Dear Wife

by Kimberly Belle

  And then there’s that stunt he pulled with Mandy in the Morning. What kind of tool bad-talks their missing wife on network television, then starts up an affair with the TV reporter? Neither move won him any points with the stay-at-home mom crowd—women like Camille, blue-ribbon, class-A gossips who wile away the hours their kids are at school at coffee shops and the gym, spreading rumors and stoking speculation. If Jeffrey were smart—which he’s not—he’d have kept his paws off Mandy and blubbered into her camera like that lovesick doctor has been doing on other shows, begging for whomever took Sabine to send her back home. Thanks to Trevor’s tears and Ingrid’s tenacity, the national news caught wind of the story last week.

  Camille refills her glass with a bottle from the fridge door and drops in two fresh ice cubes. “I still think it’s the husband. I met him once, ages ago. Some party at the Magillicutty’s, a housewarming or birthday or I don’t remember what. But the point is, I walked into the kitchen and there they were, arguing about something. Well, he was arguing. She was mostly crying.”

  “Is that so?” I pop the top and take a long pull from the bottle.

  Camille rolls her eyes at my nonanswer. As the detective assigned to the case, I’m walking a delicate balance here: releasing enough tidbits to keep the public invested, but not enough to make them lose hope. Feeding them enough information to fuel the investigation, but not enough to trip me up. I’m looking for leads, not vigilantes or armchair detectives.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Marcus. Everybody knows they were on the brink of divorce. Stop acting like I’m revealing some top secret detail about her life. She was having an affair, and honestly, who wouldn’t in her place? Her husband is a real douche.”

  Camille isn’t wrong. It’s no secret their marriage was on the rocks. My sister is not the only one floating the theory he had a hand in Sabine’s disappearance. Nobody’s buying his reading-a-book-by-the-river bullshit, including me. Chasing down what he was really up to the afternoon his wife disappeared has eaten up the bulk of my investigation hours.

  “Fine, you keep your secrets, but at least tell your favorite sister this—”

  “You’re my only sister.”

  “Whatever. Just tell me, second favorite brother of mine.” A burst of laughter comes from the next room, and she leans her head around the counter to make sure we’re still alone. Her concern is not about privacy, but about getting the scoop. Camille hates not being in the know. “What’re your spidey senses telling you? Do you think you’ll ever find Sabine?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Really? What do you think happened to her? What does your gut say?”

  “Honestly, Cam?” I drain the beer bottle, chuck it into the recycling bin. “My gut says that she’s dead.”

  * * *

  My younger brother, Duke, settles a steaming platter of pot roast swimming on a bed of vegetables onto a table already groaning under the weight of our mother’s food. As usual, she’s cooked for an army, enough to send all of us home with Ziploc baggies of leftovers that will last us well into next week. I can still hear her, banging around in the kitchen, rattling off a one-sided conversation with herself. That needs more dressing. Now where did I put the butter? Don’t forget the garlic bread.

  “Ma, come on,” I shout. The smells are overpowering, meat and potatoes and vegetables plucked from the garden out back. “You’re killing us here!”

  I wink across the table at Annabelle, who’s sneaked a slice of sausage from the tray and tucked it in a fist. Only Annabelle dares to sneak food because ever since her illness she’s Ma’s unofficial favorite, the only one besides me who can get away with breaking the house rules—rules that for everyone else are ironclad but for us a little fuzzy. (1) No cussing or talking back. (2) Nobody eats until everyone’s seated and the food blessed. (3) Turn off the lights—what do you think, that we own the electricity company?

  Ma barrels into the dining room in her apron, a frilly, floral thing she’s had as long as I can remember. “Did everybody get themselves something to drink?”

  Nods and yeses all around, including my own, even though my new beer bottle is already empty. Ma would only hold up dinner for me to go get another, and the Durand clan is a ravenous bunch. Best not to get in their way.

  She sits, then registers the empty place setting at the far end, and her expression shifts from surprised to offended. Her gaze scans the faces at the table, ticking them off one by one in her head. Her three adult kids and their spouses. Duke and Joanie’s twins. Camille and Shawn’s two hellions and Annabelle. It’s only a matter of time before Ma’s gaze lands on me.

  “Marcus, where’s Emma?”

  My absent wife. Her beloved daughter-in-law. The same person she last Christmas referred to as the daughter she never had. “Uh, hello, Mom,” Camille had said at the time, “I’m standing right here.” Ma just patted her hand. “You know what I mean.” She’s been so busy she didn’t notice when I walked in without Emma, not until now.

  I slide the napkin from under my silverware, drape it over my lap. “Home in bed. She said to tell you she’s sorry to miss this.”

  Like everybody else here, my mother is well aware of my wife’s delicate constitution. Emma’s always got something, a headache or stomachache or earache or dizzy spell she can’t quite shake. Usually, I’m cool with her bowing out of family dinners and kids’ soccer games, but today’s different. Nobody misses a Durand birthday celebration, not even Camille, who once waited until everybody was finished with dessert to tell us she was in labor.

  “Was,” I say. “Emma was sick. She picked up that stomach bug that’s going around.”

  “What stomach bug?” Camille says, looking up and down the table. “I haven’t heard anything about a stomach bug. Since when? What kind?” She frowns at Duke, then at her husband, Shawn. “Do y’all know anything about a stomach bug?”

  Ma frowns. “Well, if she was sick, then why isn’t she here?”

  “Give her a break, will you? Em’s better, but still she’s not a hundred percent yet. She just wanted to sleep it off, and honestly, both of us were a little worried she might still be contagious. We didn’t want to risk it, not with a houseful of kids.” I follow up my words with a meaningful glance at Annabelle, whose immune system is still wonky.

  For Ma that does the trick. She lets it go, pushing back her chair. “I think I have some homemade chicken soup from the freezer.”

  “Later.”

  She ignores me, pressing to a stand. “I’ll just get it out so it can defrost. It’ll only take a second.”

  Someone groans—Camille’s oldest, I think, down at the kids’ end of the table. My mother’s freezer is a black hole. Food that gets shoved into its icy belly rarely ever makes it out, except for the one day every year Ma loads everything into shopping bags and takes it to the homeless shelter downtown. If there’s chicken soup in there, it’ll take her weeks to dig it out.

  Camille widens her eyes at me, a not-so-subtle sign to stop this train before it runs off the tracks. To her right, the kids clutch their forks and throw wild, panicked glances—all but Annabelle, who’s leaning back in her chair and chewing. She looks like a red-pigtailed Snoopy, one cheek fat with sausage.

  “Ma.” She stops at the door to the kitchen, and I soften my tone. “Emma would love some of your chicken soup, but please, for the love of all that’s holy, get it later, will you? The kids down there are about to start a riot.”

  “Yeah,” someone whispers. Shawn, I think, from the way Camille elbows him in the ribs.

  Ma looks at the kids, and they bob their heads. “Nana, we’re starving,” one of them says.

  She presses a palm to her bosom, then bustles back over to her chair, reciting a rapid-fire blessing over the food like one of those disclaimers at the end of a radio commercial. Then, finally, come the words we’ve all been waiting to hear: “All right, y’all. Dig in.”

  There’s an explosion of movement and voices, of passi
ng plates and scooping spoons, of people tearing into the heaping platters like they haven’t eaten since last week. The Durand version of a food fight, Emma calls it, a complete free-for-all. So much commotion that I almost miss the buzzing at my hip.

  I see the name, and a shot of adrenaline hits my veins like liquid fire. There were a dozen reasons for me to become a cop—my firstborn’s need for order and control; our jailbird father, who dropped dead halfway through his fourteen-year sentence; the way I had to work two jobs to supplement his nonexistent life insurance. But this feeling when something breaks, punch-drunk with energy and a pulsing in my chest, that’s the reason I stay. It’s a high as addictive as a pull from a crack pipe.

  I pull my cell phone from the holder, wave it in the air by my ear, and Ma shoos me off with a flick of her fingers. Some mothers dream of their sons becoming priests; for mine, there is no more honorable profession than cop.

  In three strides I’m in the kitchen.

  “I got something,” Charlie says in that gruff smoker’s voice that sounds like he could keel over at any minute.

  Thank fuck.

  Charlie is an ex-cop, a freelance detective specialized in finding the unfindable, and my go-to secret weapon. His methods may be a little questionable—according to the Chief, a lot questionable—but he’s discreet, and he always gets the job done. I pay him under the table and from my own pocket. So far he’s been worth every hard-earned penny.

  I unlock the sliding glass door and step out, onto the tiny deck overlooking Ma’s backyard. The late afternoon sun slants through the trees, lighting up Ma’s beds of Early Girl tomatoes and E-Z Pick beans and whatever the hell else she’s got sprouting in the greenhouse at the very back.

  “I found an application for an apartment in Tulsa,” Charlie says. “Some place called...” Papers rustle in the background. “The District at River Bend. I checked it out, more hipsters there than you can beat with a stick, which is exactly what I wanted to do, beat ’em with a stick. Anyway, the leasing manager conducted a background check that went nowhere. Your gal disappeared before she could sign the lease.”

  Charlie’s message hits me, and I clench my jaw so hard something pops in my temple. My “gal” knew what she was doing when she filled in that application. She knew that as soon as she forked over her license and social security number and whatever else needed for the background check, they would act as beacons, lighting up her location on a map. An electronic trail leading the police straight to her.

  “It’s a bait and switch,” I say. “She’s on the run.”

  Charlie’s grunt says he agrees. “I called the numbers she gave the leasing manager as references. Both took me to QuikTrip, one for the corporate offices in Tulsa, the other for a gas station south of Oklahoma City. That’s two places of employment a hundred and twenty miles away from each other. I thought that was kind of funny. Don’t you think that’s kind of funny?”

  “Fucking hilarious.”

  “Both of them were dead ends, of course.”

  Of course. I suck in enough air to pop a lung, then I blow it out long and slow while I count to ten. A ridiculous technique I learned from the department psychologist, and just like when Chief Eubanks sent me to the shrink under threat of administrative leave, it doesn’t do anything other than piss me off.

  “If she laid a trail to the west, that means she probably went east,” I say. “She’d stay in the South so her accent wouldn’t stick out.”

  “Memphis?”

  “Nah, too close. I’m guessing she’d put at least a day or two’s drive between us. Start with the cities.”

  “Got it.”

  “And Charlie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’ll have dropped some balls by now. I don’t know what yet. But find them.”

  “Roger that.”

  He hangs up, and I slide the phone into my pocket and stand there for a long minute, white-knuckling the railing and watching a bird tug a worm from the dirt. The worm is flailing about, struggling to keep itself tethered to the earth, but the bird claws the ground and holds fast.

  “Uncle Marcus?”

  I turn, and there’s Annabelle, her pretty face crinkled with worry. Behind her the sliding door stands open, just enough space for her tiny body to slip through.

  “Hi, princess.” I smile down at her, trying to assess from her expression how long she’s been standing there, listening. How much she’s heard.

  She tips her head back, squinting into the sun. “You said a bad word.”

  I flip back through the phone conversation, trying to remember what I said. Which bad word? It could be one of many. I crouch down, putting us face-to-face. “I did?”

  She nods. “You said f—”

  “Don’t you dare.” I clap a hand over her mouth. “Your mother will string both of us up if she hears you say that. Speaking of your mother, didn’t she ever tell you not to eavesdrop on important police business?”

  Annabelle wriggles away from my hand, and she’s grinning. “She’s the one who told me to come out here and find out what you were talking about.”

  I laugh, the muscles relaxing in my neck, releasing the tight lines across my back. “Is there any food left on the table, or did you savages eat it all?”

  She smiles. “Nana made you a plate. A really big one.”

  I snatch Annabelle off her feet, swing her around and carry my squealing niece to the door. “Good, ’cause I’m starving.”

  BETH

  I spend the rest of the day obsessing about the missing-person report on the TV and thinking about the first time I tried to leave. We’d been married a handful of years by then—long enough for me to know your apologies and promises to change would turn up empty again, but short enough I still thought I had some sliver of control. In a moment of daring recklessness, I threw some things into a bag, shoved it in the trunk of my car and drove across town to my sister’s house. The week prior, after seeing the bruises across my back and ribs, she’d pressed her house key into my hand and told me to use it anytime, day or night.

  My freedom lasted for all of four hours.

  Just thinking about my sister stirs up a wave of fresh sorrow, a bittersweet churning in my chest. I remember her face when you showed up on her doorstep, with flowers and that diamond necklace I still don’t know how you paid for, the disappointment that curled on her lips when I followed you out to the car. Do you remember what you said to make me go with you? Do you? Because I remember every single thing. Your hands gripping my arm. Your hot breath in my ear. My sister hollering at me to come back inside.

  “Either get in the motherfucking car,” you said as calm as could be, “or I will slice your sister into a million bloody pieces, and I will make you watch.”

  I got in the motherfucking car.

  After that my sister and I didn’t speak for months, because I couldn’t tell her the truth of what you said, and she couldn’t understand why I would go back to someone who kept breaking my bones and my heart. She accused me of being too proud, too blinded by love, and I couldn’t tell her that love had nothing to do with it. I went with you that day because I believed you. Unlike all your other promises—that you were sorry, that you would get help, that you’d never, ever raise a hand to me like that again—the threat to my sister, I knew, was not an empty one. You’d slice her to pieces, and you’d do it without blinking an eye.

  I learned another lesson that day, one that in the end, was much more sinister: my leaving was not just about me. You would mow down anyone who got in your way.

  “Hello, Beth?” The Reverend’s voice comes from right behind me, but it takes two more attempts before I realize he’s talking to me. That I’m Beth.

  I startle, and my head whacks against the upper shelf of the cabinet I’m hunched under. Stars burst across my vision. I slap a hand to the throbbing spot and back out of the cabinet on my knees.

  The Reverend presses his hands in prayer and gives a little bow. “‘Whate
ver you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.’ Colossians 3:23.”

  I don’t know how to respond to this, what to say to this godly man who I’ve put in danger by the simple act of accepting a job. He’s one of the people you’d mow down to get to me—collateral damage, that’s what you would call it. I try to focus on the Reverend’s smile, not the spiky ball of dread gathering in my gut.

  “Can I borrow you for a little bit?” he says. “I could use your help upstairs with the bookshelves in my office.”

  I push to a stand, brushing crumbs and dirt off my pants. “Of course. What’s wrong with them?”

  “Well, for one thing, the books are just shoved in there, willy-nilly. There’s no rhyme or reason to them, and I can never seem to find the one I’m looking for. I need somebody to organize them, come up with some kind of a system. It’s a big job. It will probably take you the rest of the day.”

  I don’t understand. Up to now, Martina, Ayana and I have been a team, scrubbing our way through the church like locusts through a field, and now the Reverend seems to be singling me out. I flick a glance at Martina, frozen on the other side of the day care room. She frowns, and the look she gives me makes me tense.

  I wave a casual hand in her direction. “Should I bring some reinforcements?”

  “That’s an excellent idea, but this room needs to be ready for the kids tonight.” The Reverend turns to them with a smile. “Why don’t you ladies finish up down here, then join Beth when you’re done. In the meantime, I’ll walk her up and explain what’s what.”