Crystal was the one we hired to help drive the kids around. She was a nice young woman who was always on time and good with the kids. She worked for us until Millicent decided we didn’t need her anymore.
But before that, she kissed me.
It was when Millicent was in Miami for a conference with a coworker named Cooper. I never liked him.
For the three days Millicent was gone, Crystal was around more than usual. She picked the kids up from school and made dinner for them at the house. One afternoon, we found ourselves alone, and that’s when it happened.
At lunchtime, I went home to eat, and she was there, alone, because the kids were at school. She made us a couple of sandwiches, and we ate together while chatting about her family. Nothing exciting, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that made me think she was flirting. After we finished eating, we bumped into each other as I went to the refrigerator and she headed for the sink.
She did not pull away.
Neither did I, to be honest. Maybe I wanted to see what she would do.
She kissed me.
I pulled away. At that point, I had never cheated on Millicent. I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was thinking about Millicent in Miami with her male coworker.
Before I had a chance to say anything to Crystal, she apologized and left the room. I don’t think we were ever alone again.
I considered telling Millicent right up to the moment I picked her up at the Orlando airport. I decided not to take the risk.
I am thinking about this because I don’t think I’m the only one not being totally truthful. I think Millicent has been lying to me. The idea came to me when Jenna got sick. I had just arrived home from work, and I was late; we were supposed to go to a party thrown by an association of mortgage brokers. Millicent was rushing around, trying to get ready, Rory was playing video games, and Jenna was throwing up in the bathroom.
Millicent went to the party alone that night. I stayed home with Jenna.
We have taken Jenna to the doctor about her stomach once before. Our family doctor says I worry too much. Kids get upset stomachs all the time, he says. But now she has them more often, her stomach problems have gotten worse since Owen was brought back to life. This makes me think her fear of him is not getting better. It is making her physically sick.
I pulled up a calendar on my phone and tried to figure out how often she was getting sick. One of the first times it happened was the night we were with Lindsay, when I’d left Millicent alone with her to go be with Jenna.
Ever since Lindsay’s body was found, I’ve wondered about that night, about what would have happened if Jenna had not been sick. Would we have gone ahead and killed Lindsay that night? Or would Millicent have told me she wanted to keep Lindsay alive?
And when did she take care of her? When she was supposed to be at work? How did she sell all those houses and still keep Lindsay alive for a year?
Too many questions I cannot answer. I have secrets. Why wouldn’t she?
* * *
• • •
MY FIRST IDEA is stupid. I thought I could follow Millicent to find out what she is doing, maybe where she is keeping Naomi. But as soon as I think of following Millicent, I realize why it is impossible. She knows my car too well; she knows my license plate. She would spot me in a second.
Plus, I have to work. My job is flexible, not optional.
But I don’t have to follow her, because technology can do it for me. Five minutes of research on the Internet tells me this works exactly like in the movies. I buy a GPS tracker with a magnetic case, press the power button, and stick it on the bottom of her car. All I have to do is log in to the app on my phone to see where her car is. The app also records the addresses where she stops, so I do not have to follow it in real time. The whole setup is unbelievably cheap, even with the fee for real-time information. Spying on someone has never been simpler.
I make it sound easy, and technically it is, but the real cost is to my psyche. And my marriage.
Even after I buy the device, I don’t put it on right away. It stays in the trunk of my car, burning a hole in the back of my mind. I do not want to blow up my marriage and my family, which is what will happen if Millicent finds out I am spying on her.
I do not want to do it, but I want to know what she is doing.
When I get home from work, Millicent is already home and her car is in the garage. It takes only a second to attach it.
Later in the evening, it occurs to me that maybe there is a way for her to know there is a tracker on her car. All technology has countertechnology—at least I assume it does—so I spend an hour on my phone, looking up all the ways Millicent could find out what I have done. And I am right; she can find out. But first she would have to suspect she is being tracked.
I look over at her. She is sitting with Rory at the dining room table, and they are making flash cards for his history class. He has never been a great student, because, as his teachers say, he does not apply himself. Millicent agrees, and a few times a week she helps him do just that. No phones, no distractions, nothing but his homework and his mother. Not even I interrupt when Millicent is working with Rory.
After a few minutes, she feels me staring at her. She glances up and winks at me. I wink back.
Later that night, I remove the tracker from her car.
The next morning, I put it back on.
Thirty-nine
WHEN I WATCH someone in person, it feels intimate. They have no idea they are being watched, so they are not guarded or self-conscious. I get to know how they walk and move, their little tics and gestures. Sometimes, I can even tell what they will do next.
Using a tracker is much different, because I am not watching Millicent. I am watching a blue dot move around a map.
The app tells me where she goes—the address, latitude and longitude. I know how long she stays, how fast she drives, exactly how she parks. The app spits out charts and graphs that tell me how much time she spends driving, her average speed, and the average time at each location. I try to picture Millicent behind the wheel, dressed up for work, perhaps talking on the phone or listening to music. I wonder if she does something I don’t know about. Maybe she sings when she is alone. Or talks to herself. I have never seen her do either one, but she must do something. Everyone does when they are alone.
On the first day, she drops the kids off at school and goes to the office. She works for a real estate agency but does not spend much time sitting at a desk. After that, she drives to Lark Circle, to a residential address in Hidden Oaks. Over the next eight or nine hours, she goes to eleven houses, all of which are for sale. I check them all. She picks up the kids, stops at the store, drives home.
The surprise is where she stopped to eat lunch. Instead of having a salad or a sandwich or even fast food, Millicent went to an ice-cream parlor.
For the rest of the afternoon, I wonder if she got a cone or a cup.
Our dinner is roast turkey with chorizo and sweet potatoes. Rory glosses over the grade on his history quiz by telling an exciting story about a kid who was caught smoking and made a run for it before anyone could identify him. Jenna had heard the same story, but a friend of a friend said the guy was the vice principal’s son and that was why he ran.
“False,” Rory says. “I heard it’s Chet.”
Jenna turns up her nose. “He’s a jerk.”
“Chet Allison?” Millicent says. “I sold the Allisons their house.”
“No. Chet Madigan.”
“You have two Chets at school?” she says.
“Three,” Jenna says.
There is a lull in the conversation. I ponder the abundance of Chets while sneaking a look at Millicent’s plate. She has a thick slice of turkey, a scoop of chorizo, and a tiny sweet potato. For her, it is a normal-size dinner. Dessert is fruit and gingersnap cookies. No ice cream.
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br /> All of a sudden, I find myself fascinated by my wife’s eating habits. I wonder if her lunch always determines what we eat for dinner, dessert, or both.
I watch the blue dot again the next day.
Millicent drops off the kids, but I pick them up, and during that time she is at a house in the Willow Park gated community. Today, she goes to the office, but she does not stop for lunch. Again, she stays within a small radius, concentrated in the areas and subdivisions where she sells the most houses.
In contrast, the police have widened their search. At night, after Millicent is asleep, I watch the news on my phone in the bathroom, because if I go into the garage, my son will think I am still cheating on his mother.
Josh now starts his reports with the number of days that have passed since Naomi has disappeared. He calls it “The Count,” and it is at twenty-two. Twenty-two days have passed since Friday the 13th, and Josh is still following the police around to abandoned buildings, sheds, and bunkers. An expert says this is probably futile, because Owen is watching the news, and therefore Naomi would not be kept in an empty building, shed, or bunker. Besides, a woman can be held anywhere. A single room, a storage container. A closet.
The report is over in just a few minutes. It used to take up half the evening news. The story is starting to fade, because nothing new has happened and Naomi is no longer the girl next door. She is tainted. The viewers have grown restless.
And I have become mesmerized by the blue dot. In all my years of marriage, I have never wondered how much time it takes Millicent to show a house, or how long of a lunch she takes, or how many houses per day she sees. Now that I am tracking her, all of this has become intriguing.
I check the app every chance I get. Before and after tennis lessons, when I am in my car, in the clubhouse, in the locker room. There is no sign of Naomi. Millicent visits no unusual buildings or abandoned businesses, and the houses are all on the market. She goes to the store, to the school, and to the bank for a closing. After four days, I start to wonder if Naomi is already dead.
As disturbing as it is, I think this may be the best-case scenario.
If she is gone, never to be heard from or found, Owen may fade away with her. When he is gone from the news, it will be like he’d never come back.
Trista will still be gone. Nothing can be done about that. But Jenna will stop being scared. She will stop thinking about Owen Oliver.
Then, a year from now, Owen will be back on the news. The anniversary of the event will be marked with documentaries, specials, and dramatic re-creations, but there will be nothing new to report. We will hear about Naomi and the men in shadows with the garbled voices.
Once again, Owen will fade away. Naomi will go with him.
Jenna will be a year older and talking about boys. Her hair will be long again, and she will not have a knife under her mattress.
As the days go on, I start to think it is all happening. Naomi is no longer alive, and Millicent is not torturing her, not visiting her. The police still have nothing. Everything, all that we have done, will just fade away until everyone forgets.
With a smile, I watch the blue dot. Millicent goes home in the afternoon, drops the kids off, and then heads back out. She stops at a coffee shop, and I know she is getting a vanilla latte. Maybe with an extra shot, but it’s hard to tell from just the dot on the map.
I am so busy watching Millicent that I miss the breaking news. A woman claims Owen Oliver Riley attacked her.
Forty
I FIRST HEAR ABOUT this woman when I’m at the EZ-Go. A TV screen is mounted above the soda machine, visible to everyone in the store, including in the security mirrors. The breaking-news banner is everywhere, but I pay no attention until Josh is on the screen. He says a woman has come forward to claim she was attacked by Owen Oliver Riley.
She doesn’t appear on TV, not even in shadows. For now, she is just a report filed with the police. The text appears on the screen, and a female reporter reads it:
On Tuesday night, I became Owen Oliver Riley’s latest victim, but by the grace of God I got away from him. I am a hairdresser, and after work we all went across the street for a drink. Later that night, I was at a bar out on Mercer Road but I decided to leave, because I had to work the next day. This was right around 11 p.m., and I remember because someone said it and I thought I better get home soon, so I decided to leave. I was parked in the back lot, and it isn’t even dark back there because of the lights, and the moon was real bright—maybe it was a full moon, but I didn’t check. It was light enough to walk by myself, so I did. Honestly, I didn’t even think about Owen. He never crossed my mind.
I was a couple feet from my car when I felt a tug. Felt like my bag got caught on something, the strap. It wasn’t hard, didn’t scare me. I just stopped and tugged, and it was definitely caught on something. So I turned around.
He was just standing there, holding on to the strap of my bag. That’s what it was caught on. Owen’s hand.
I knew it was him, even though he had a cap pulled down so low it covered half his face. I could still see his mouth, though. His smile. Everyone knows that smile—it’s all over the news because he smiled in that old mug shot, and that’s how I know it was definitely him. And that’s why I let go of the bag and ran.
Didn’t get far before he tackled me. That’s where I got all these scrapes, trying to get out from under him. But I couldn’t, because he was just so strong, and every time I tried to move, his grip got tighter.
I’m only alive because of my phone. My brother called, and I knew it was him because of the ring. I personalize all my rings because I like to know who’s calling, right? My brother’s ring sounds like an explosion, because that’s kind of what he’s like—a big explosion. His life always seems to be blowing up, and when it does he calls me. But I can’t complain anymore, because his life and that ring is why I’m still here. The exploding sound was so loud it made Owen jump. His head whipped around, and I think he believed something had really blown up.
I scrambled to get up and ran straight back to the bar, and he didn’t follow me.
I don’t think he realized nothing blew up. Maybe he still thinks something did.
That is the end of the statement, or at least the only part read on the news. The words disappear, and Josh is back. He is standing in the parking lot behind that bar on Mercer. I haven’t been to that bar since I was about twenty. Back then, they were known for not carding.
Josh looks serious. Sad. He is getting better, because he no longer looks excited about something horrible. He calls the woman who got attacked Jane Doe.
“Excuse me.”
An older woman brushes past me. I am still standing in the convenience store, right near the soda machine, staring up at the screen. The only other person watching is the guy at the register. It’s not Jessica, the cashier I usually see. This guy has a bald head, which shines under the fluorescent lights.
He looks at me and shakes his head, as if to say, “Isn’t it terrible? Isn’t it a shame?”
I nod while buying my usual coffee and a bag of barbecue chips.
* * *
• • •
THIS IS WHAT living with Millicent has always been like. Life goes along like it’s supposed to, an occasional bump in the road but otherwise a fairly smooth ride. And then suddenly the ground opens into a chasm wide enough to swallow everything. Sometimes, what’s inside is good, even great; sometimes not.
It happened when she told me Holly was alive. It happened when she bashed Robin in the head with a waffle iron. And again when she resurrected Owen.
These are the giant events, where the chasm becomes wider than the earth itself. Not all have been quite that large. Sometimes, the chasm is just big enough to swallow me, like when she left with the kids and disappeared for eight days after I came home drunk.
And then there are the c
racks. When the ground opens up, it causes cracks. Some are bigger than others, like Jenna having a knife under her mattress. Or Trista killing herself. They are all different sizes—long, short, a variety of widths—but they originate from the same chasm.
The first one cracked open on our wedding day.
Millicent and I got married at her parents’ house in a field surrounded by cilantro, rosemary, and oregano. She wore a gauzy white dress that hung to her ankles, and she had a homemade wreath on her head, made of daffodils and lavender. I wore khakis rolled up to my ankles and a white button-up, left untucked, and both of us were barefoot. It was perfect, right up until it wasn’t.
Eight people attended our wedding. The three guys I went overseas with were there, including Andy. Not Trista. They were dating but not married, and Andy wasn’t ready to give her any ideas. Abby and Stan, Millicent’s parents, were there, and so was a friend of Millicent’s from high school. The last two were neighbors.
The ceremony was just that: an act, a ritual. Neither Millicent or I were religious; we were going to get legally married the following Monday at the Woodview City Hall. In the meantime, we pretended to marry, with Millicent’s father playing the minister’s role. Stan looked so official in a plaid shirt buttoned to the neck and his thin grey hair smoothed down with gel. He stood in front of their herb fields with a book in his hands. Not the Bible, just a book, and he almost said the right words.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this young man wants to marry my daughter today, and I think he needs to prove himself.” Stan pretended to give me the evil eye. “So make it good.”
I had written and rewritten my vows a dozen times, knowing I would have to say them out loud. The other people did not bother me at all. I was nervous about saying them to Millicent. I took a deep breath.
“Millicent, I can’t promise you the world. I can’t promise I will buy you a big house or a fancy car or a giant diamond ring. I can’t even promise we’ll always have food on the table.”
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