My Wife Is Missing(90)

Michael thought back to the day Natalie had showed him Audrey’s picture on her phone. It had been quite a shock when she accused him of infidelity. Of course it was true, he had strayed, but it was so much more.

Some things done can never be undone.

Gazing fixedly at Audrey’s picture on Natalie’s phone, at those all too familiar blue eyes, Michael was shocked at how close Natalie was to the truth. Just for a moment, he let his guard down, allowed his emotions to take over—and, judging by the way Natalie eyed him with hurt and suspicion, her accusations that quickly followed, it was a moment too long. She knew something was amiss, that Audrey was involved, and that Michael wasn’t being completely honest with her.

And he wasn’t, not by a long shot.

Michael tried to recover, to stuff his emotions back inside the metaphorical box and adopt a more imperturbable expression. After long years of use, he’d strengthened his lie muscles the way bodybuilders did their biceps.

Forget the affair, Michael told himself. If Natalie knew the truth about him, there’d be no coming back.

Then, everything got worse. Much worse.

He recalled the night he got that phone call. She was hysterical. Demanding that she see him, or else. She’d tell. She’d tell everything. He left the house in a rush, and the next day the news came out.

Audrey was dead. There were no suspects.

He doubted that would stay the case for long, but it did. Nobody figured it out. The police got in touch with him because of one email exchange, but so far nothing came of it because there was nothing tying him directly to the crime.

Even so, he should have guessed Kennett’s ulterior motive from the start. He’d even mentioned Audrey’s name in the bar that first night. The threat had pulsed before Michael like a neon sign, but he was too consumed with fear about Natalie and the kids to listen to his intuition. Best he could do was to pretend he had nothing to hide when Kennett essentially invited himself into Michael’s problem.

Now his greatest threat was sleeping in the room next door—or, if he was like Michael, failing to sleep. Every few minutes, it seemed, Michael found himself out of bed, pacing his hotel room like a prisoner in a cell, peering out the peephole at a fish-eyed view of an empty hallway, then out the third-floor window. There he looked out onto a bleak parking lot, expecting at any minute to see a swarm of police cars rolling in at high speed. But there were no strobe lights, no sirens, and no police came that night.

When would Kennett drop the other shoe? Michael kept asking himself. Obviously he had no intention of arresting him for Brianna’s murder. Double jeopardy kept Michael safe there, but Audrey was a different matter. Michael wondered if that was Kennett’s angle. Was he playing a game, working Michael undercover, gathering evidence he could later use to make an arrest? Perhaps. But he was also helping to track down Natalie, so Michael decided to tackle one problem at a time.

It was almost morning, and Michael’s sleeplessness began to take a physical and mental toll. He felt it in his bones, like a sickness he couldn’t shake, a weakness he couldn’t overcome. He was utterly out of sorts in both body and mind.

Poor Natalie, he thought. Once again he was reminded of his thoughtlessness in ignoring her suffering—or worse, losing his temper when she couldn’t do the simplest tasks. Insomnia was an insidious beast, a predator of the mind.

If he got out of this quagmire, if he somehow managed to fix the unfixable, Michael vowed to change. He was done living a life of lies. He’d come clean about everything.

Well, almost everything.

As dawn came, Michael decided to shower. He didn’t know what the day would bring, but he was going to be clean and shaved when he faced it. Toledo was obviously a dead end, but where to go from here, Michael couldn’t say. All he knew was that the more time he and Kennett spent together, the more chances there’d be for him to say or do something incriminating.

The shower’s scalding water didn’t wash away Michael’s worry. He stood under the showerhead, hands braced against the slick tile, thinking of memories Kennett had conjured up for him of another time many years ago, a party Michael had attended when everything started to unravel.

Without that party, Michael wouldn’t be in Toledo with Kennett, would probably be married to someone else, have different kids. Without that party, and what happened that night, his life would have been entirely different.



* * *



The place was packed with sweaty teens. A teacher was there, too. Mr. Oman. He was cool, though. In his twenties, not long out of college, taught chem, wasn’t a dick. He was drinking out of a red plastic cup like everyone else. Nobody was going to rat on him. He could score weed.

The party punch was spiked with so much vodka that a match held too close might have set the place ablaze. They were partying at Toby’s house because his parents were out of town and they didn’t give a shit anyway. Rye had just beaten Harrison 34–14 and after the game, everyone gathered at Toby’s for a big celebratory party. That’s where he first saw Brianna. She was young, just a sophomore, but he didn’t let that stop him.

She was a cheerleader, hot as hell, with legs longer than a mile and a smile like a sunbeam. He’d had his share of girlfriends (a benefit of being athletic and good-looking), but Brianna was something else. Sure, she was young, but he didn’t let her age or those pom-poms deter him. She was confident. Wasn’t at all intimidated to talk to a senior, much less one who was captain of the soccer team, member of the National Honor Society, yearbook president, and spent four years in honors choir.