“Well, Beth,” he says once the topics are exhausted, “sounds like you’d fit in just fine around here.”
I blink in surprise. That’s it? Interview over?
“You seem surprised.”
“Not to be rude, but don’t you want to ask me about my experience? Question me about cleaning skills or ask me about... I don’t know, my relationship with God or something?”
“Your relationship with God is just that—yours. It’s no business of mine unless you make it that way. And Martina already vouched for your cleaning skills. Everything I’ve seen and heard from you so far lives up to what she told me.”
I don’t ask what she told him, because I’m not sure I could keep a straight face when he rattled off what must have been a string of lies and fabrications. I’ve known Martina all of two days, and the longest conversation we’ve had was on that first night, when I bumped into her in the kitchen. She knows nothing about me other than what she’s seen, and I’ve made sure she hasn’t seen much. And yet she’s told the Reverend all about me—yet another favor, yet another reason for me to question her motivations. What does that girl want from me?
“There’s some paperwork that needs filling out upstairs,” he says, standing. “The official application so we can process your paycheck, and another one so the USCIS doesn’t come banging on my door with a big, fat fine. I assume Martina told you to bring some identification?”
Trotting out my new ID feels as precarious as walking the ledge of a cliff, but I pat my bag with a nod. “Not a problem.”
“Then welcome to Church of Christ’s Twelve Apostles, Beth.” He sticks out a hand, and we shake, mine pressed between his two warm palms. “We’re glad to have you join our ranks.”
“Thank you, Reverend. Really, this means a lot to me.” To my absolute horror, my eyes grow hot, the tears welling so quickly it’s impossible to blink them away. I choke on a small but audible sob. “I can’t even tell you how much.”
The Reverend takes me in with a kind expression. “Are you all right, child?”
I wipe my cheeks with my fingers, but new tears tumble down before I can mop the old ones away. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Or I will be. I don’t even know why I’m crying.” I force up a throaty laugh. “I promise it won’t be a regular occurrence.”
I hate to cry. For the past seven years, my tears have been slapped, backhanded, punched, yanked, kicked, squeezed and one time, burned out of me. Tears are a sign of weakness, followed always by punishment. Only losers cry.
But this man doesn’t taunt me for them, and he doesn’t look away. “If you ever want to talk about anything,” he says warmly, patiently, “you should know that I’m a good listener. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you I take care of my flock.”
I murmur another round of thanks, though the only thing I can focus on is getting out of here and into the restroom across the hall, where I can splash the splotches from my face and reapply the mascara I’m almost certainly crying down my cheeks. He lets me go, and I’m almost to the door when he stops me.
“Oh, and Beth?” His lips curve into a gentle smile, and I can see how it could melt a churchful of people, hanging on his every word. “What I said before, about taking care of my flock... That includes you. Whatever brought you here, whatever burdens you think you’re carrying, you can lay them down. You’re one of us now.”
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, I’m back in the church basement, where Martina is busy attaching a battery-powered vacuum to my back.
“Did he ask you to be in the band?” Martina says, holding up the straps for my arms.
The two of us stand in the center of a room that does triple duty as a kitchen, break room and cleaning supply closet. An old television is pushed against a wall in front of mismatched sectionals, and to its right, a workstation with multiple sinks for rinsing buckets and rags. Two walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves that belong in a grocery store cleaning aisle, or maybe an episode of Extreme Couponing. Sponges and mops, neatly stacked buckets, every cleaning product imaginable.
My uniform came from the giant Tupperware containers on the bottom shelf, khaki pants and a white T-shirt with the church logo and God Works Here embroidered in looping navy letters across the front. The getup looks ridiculous over the pleather Mary Janes I wore with my interview dress, but I didn’t think to bring sneakers.
“He asked me if I could sing or play an instrument, yeah.” I shove one arm through the loop, then another, and she settles the thing on my shoulders. For a piece of machinery, it’s pretty light.
“I knew he would. He asks everybody to be in the band.” She reaches around me from behind, snaking the harness around my waist, and I stiffen. Her fingers brush over the money belt but don’t linger. She smells like bleach and peppermint gum. “What else did you talk about?”
“I don’t know. Lots of stuff. TV shows and books and truffle fries. It was the weirdest job interview ever.”
She grabs me by an arm, turns me around to face her. “Did he tell you the joke?” I shake my head, and she grins. “Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Jesus.”
“Jesus who?”
“Jesus Christ, open the door.”
I laugh, not because the joke is funny, but at the idea it originated from a man of God. What happened to not taking the Lord’s name in vain? Father Ian would lose his shit.
Martina hands me the vacuum hose, shows me how to work the on and off button on the side. I flip it on, and the nozzle suctions itself to the carpet.
“Good gear is half the work,” I say before I can stop myself, one of your favorite one-liners. I flip the switch, both on the machine and in my mind, and turn to Martina. “I still don’t understand. He didn’t ask me one single question that was relevant to the actual job. No personal questions, either, other than silly things like whether I put on both socks before my shoes, or do one foot at a time. The whole time I’m just sitting there, waiting for the bomb to drop.”
“The Reverend says the past only defines us if we let it. He says you can let it hold you back, or you can be set free.” Martina takes on that church-like expression I’ve come to know so well, a combination of holier-than-thou satisfaction and wondrous, drank-the-Kool-Aid joy, and this is what Father Ian could never explain to me about organized religion. You are invited into the flock because you are damaged goods, and then you are expected to transform into a righteous follower, to throw out your doubts with your sins and just believe. In the end, after all that happened while going to that church, I couldn’t do it.
I lean in and lower my voice, even though we’re the only two in the room. “He also said they needed my IDs so they wouldn’t get fined by the USCIS. That’s the Citizenship and Immigration Services, Martina.”
Her eyes narrow. “What would you know about the USCIS?”
The accusation in her words revives my doubt of her Grady-baby story, and what about that Spanish-tinged accent she tries to bury under a Southern drawl? If Martina were born here, in a hospital in the state of Georgia, like she said she was, what would she know about the USCIS?
“I know what the letters stand for,” I say, “but I’m also assuming they have these things called computers, which will light up like a Vegas slot machine at my fake ID and social security numbers.”
She chews her lip. “They won’t,” she mumbles, but I catch a flash of panic in her eyes. “Jorge recycles the numbers. He only uses ones that are real. Ours won’t get flagged.”
Whatever uncertainty I had is wiped away, just like that. Martina is a Jorge customer, too. A fugitive posing under a name she wasn’t born with. Maybe I’m right to guard the cash strapped to my waist.
Suddenly, this room feels too crowded, too hot. I need to get away from here, away from her. I gesture to the machine strapped to my back. “So where do you want me to start with this thing?”
“Upstairs,” she says, stepping to the shelves for a vacuum
of her own. “We start at the top and work our way down. Like a team.”
But I’m not blind, and I’m no fool. I caught her glance at my waistline. Whatever Martina is after here, I’m pretty sure it’s not teamwork.
JEFFREY
When I wake up on Saturday morning, I shoot off a text to my boss explaining why I’ve been MIA for the past two days, then pull the pillow over my head. It smells like Sabine, like that sweet-spicy stuff in the overpriced bottles on our shower shelf, and I shove it to the floor.
I stare at the ceiling and tell myself to get up, but my limbs feel hulking and heavy, like those sandbags they pile everywhere when the National Weather Service issues a flood warning. I barely slept, thanks to the constant hum of the search boats in the waters behind my house. They’re out there now, and I waver between worry and fury.
What kind of idiot do they think I am? Like I would be stupid enough to dump my wife’s body in my own backyard. Like I would ever be that reckless. I watch Dateline. I know to not pollute my own property with evidence. They could give me a little credit and search farther downstream.
Then again, I haven’t given them much reason not to suspect me, not after my miserable performance in Detective Durand’s office, my nonanswers about my whereabouts Wednesday afternoon. I’d blame it on being rattled, the knowledge he’d been checking up on me, unsettling me enough to stumble over my answers.
But the truth is, it was Ingrid. If she hadn’t been sitting right there, weighting the air in the room with her huffed sighs and cheap perfume, then I might have told him the truth. The detective is a guy; he might have understood, but not Ingrid... No fucking way I was telling her.
It was like when you get a Trivial Pursuit question you know the answer to, that panicked, white-hot moment before the answer rolls off your tongue. I took some deep breaths, blew them all out, but the answer didn’t come.
And now Detective Durand and his Keystone Cops are determined to pin Sabine’s disappearance on me, instead of finding the person actually responsible. Because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that though they say they’re looking for Sabine, what they’re really searching for is her body.
By the time I wake again, it’s well past noon, and the noise of the boats is muffled by a low rumble coming from my front yard. Reporters have descended on the house like a flock of starving vultures, pecking at me through the glass. It’s not enough that they ruined my front lawn with their vans, they hurl questions at the house whenever I so much as walk by a window. Yesterday I pulled all the shades, but I can still feel their presence the way you feel a tornado bearing down outside, ominous and deadly.
I know from their questions that the police and their merry band of volunteers have searched everywhere there is to search. Pine Bluff’s fields and patchy woods, the town’s parks and hills and riverbanks. No bits of fabric to show for their efforts, no long strands of brown hair found stuck in a tree. If Sabine is anywhere close by, if she’s on Pine Bluff soil or in her muddy waters, chances are good that she’s dead.
Anger and grief, remorse and regret, the emotions churn in my empty stomach. There are a million things I want to say to Sabine, and now it looks like I’ll never get the chance.
The light in the room has shifted, the afternoon sun finally climbing high enough to hit the bedroom windows. I stare up at the ceiling, listening to the camera crews on my front lawn, and a wave of anxiety drags me from bed. I need to run. To pump my legs until my heart wants to explode and my chest burns with the lack of oxygen. To abuse my body until I forget these past few days ever happened.
I pull on running shorts and a T-shirt and grab my phone from the nightstand. A hundred and twenty-seven messages. I scroll through the texts and emails, variations of the same message. OMG, so shocking. Anything I can do to help? Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. I’m pleased that the tide hasn’t turned, but I’m not naive enough to know that it won’t. Ingrid is probably out there right now, alerting the world of the two-hour hole in my day. It won’t be long until she tells the press, too.
I peel the shade from an upstairs window and take a peek outside. Reporters stand in clumps on my front lawn, drinking coffee and shooting the shit like my life is a fucking happy hour. The Arkansas sun beats down on their heads and reflects off the pavement behind them like water. Good. I hope they’re roasting out there.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I inspect the contents of the fridge, searching for breakfast. Leftover pizza, a half-empty pack of eggs, some fuzzy cheese and a gallon of spoiled milk. Sabine didn’t spend any of the time I was out of town at the grocery store, and why would she? My trip to Florida was like a birthday, anniversary and Christmas rolled into one, four whole days of unmonitored time with her lover. They probably spent every free second together, especially since his wife moved out. No nagging spouses at home, asking what’s for dinner.
I grab the eggs and slam the refrigerator door.
If I’m going to hide out here all weekend, I need to go to the store. Tension creeps into my shoulders at the thought of backing my car through the throng of reporters. Maybe I should talk to a lawyer. Get him to chase them off with the threat of a lawsuit, and while I’ve got him, ask what the implications might be now that Detective Durand knows about the unaccounted-for patch in my Wednesday. Then again, what is the detective going to do, arrest me? He can’t do that without evidence, without a body. A two-hour window doesn’t make me a murderer.
I’m cracking the last of the eggs into a pan when the doorbell rings, and I check the window by the garage. Somehow, my brother Derrick has managed to plow his Camaro past the reporters, and now he’s out there, preening for their cameras.
Shit.
I drop the blinds and return to the eggs, watching them pop and hiss in the pan. To open or not to open, that is the question.
The doorbell rings again, four quick punches followed by a fist pounding on the door. “Come on, Jeffrey. I know you’re in there. It’s me, Derrick. Let me in.”
I poke at the eggs with a fork.
Letting him in would mean uncorking a spiky, barbed ball of age-old grievances and passive-aggressive rage. Derrick resents me for my job, my house, my wife—ha! joke’s on me—my car and my clothes, the inch-and-a-half height I have on him, even though he’s the older brother. I resent him for the way he tortured me at school, bullying me with taunts and ridicule and once, a wedgie delivered in front of the entire football team. We are like Mentos and Coke—put us in a container together and it’s not long before we explode.
I hear him clomping up the steps to the back door. He finds the spare key Sabine hid under the flowerpot and slides it in the lock. There’s a whoosh of sliding glass, a roar of rushing water, and a few seconds later, he’s standing in my kitchen.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he says, tossing the key onto the kitchen counter. “I’ve been banging on your door.”
My brother is his usual, slouchy self. Faded and ripped T-shirt, cutoff jeans, flip-flops. Derrick is the high school star quarterback who never made it off the bench in college. He flunked out sophomore year, and his life has been shit ever since.
“I heard you. What are you doing here?” Not the nicest greeting, but considering our relationship, not the worst one I could give him, either.
“I figured you could use the moral support, but I can just as soon go back home.” He hikes a thumb over his shoulder, but it’s all for show. His soles are superglued to the hardwood. “So I guess your wife finally had enough of you, huh?”
“You’re a real dick, you know that, right?”
“Jesus, chill out, will you? I’m only kidding.” He moves farther into the room, taking a look around—kind of like that detective did in my foyer. Like he’s cataloging all the things he can’t afford and silently judging me for them. He whips off his shades and hangs them from the collar of his shirt. “Seriously, man. What can I do?”
“Nothing.” I turn back to the stove. “Though I really appreciate
you coming over to gloat and all, but you can go now.”
Derrick moves closer, his flip-flops slapping against his crusty heels. “I’m just trying to be helpful. Jeez. Why do you always have to be such a dickwad?”
“I don’t know. I guess it runs in the family.”
“I thought maybe we could drive around and look for her or something.”
I toss the fork into the pan and flip off the gas. The eggs are burned, the edges brown and papery. I dump them, pan and all, into the sink. “What, do you think she’s just hanging out on a street corner or something, waiting for a ride?”
“No, but maybe she drove that fancy car of hers into a ditch. Maybe she had a flat tire.”
“Don’t you watch the news, Derrick? They found her car at the Super1. It was abandoned.”
His eyes go wide, and he leans a hip against the granite. “Holy shit, bro. That sounds serious. What do the cops think happened, that somebody took her?”
I yank open the refrigerator, pull out the pizza box from the night Sabine went missing. The crust is hard as dried dirt, the cheese an orange, rubbery blob. I pick up a piece and bite into it, and it tastes as disgusting as it looks.
“I’m pretty sure they think that I took her,” I say around the pizza.
“You? Have they lost their minds? Why would they think you took her?”
I stuff my mouth with another bite in lieu of answering. Answering would mean telling him about the backhand, her affair with the doctor, the missing two hours in my day—none of which I plan to share with my brother, ever. Derrick likes to pocket my shortcomings and failures, store them in his basement-brain like dormant Molotov cocktails. Weeks or months or years from now, when the rest of the world and I have moved on, he’ll toss one into a conversation just to see the fireworks.
“What about Ingrid?” He helps himself to a slice of pizza, which he shoves in the microwave for a minute, and pulls a beer from the fridge.
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