by Delaney, JP
Except that it wasn’t a great place. You hated it at first sight. The thought of sending Danny there terrified you. All this talk of aversives and contingent behaviors was just so brutal.
You did something you rarely did with Tim: You put your foot down. You said No.
Tim just carried on as if it was a done deal. Meadowbank had the best results, so Meadowbank was where Danny was going. End of. Anything else was just irrational emotional chaff. Women’s stuff.
In desperation, you told him you could get Julian back. You admitted he hadn’t really gone abroad. You confessed you’d only said that because he kissed you.
You thought Tim would be fine about it. After all, you’d put a stop to it the moment it started. What more could you have done?
But Tim wasn’t fine.
* * *
—
“You’re obviously going to fuck him. So I don’t know why you don’t just go ahead and do it.”
You were both shouting now. “What! Of course I’m not—”
“Admit it, you’re horny for him. I wouldn’t mind but I hate that you won’t be honest about it.”
“This is crazy—”
“What I do mind is that you’re letting your sloppy pussy dictate what’s best for Danny.”
“That is unforgivable!”
And you remember how Tim snickered. A weird, high-pitched giggle, like a little kid. “And yet somehow I think you’ll forgive me. Because you’re not about to walk out on all this, are you? The nice houses, the pretty dresses, the private jet. Not to mention all the quack therapists you waste your time and my money on.” He leaned in, too close. “You know what I do to sluts who think they can take me for a ride? I destroy them.”
You stared at him. “What sluts?”
He stopped. “Nothing. Just a figure of speech. Don’t try to twist this, Abbie. Don’t try to make this about me.”
* * *
—
“He wouldn’t let her simply divorce him,” you say. “She had to be punished. Shamed. For something that was only in his head in the first place.”
“He put her on dating sites,” Mike says. “Or at least, a chatbot version of her. He thought it was funny. He made the chatbot tell those men all the degrading things she wanted to do for them. In Abbie’s voice, with Abbie’s profile picture. It was childish and pathetic. But Tim thought it was hilarious. He could listen to it for hours.”
From Madonna to whore, you think. Just like it said in that book.
“I suppose I should thank you, then. For helping her get away.”
There’s a long silence. Then Mike shakes his head. “I didn’t, though. I wish I had. I would have, if she’d asked me. But she never did.”
“I don’t believe you. I found a picture of you at the Haven Farms fundraiser. If you didn’t help Abbie disappear, who did?”
“Me,” a voice says from the doorway.
You both turn.
“That would be me,” Jenny repeats.
72
“Mike tells people he didn’t like Abbie. I guess he told you that, didn’t he?”
The three of you sit around a table in a meeting room. No one’s turned on any lights. Even so, Jenny keeps her gaze on the table, not meeting either your eyes or Mike’s.
“The thing is, he’s lying. He loved her. Right from the moment he met her. I always knew he did.” Mike flinches, but she ignores him. “Perhaps love isn’t the right word. But infatuation doesn’t begin to cover it. He went…goofy over her. That’s the only way I can describe it. Something in him just kind of melted whenever she was around. Whereas me…”
She shrugs. In her Nirvana hoodie, she’s so tiny and boyish. So unthreatening. Androgynous, almost sexless. That was how she’d survived in this toxic environment, you realize: At some point, she’d simply turned into one of the guys.
At least, on the outside.
“As it went on, the fact she was taken—by Tim—I think that was part of the attraction, actually. The relationship between him and Mike…it’s pretty screwed up. When all’s said and done, my husband’s the beta to Tim’s alpha. I got used to that. But it would have been good to see him stand up to Tim, just occasionally.”
“Jen,” Mike says softly. “I love you. You know that.”
“Oh sure. Marriage, date night, picking out curtains, even sex…We can do all that. But sometimes, just sometimes, it would be nice to be adored.”
“I do,” he says desperately. “Believe me, Jen. I do.”
“I saw the way you looked at her. Abbie did, too. She might even have gone to you in the end. For help, I mean. She was desperate to get away, you were desperate for anything you could get from her…” She shrugs. “So I guess you missed your chance.”
“When did you start helping Abbie?” you ask.
Jenny’s eyes flick briefly in your direction, then back to the table. “I used to see her at company socials. I could tell there were problems. Well, of course there were. It was amazing Tim had been able to keep up the pretense so long, really. Things were getting even worse here…I remember one time I sent him an email about a problem I’d spotted in the coding. He sent it on to a developer, but he accidentally copied in the whole math group. He’d written: Someone sew up this bitch’s vagina and tell her to quit whining.”
She’s silent a moment. “I didn’t go to HR. I knew if I did, there was only one way it could end. A payoff, an NDA…and no job. So I ignored it, just like I always did. You know what was so damn ironic? The fact is, I had sewed up my vagina. I always knew I couldn’t have kids and be a world-class coder, too, at least not in a company like this one. And bad as this is, others are worse.
“So I started inviting myself around to Abbie’s house for coffee, and gradually it all spilled out. She wanted to leave, to take Danny away from that horrible school Tim had chosen and start over somewhere different. Somewhere kinder.”
Another flashback. The continuing fights over Meadowbank—such incredible fights. Tim surprised to find his usually laid-back wife so stubborn. But equally, refusing to give ground himself.
Fights that turned increasingly from the theoretical to the personal.
“You’ve had your chance with Danny, and what’s the best you could come up with? Fucking kinesiology and head massages. It’s time we did this properly.”
And then, the most devastating exchange of all.
“I’m his mother. Surely I know what’s right for him?”
“A mother who bore me a defective son. What does that say about you?”
You’d stared at him, heartbroken. Because, whether he really meant it or not, there was no going back now.
“Abbie knew Tim would fight her every inch of the way,” Jenny continues. “She had this insane plan to just take off…It wouldn’t have worked, not in a million years. He could have tracked her down in hours. And then he’d use what she’d done to take Danny away from her. I told her, if she really wanted to do it like that, she had to do it properly.”
“And then you thought you’d get your husband back,” you say softly.
She nods, then glances at Mike. “Didn’t quite work out like that, though, did it?”
“Why not?” you ask when he doesn’t reply.
“Anyway,” she says, not answering you directly, “it took two months of planning. First, we had to research suitable places for Danny. Julian was out of the question, of course—he was the first person Tim would have looked for. That picture you found, of the fundraiser? It was me who found that organization, me who went to look around one of their sites and shot footage on my phone for Abbie to look at. I’m not saying they’re perfect, but they ticked most of Abbie’s boxes. They focused on making people with autism happy, not making them better. Tim’s preference was always the other way around.
“Eventually we
got to D-day. That was what we called it, in case Tim was spying on us—Abbie always suspected he’d bugged her phone. D for disappearance. D for Danny. But as it turned out, maybe D for something else as well.”
“Why? What went wrong?”
“After all that planning, it was the stupidest thing. Danny was on a school trip that afternoon. That stupid bitch Sian hadn’t thought to tell anyone. So Abbie got to the school with some story about needing to take Danny for an eye appointment, and he wasn’t there. Everything else was in place…Abbie figured she’d just have to come back for him next day. So she went back to the beach house.” Jenny’s silent, her short unpolished nails picking at the seam of her hoodie. She sighs. “And that was the last I ever heard from her.”
“Why?” you say, not understanding. “What happened?”
“My guess is, Tim found out somehow.” Jenny’s eyes are wet. “Maybe the school phoned him instead of her when Danny got back, and he realized there was no eye exam…I don’t know. I don’t even know if she somehow managed to get away, or if he killed her. Or, for that matter, if she killed herself, thinking it wasn’t going to work.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police? You could have told them what she’d been planning. They’d have had a much better chance of getting to the bottom of it if they’d known.”
Jenny shrugs. But her gaze goes to Mike.
“Oh my God,” you say, realizing. “You thought Mike was involved. You thought, if Tim killed Abbie, Mike might have helped him.”
“Why not?” she says quietly. “You think Tim wouldn’t have called Mike up and said, I’ve just killed my lying slut of a wife, come and help me clear up the mess? That’s the kind of shit he doles out to my husband on a regular basis. And Mike…” She stops. “Mike would have done it, too.”
“Jesus,” you say disbelievingly. “All this time, you’ve thought that of your husband…And you never said anything?”
Her eyes flash. “Sometimes it’s easier in a marriage not to overshare. Not to rock the boat. There’ll always be another day for that conversation.”
“Jen,” Mike says desperately. “Jen…”
“Don’t say anything you’ll regret later,” she says sharply to him. “Don’t lie to me.”
There’s a long silence.
“Maybe I can help there,” you say at last. “Abbie’s alive. She wants me to go to her.”
Jenny buries her head in her hands, her bony shoulders shaking with relief.
“So now you have to help me,” you add. “Both of you. You owe me that, at least.”
Jenny looks up, her cheeks shiny with tears. “What do you need?”
“To know where she is, for one thing. Haven Farm Ranches seem to be spread all over the U.S. I can’t possibly visit them all.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know where she is. None of us do. That was the only way it was safe, Lisa said.”
“Lisa was in on it, too?”
Jenny nods. “She was the only one Abbie trusted. But even so, I don’t think they’re still in touch. Tim would have been spying on her as well.”
You realize now why Lisa has been so intent on having you destroyed. She’s frightened you might somehow work out where Abbie is and tell Tim. “Can you at least get her to tell me whatever she does know?”
“I can try. But if you do work out where Abbie is, what will you do?”
“The only thing I can. I’m going to take Danny to his mother, just like she wants me to. Because now she’s my only chance of surviving, too.”
73
Next morning Tim leaves the house early for a crisis meeting with Pete Maines. He’s going to countersue, he announces furiously. He’ll sue Lisa. He’ll sue Renton. He’ll sue his own company. He’ll sue Mike. The bastards are mistaken if they think he’s just going to lie down and take it. They have no idea what kind of shitstorm they’re about to unleash on their own heads.
Or something. You can’t really be bothered to follow the details.
Not once does he ask how you feel. The nearest he gets is when he asks if you’ve had any ideas about Abbie yet.
You frown. “There was something—but it’s probably irrelevant—”
“What?” he demands.
“Was there a guy she once worked with—Rajesh? Someone she was close to?”
Something flickers in his eyes. “Yes. Is she with him?”
“It’s only a hunch. But I’m going to give it some more thought.”
“Do that.” He smashes his fist into his palm. “This damn court case has come at just the wrong time.”
He kisses you goodbye, but distractedly. A habit, a ritual. Like kissing a photo because the real thing isn’t there.
And that’s the last time he’ll ever see you, you think as he leaves. Will he look back one day and ask himself, What if I’d done something different?
Probably not. Tim’s not much given to introspection.
Hopefully he’ll be too busy obsessing about Rajesh to consider any alternative scenarios now, at least in the short term. Jenny told you Rajesh is currently in India, the CEO of his own start-up and a multimillionaire in his own right. That should buy you some time.
Once Danny’s gone to school, you go up to Tim’s study. The combination lock on the door is a problem—you try some different options, but none work, so you get a fire extinguisher and smash the lock off the frame.
Inside, just as Tim described, are half a dozen rack-style computers. Lights flicker, green and red. Behind them, there’s something under a drop cloth. You go to see what it is, pulling the cloth off. Then you recoil.
It’s you—an ugly, prototype version, the limbs crudely screwed together, the joints exposed and crisscrossed with wires. The A-bot. Across the blank cheeks someone has scrawled WHORE in big, angry letters, so that the O encircles the open, lipstick-smeared mouth.
It must be light-activated, because as soon as the cloth is off it stirs. Then, in a voice eerily like your own, it speaks.
“Hello sir. I hope you’ve come to fuck me.”
You turn away, sickened. Even though you know it isn’t conscious, you can’t help feeling sorry for it. You find the backup power supply to the computer and disconnect it. You’re about to do the same with the servers when it occurs to you that this might not actually achieve what you need it to. You want Tim’s data wiped, not just powered off. And you don’t actually know how to do that.
Luckily, you know someone who will.
* * *
—
“Back already?” Nathan says when he sees you.
“I need something. A couple of things, actually.” You show him the hard drives. “First, I need these erased. That website talked about something called a degausser—I assume you have one of those?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Anything else?”
“Yes—I need to make sure no one from Scott Robotics can track me. So if there’s any kind of GPS built into my system, you need to get rid of it.”
“Hmm.” He thinks. “I’ll have to jailbreak you.”
“Meaning?”
“Disconnect you from the cloud. It’s not so different from untethering a cellphone. Though technically more challenging, obviously. Speaking of which, I hope you were smart enough not to bring your iPhone with you?”
“I only carry this these days.” You show him the burner. “And I take out the SIM card when I’m not using it.”
He grunts. “We’ll make a techie of you yet.”
“And you? Did you manage to track down the corporation Charles Carter set up?”
“Better than that. I’ve got a list of its assets.” He holds up a printout. You reach for it but he pulls it away. “Uh-uh. When you’re hooked up.”
* * *
—
You let him plug his cable into your hip
one last time.
“Let’s see,” he says, fingers flying across the keyboard. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of how you’re put together now, so this shouldn’t…Right. Gotcha.”
“You can do it?”
“Of course.” Nathan sounds offended. There’s a long silence, broken only by the clicking of his keyboard. “Though it’s actually a bit more complex than it first seemed,” he admits.
Tap-tap-tap. He looks up. “If you were a phone, I’d be obliged to mention that what I’m about to do might invalidate your warranty.”
“I can live with that,” you say drily.
“Plus, it might brick you. That means what it sounds like—turning an expensive bit of hardware into a brick. Plus plus, it will disable any security software you’ve got, such as firewalls and so on. Which may make your operating system liable to crash or malfunction.” He lifts his hands off the keyboard. “Okay to go ahead?”
You look at the screen. On it are the words SURE? Y/N
No, you’re not sure. You have no idea if this plan you’re formulating will simply make things worse.
On the other hand, the alternative is being wiped. “Do it,” you say impatiently.
He presses Y. For a moment you feel nothing. Then, subtly, something changes. You feel…
You feel alone, somehow. As if a hum of voices just out of the range of your hearing has quieted and tiptoed away. As if there had always been a prickling, boiling sensation at the back of your head, now only noticeable by its absence.
What’s the word for that? You reach for it, but there’s nothing there. Nothing falls into your brain, ready-made. You shiver.
“And the hard drives?” you manage to say.
He goes to a small box like a paper shredder, tosses Tim’s backups inside, and presses a button. “Done.”