I thought of Sam, watched the officer depart, and considered that maybe I wasn’t as good at reading people as I believed.
13
When I left the police station, the autumn sun had finally won its battle with the cloud cover, but the fight left it weak and unable to offer warmth.
I paused outside the station. I should go home, check the computer, sift through phone records and credit card statements. But when I thought of home, I thought of Sam making tamales, setting off the fire alarm when a batch of cornhusks caught fire, or Sam tending to scrapes on Audrey’s knees and elbows, insignificant injuries made instantly better with Dad’s attention and a superhero Band-Aid. I thought of the last time Leo had the flu, when he had allowed us to sit next to him on the couch. We had spent an entire Saturday afternoon there, sharing a blanket and watching South Park reruns and Miyazaki films.
I couldn’t go home.
Even though I hadn’t yet decided on my next step, I walked with purpose toward the car. Keep moving, I told myself, just as I had the night before. Reflection could wait until tonight, when I spent another night on Zoe’s sofa, or my first night alone in the bed I usually shared with Sam. I wasn’t sure I was brave enough for that yet.
Still struggling to come up with a plan, I drove past the station—and saw it. A little metal box, its black lens pointed at the street. I turned around at the next block and headed toward home after all.
I turned a few blocks before I reached our house. The cold sun stole the magic from the neighborhood where Sam had disappeared, ghosts now recognized as bedsheets, skeletons clearly plastic instead of bone. A witch, robbed of its shadows and glowing orbs, listed to one side on a fence post. Someone had splattered its tattered dress with egg.
Not yet 11 a.m. on a Friday, the street was deserted, but I wasn’t looking for people. I was looking for cameras. Women like the ones I had met a night earlier—the pirate and the witch who had groused about kids who came in from “other areas”—were exactly the type who might want to surveil outsiders.
I walked down one side of the street—past ranch, traditional, and midcentury modern homes—and down the other, yards accented with live oak and flowering pear trees, boxwood hedges and drought-resistant plants. I scanned doorways, second-floor balconies, and rooftops for surveillance cameras.
I saw none. I supposed they could be stashed under eaves or camouflaged in shrubbery, but wasn’t the whole point of surveillance to deter crime? And what about doorbell cameras? Someone could be watching me using an app on their phone, and I might never know.
I felt a familiar itch of frustration. As a high school freshman in Phoenix, I had joined the cross-country team but had realized quickly I hated running. There were blisters and leg cramps, and my lungs often felt on the verge of bursting. No endorphins, just a painful slog and the fear that, yes, this time I might actually vomit, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing?
But I finished the season. That’s what I did: I finished. So, standing on the block where Sam was last seen, I retraced my steps, looking more closely at doorbells now.
I almost missed it, as focused as I was on the high points. But it wasn’t a camera that drew my attention; it was a pumpkin. Pushed as it was to the side of the porch, I hadn’t seen it on my first pass. Soft spots had started to form on the squat squash, its color beginning to fade. The jack-o’-lantern, though, was expertly carved. Its eyes drooped, forlorn, its eyebrows arched slits of dismay, its mouth down-turned. Out of that mouth, between carefully carved fangs, spilled a generous mound of stringy and seed-specked pumpkin guts.
As if it were throwing up.
This was exactly the kind of pumpkin Audrey had mentioned earlier, and it sat on the brick steps of the two-story home two doors down from the haunted house where I had found her.
Free newspapers were scattered on the doorstep next to the pumpkin, a few more on the front lawn. A side window was cracked, covered with cardboard.
Even though I expected no answer, I knocked.
“You selling something, or looking for the Gardners?” I turned toward the voice, which belonged to an older woman in leopard-print glasses, a floral blouse, and periwinkle slacks. “Because if you’re looking for the Gardners, they moved out the middle of this month.”
But if the house had been vacant for a couple of weeks, the porch light shouldn’t have been on the night before. And if the light hadn’t been on, how had Audrey seen this pumpkin? I myself had nearly missed it in daylight.
The woman in the periwinkle slacks, hair just a shade lighter, took my pause as a sign I wanted to know more. “Stan, he’s the husband, used to manage a car lot. Lost his job a few months back. The wife, Christina, she’s an adjunct professor, but they couldn’t support a family of five on that. Not in Sonoma County. They moved to Ohio.” She held out her hand and I shook it. “I’m Helen, by the way.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Cassie.” I pulled out my phone and displayed a photo of Sam. “Have you seen this man? Maybe last night?”
The older woman adjusted her glasses and leaned in. “Is that your husband?”
When I nodded, Helen smiled. “He’s a handsome young man. I’ve always been a sucker for dimples. My Bob had dimples.”
“Do you remember seeing him?”
“Of course. Mainly because of the little girl. She sparkled and was so polite. Some of them don’t say thank you, but she did.”
My heart skipped. “You saw Audrey?”
“The little girl? She was adorable and the only cat wearing a crown I saw last night.”
“What time was that?”
“I ran out of candy around eight, and they were one of the last. A quarter till?” She thought about it a second, then nodded. “Yes, that sounds about right.”
That was shortly after Sam had called me. Thirty-one minutes, to be precise. Sam had promised to be home in thirty. “Was there anyone with them?”
The woman tilted her head, curiosity edging toward suspicion. “Are you two having trouble, is that what this is about? Because I don’t really like to get involved.”
I imagined the Gardners would disagree.
“My husband’s missing.” Saying it aloud, for the second time in an hour, made the stone I carried in my stomach heavier. I tried a slight smile to soften the words, but I feared it came across as rotten as the pumpkin on the stoop.
“And you think he might have gone off with someone? A woman?”
“He might have.”
She considered this, running her fingers through her periwinkle hair. “I thought my Bob was cheating once, after we first got married. I found a box of condoms. Doused them with that ink that only shows up under UV light.”
I couldn’t help myself. “What happened?”
“The first time I noticed a few missing, I waited until he was asleep and got out my special light. Checked his hands. Checked everything. He was clean. Turns out the condoms belonged to a friend, and Bob was keeping them for this guy so his wife didn’t find them. I gave the wife the box and the light.”
So much for Helen’s policy about not getting involved. Or maybe that was how that policy had started. I couldn’t imagine the gift was well received.
“As to your question, it was just him and the girl.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, which house is yours?”
“The yellow ranch.” Helen pointed to a house across from where we stood.
I handed the older woman one of my cards. “If you hear anything . . .”
Helen took the card and slipped it in the pocket of her slacks. “You’re sure you don’t know the Gardners?”
When I shook my head, the older woman continued, “The two younger Gardner kids aren’t in school yet, but the oldest is in eighth grade. Poor kid. Must feel like his life has been turned upside down.”
I pulled my hands up into the sleeves of my sweatshirt, suddenly cold again. What would my own children do if their father never came home? “That would be terrible,
” I agreed.
“But Ohio’s nice. I have a cousin who lives there,” the older woman said. She studied my face and then winked. “I hope you find your husband.”
She patted me on the arm and walked away.
14
I had been so fixated on the neighborhood where Sam had disappeared, at first, I overlooked my own. Then I drove past Gino Baldovino’s house.
Though he had been married three times, Mr. Baldovino currently lived alone. It was always the wife who left. I had learned this when, shortly after we had moved in, Mr. Baldovino had crossed the street to tell me I was overwatering my strawflowers.
Mr. Baldovino had talked to us only once since, the previous autumn when a rake had disappeared from his front yard on the same day Leo had a couple of friends over. I could not convince my neighbor the boys weren’t involved—rakes, as I had pointed out, weren’t high on the wish list of most teens—and he had left muttering in Italian.
The next day, Mr. Baldovino had installed a surveillance camera. Every day since, it had been pointed at our house.
My breath quickened in concert with my step as I crossed the street to the Baldovino home. My knock was only slightly louder than my heartbeat.
When Mr. Baldovino didn’t answer, I rang the doorbell. The curtains parted, then fell back together again.
Five minutes passed, but I continued standing, resolute, on his porch. I knocked again and, when that didn’t stir him, I rang the doorbell.
Between the knocking and the ringing, I had gotten a nice rhythm going when the door finally opened. The crack offered a glimpse of only one eye and half a nose.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
Small talk would be wasted on my neighbor, so I opted for brevity: “Your surveillance from last night and early this morning. Please.”
The single eye narrowed. I guessed he was torn between his natural urge to shut the door and his desire to learn more about a possible crime in his neighborhood. Curiosity won out over ill manners. “Why?”
Reluctant to share my story with him, I sought a lie. “A hanging planter on my side gate went missing.”
“I don’t remember a planter.”
I cursed that I hadn’t thought to say Audrey’s bike or Leo’s cleats. He wouldn’t have cared about those items. Actually, I had doubts he would care if the kids themselves went missing.
“I just hung it last night,” I said.
“Were your sons’ friends visiting?”
I sighed, refocusing my patience. “No.”
“What was in the planter?” he asked, his eye still a slit in his face.
“I don’t know. Some tiny yellow flowers.”
He snorted at this. “‘Tiny yellow flowers.’ Because that narrows it down.”
But my ignorance convinced him, and he opened the door wide enough so I could see both eyes. “Go buy another one.”
“The flowers were new, but the planter was my mother’s,” I lied. Again. I had nothing of my mother’s.
Mr. Baldovino considered this. “They’re my DVDs.”
Why else would I be here? I thought. “I can pay you.”
His frown deepened. “I don’t need your money. You can return that rake your son stole.”
How had this man attracted three wives?
“My son didn’t steal your rake, Mr. Baldovino, but I can certainly buy you a new one.”
“You wouldn’t get the right kind.”
I choked back another sigh. “Is there anything you want, Mr. Baldovino? I can run some errands for you.”
He didn’t have a car and was in his eighties, but he immediately puffed up his chest at the offer. “What? You think I’m some kind of invalid?”
“Of course not. How about some clippings from our garden?”
This interested him. “I want a tree,” he said. “The Japanese maple.”
“Of course.”
I expected him to leave so he could retrieve the recording. Instead, he closed the door without a word and, a few minutes later, still hadn’t returned.
I started knocking again.
“What?” he bellowed through the door.
“Can I get the DVD?”
“I’ll bring it to you after my nap.”
I considered pushing Mr. Baldovino on this but thought any disagreements might result in further demands of trees.
I hadn’t wanted to return home but, forced to wait for the recording, I now had no choice. Still, I stood rooted to Mr. Baldovino’s walkway like the Japanese maple soon to be ripped from my front yard.
None of the late morning light penetrated the room-darkening curtains in our living room. The curtains had been installed shortly after Audrey was born, at the same time we had purchased the sleeper sofa. Audrey had been colicky and slept in spurts, so I had lived in this room for the first eight weeks of her life.
Standing in the dark, with no distractions, I remembered that time with new clarity. I had felt overwhelmed and utterly alone. It had gotten worse when Audrey was diagnosed. That’s when I had started pulling away. At the time, I had believed Sam was having an affair.
The suspicion had been fleeting, banished the night Sam had taken to sleeping in the living room beside me, but now I wondered if I dismissed my suspicions too quickly. Had he been cheating as far back as then?
I didn’t embrace the theory, but neither did I turn away from it. Since finding Audrey alone the night before, I had been seesawing between faith and mistrust, each piece of evidence viewed as either proof Sam had left voluntarily or a contradiction to what I knew to be true.
If I doubted Sam so easily, did it matter which was right?
Our home didn’t have a dedicated office, so we had created a work space on one side of the dining room. Years earlier, Sam had found an old desk dumped curbside, then had spent a weekend scraping, sanding, sealing, and painting it a deep green. The family computer was positioned at its center, clutter shoving against it. On the right, Leo’s history book, piles of notebook paper, and a glass half-full of water. On the left, Audrey’s artwork and bottles of glitter glue. And, perched on a shelf above the chaos, the picture: the one of Sam and the kids at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, taken when Leo was still small enough to tuck beneath his father’s chin. As usual, I wasn’t in the photo.
I settled in the chair and signed on to our bank’s website, scanning the transactions for the past month. There were debits for groceries, gas, utilities, and restaurants, mostly the kind where meals were served in a bag. We had smogged and registered my van that month. There were several other online charges I didn’t recognize, but when I cross-referenced those, the items were expected: a new phone case and sneakers for Leo, a couple of books for Audrey.
I went back another month, and still saw nothing suspicious. There were no large cash withdrawals, nor a series of small ones. Over the past two months, only three hundred and twenty dollars had been taken out of the ATM. As far as I could tell, no flowers, romantic dinners, or lingerie had been purchased. But if Sam was having an affair, he was certainly smart enough to pay cash.
I found only one surprise, but it wasn’t any of the charges. It was the absence of one. After combing through two months of transactions, I could find no mortgage payment listed.
I navigated to the mortgagor’s website. There, the transactions confirmed what I already suspected: the house payment was forty-five days late.
I tried to think of a reason for such an oversight, because that was what it had to be: an oversight. Sam had been distracted lately. We both had been. If we had fallen behind on our bills, Sam would have told me. He wouldn’t have risked the roof over our children’s heads. We didn’t have secrets like that.
I caught myself: there was that lie I’d been telling myself. Of course we had secrets. I just hadn’t thought they were important ones. The week before, I had told Sam I was coming right home but instead spent an hour browsing the bookstore. Last month when I bought Leo the sneakers, to avoid an argument, I
had lied that they were on sale. Better that Sam find out when he balanced the checkbook than at the end of a long workday.
I love you, but you spend too much money on the kids.
Until Sam had disappeared, I thought those were the kinds of secrets we had. Covert errands and overpriced sneakers. But maybe that was how it started. Small secrets become larger ones until your husband goes missing and you discover your house payment is past due.
What else didn’t I know about my husband?
I returned to the list of banking transactions and switched my focus to the credits. Using the calculator on my phone, I added up Sam’s paychecks for the past two months. I didn’t know what he made down to the dollar, but the total was lower than I expected. I went back six months and compared those totals to the current ones. The current deposits were significantly lower. Two weeks before, there had been no deposit at all.
I struggled to decipher what it all meant. Had Sam been getting cash back from his paychecks, squirreling it away until he could escape? Had he gotten a cut in pay he hadn’t told me about? He certainly hadn’t told me about the missed house payment, so what else could he be hiding?
Fury surged, bitter and sharp. What the hell, Sam?
I swept the framed picture of Sam and the kids from the shelf so that it fell facedown on the desk, that stupid desk, painted that shade of green because Sam said it matched my eyes. I expected the glass to shatter, but it remained intact, which felt like a betrayal. I yanked open a drawer and lobbed the photo inside. This time, the glass spiderwebbed.
Perversely satisfied, I slammed the drawer. Then I opened it and slammed it again, harder. The second impact loosened the brushed-nickel knob, so that it bobbled when I slammed the drawer a third time.
Where are you, Sam? Why aren’t you here?
Angry tears threatened, but I gritted my teeth against them. It wasn’t just Sam. It was all of it. The attack on the trail. My patient’s near-fatal poisoning. Finding Audrey with women I didn’t know. My father. Myself.
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