating an answer to the question she knew Michael would ask.
“I’m looking for your birth certificate.”
Natalie had hoped it was all a big misunderstanding, that Michael would happily clear the air, get the document (wherever it was), prove it wasn’t annotated with a name change, and give her one less reason to distrust him. Now it was clear—that was wishful thinking.
Michael took a threatening step forward. Natalie saw how he kept his body positioned in front of the door to block her only way out.
“What do you want that for?” he asked.
She took note of an icy detachment in his voice.
“I thought it would be a good idea to get our passports renewed,” Natalie said, again grateful that she’d preplanned her story. “Mine is expiring and yours is only good for a couple more years, so I figured we should all get new ones. You took care of that the last time, thought I’d return the favor. But I need our birth certificates for that, and yours isn’t in the safe.”
She rose from the floor to make her way to the hefty blue box on her cluttered desk. The lid was open. Three birth certificates topped the stack of papers within. Natalie fanned them out for Michael’s benefit.
“Where’s yours, Michael?”
She was unable to keep an accusatory edge from her voice.
Michael advanced, the shadow in his expression only deepening.
“I brought it to work a while ago,” he said after a brief hesitation. “Don’t remember when. I needed it to redo my I-9 form and I just forgot about it. Left it in a file drawer there.”